[Longbow26]

The day I took the boys to teh range i recoverd one of the patched round balls i shout out of my Lyman 54 cal flinhtlock at 100 yards. I had to dig into 6 inches of clay to find it. I have not waighed it yet since it still has some caly on it and i dint want to wash it incase some ppl might be skeptakle if i did.

The 54cal ball meashers 1/2 inch across when round. The recoverd ball now meashers 3/4 of a inch long. And is 1/4 thick now.

Usually i recover my shot balls they are stacked ontop of eachother and molded together. This one was recoverd my it self since i ahd switched aiming spot on target and had cleard the back stop hill of debree so i could see the enternce hole into it.

I like looking at the recoverd balls and patches, it tells me a few things about the laods i putting together.

This was 100 grains of FFF goes powder and bore buter 1000 lubed patch. The aptch dint show any bern threw so laod was not to hot. The ball held its shape and mass hand waighing test. So in in opinion is good load for hunting. Its espansion is good. Not exesivly thin on the sides that would creat breaking up.

[file]86521[/file]

 

[Longbow26]

A dif view

[file]86523[/file]

 

[Longbow26]

I not know hwo to disable the flash so was hard to get a clear picter that dint get whited out from flash.

[file]86525[/file]

 

[Longbow26]

not know if any beter

[file]86527[/file]

 

[Longbow26]

last one.

[file]86529[/file]

 

[yankee]

they do flatten out don't they, i recovered one once on a Deer yrs ago but i don't remember the specifics, i remember it was a flat distorted mess

 

[DWD]

So ya weighed it yet? Curious how much weight it lost.

 

[Longbow26]

[rquote=1524311&tid=106228&author=DWD]So ya weighed it yet? Curious how much weight it lost. [/rquote]

Starting waight was 225.2 grains and recoverd waight after washing the clay off it was 218.8 grains a loss of 6.4 grains. I am not good enouf with math to figer out what persent fo mass it loss.

 

[DWD]

Between 3-4%, that's great IMHO. :
1% would be 2.252 grains so it's really closer to 3%... :thinking:

 

[yankee]

thats not a bad loss in clay, place a shoulder bone from a deer carcass over that clay and shoot again, that would be a closer comparison to total weight loss

 

[sharps4590]

Round balls generally don't lose much weight simply because they're generally pure or nearly pure lead which has a high cohesion factor. Going through the shoulder blade of a deer shouldn't make much difference. Go up in size of game and the difference will be higher.

Every animal on the face of the earth has been taken with the patched round ball and black powder.

Vic