My deceased father was a printer by trade and used to hoard linotype for moulding fishing sinkers. I wondered if anyone has tried moulding roundballs with linotype. It is pretty hard material and might work well in rifles with "Forsythe" rifling like the Pacific Arms underhammers. I used a hardness measuring gadget that made an indentation with a needle to measure and log hardness of top rails made of aluminum alloy when I worked building semi trailers for Great Dane. One of those might come in handy for moulding the linotype to assure material that goe's into the pot is consistant. I believe the alloy was part lead. Just a thought. Again I hope I'm not being redundant here. I seem to ask questions repeatedly until it finally sets in.

I just read Markw's response in a previous posting regarding hardened balls. I suppose that linotype might be too hard and difficult to mould. Maybe someone has tried this and worked out any problems. That would be a shortcut. Sorry, I should read the replies more carefully. Linotype seems lighter than lead to me and it might be cut with zinc or aluminum I have no idea. Maybe I should have read thru the bullet casting forum first before posting this here.

Ed Harris played around with hard balls and wrote it up in one of the Gun Digests or Handloader Digests. He played with them until he got them to work, but I don't remember the details. Linotype is 86% lead, 3% tin and 11% antimony, and shouldn't be cut with anything else like zinc or aluminum. Linotype was used for printing precisely because it is very easy to mould. They wanted good sharp type and linotype made it.

Bye
Jack

I've used hard lead for roundballs to shoot in a smoothbore with good results. I don't think they will load very easy in a rifled barrel.

I imagine maybe a custom made mould may be needed unless the Forsythe rifling would allow the balls to be loaded easily enough. I wonder exactly what owners of "Forsythe" rifled firearms like the Pacific Arms underhammers use. It's food for thought anyway.

Linotype is pretty danged hard for roundballs. Swampman's right, it can work well in a smoothbore, but even wheelweight lead can be a challenge to get working right in a roundball rifle. Lino's getting harder to find these days, and folks looking to make hardcast rifle or handgun bullets like to mix it into their alloys -- you might run up against someone who has pure lead they'd trade to you.

I've tried both linotype and wheel weights for round balls with poor results. Stick with soft lead it works much better. Like pisgah says see if you can find a caster who has some pure lead and trade it out.

Linotype is going to cast very easy, it'll fill the mold perfectly if your heat is right. It's not going to shrink much so if you cast in a 0.490" mold, chances are you're going to drop a ball from linotype that measures about 0.4922"

Linotype isn't good for balls, it'll work if you run smaller diameter balls and thicker patches but it's no good for hunting purposes, linotype is brittle and the ball will likely break apart on impact.

Changing the ball alloy changes the ball size & weight which means the whole load changes. WW alloy balls work okay if they don't drop too big for the bore but like anything else you need to build a load around them.

Linotype will fetch a good buck to the hardcast crowd, you can probably sell it and buy more pounds of known good almost pure lead than you have in pounds of linotype. BTW, if you boost the almost pure lead with a little WW alloy, it'll make great castings w/o jumping you more than one point on the BHN scale. 1# of WW to 30# almost pure.

Preoblem with linotype is that even though there is a patch, the ball ges engraved when seated. If you patch and seat a pure lead buall,,,then pull the ball (or debreech and push it back out) will find little marks through the patch were each rifling land stood. It's how you (well...at least i do) check for a good patch/ball fit...tight enough to leave those little marks, but not so tight that the patch is cut when seated.

Lino is too hard for this. So you'd need a slightly smaller diameter ball, thicker patch, and lower expectations for acccuracy.

Thanks for the info. I guess I should round all that linotype up since it is scarce. I did notice that it was brittle. I have bars of it and if you bend then it breaks easily.

I prefer something softer and something that does not fracture as readily as linotype, but then I am thinking of hunting game with whatever I practice with. ie LEAD.

Something that shatters to tiny bits won't be too good on a big game animal that I am trying to take down. Also I perfer more weight per volume of ball, not less. A pure lead 54 cal round ball goes about 230 grains the same sized round ball cast with linotype will be well under 199, I would estimate. Plus as others have said in the same bore size you'd have to go even smaller for the RB cast with linotype to shoot, hence you'd have to go smaller in diameter and lighter some more.... And, as others have agreed the linotype will most likely result in poor accuracy so even for punching paper the linotype seems like an inferior option, unless you just want to punch holes and don't care if they are very accurate. It seems to me for punching holes in paper or hunting the linotype for casting round balls and the shooting same from muzzleloaders is a losing proposition.

Bullseye,

Midway is getting over $4/lb for new Linotype alloy. I think if you melt it and flux and skim it and cast it into 1 lb ingots in the Lyman mold or something similar, you ought to be able to ask $2.50/lb as reclaimed and cleaned Linotype. Check your local scrap yard, and ask what they will pay, too, to get a better sense of its value? See if they will trade you lb/lb for some lead? Twenty years ago, I would have suggested getting a table at your local gun show to sell it, but the cost of tables is so high now that it isn't worth the risk. You might also look at the Trading Post forum here, but selling anywhere but locally brings shipping into the issue, and that becomes another cost problem. If you have a local gun club you belong to, a note on the bulletin board may be your best bet?

I have used linotype to cast mini balls, 158g. 357 and 220g. 41 mag bullets. As stated above the cast bullets will be a little lite but they shoot well. My old muzzle loader had a rough spot in the barrel and picked up a lead smear that was terrible hard to get out, didn't have any problems with the pistol bullets. You can load pretty hot without gas checks.