bullet molds

[shootrj2003]

you are in a place with no skilled gunsmith's or blacksmiths ,you,are also in a place where you need a good supply of ammo,big mean animals and a not  always so friendly native pop. you have some balls,a good supply of lead and powder[you managed to wrestle two casks and some lead bars out of the ship ,along with your rifle] ,whew!O.k. you don't however, have your ball mold!How do you make one?You want one better than the Prospect of chewed lead.

[Two Steps]

Depending on where ya are, you might want to they something on the order of soap stone.  I believe that you could make a mold out of hard wood that would run you off a few balls, but I know that you can do fine with a soft stone mold.
Al

[Captchee]

yep soak stone or clay  
even sand will do in a pinch .the finer the sand the better .
 but you would only get  one casting per mould .

[shootrj2003]

The thing is how to make it spherical and the right size or how to actually cut it right,sand molding is the easiest but least portable

[Captchee]

In a pinch , there really is a lot of things one could use depending on the time  one wants to take  
 But do you want portable or something that will get you some projectiles made ?

 in the time it took to make a clay or sandstone mould , you could have probably sand cast half if not all your listed supply of lead , into RB
 Not to mention  as long as you have water  and  sand . You have a mould

 Baked clay or sandstone will be the most portable and if taken care of will  last longer then  antler or horn

 concerning your scenario  though .
 I assume from your description  of the event   you were  either on a ship , or your on a  trade boat exploring a river or lake system .
 doesn’t really mater  because you appear to not have a horse  and are alone .
 Therefore   your only going to want what you can pack .  Kasha  the rest near by. With hopes it doesn’t get found  .
Then get away from the area  or into hiding , If the area is as un friendly as you say
  Native people used rivers  as trade routes just as much if not more then whites  so unless your very lucky ,it wont be long before your little accident is found  and your trail picked up .  A smart person thus isn’t going to be packing anything more then they need to get them to safety .
 Thus your probably not going to be wasteful of what lead and powder you do have .

 I would also submit that in your situation , having a projectile  is more important then having one that is  of correct size or shape . It doesn’t need to be perfect , it just needs to work .

[Gordon H.Kemp]

I"d have to op for the wood mold . It really donn"t take a lot of carving skill , and if made some undersize would last for many balls and i light and portable.  Depending on how much time you could apply to the project , it could be at lesat a double mold ? Wood molds will last quite some time . When  Granger first opened the Mount pleasent (saratoga county N.Y. glass factory  in 1839 .He used wood molds so the name of the spring operators logo could be carved in reverse in the mold and would be proper on the bottles. I have one bottle that was blown in a wood mold that appears to have been used quite a bit  as the letters are not sharp and you can actually see the imprint of the wood grain .
        .

[pathfinder]

Sand moulds are EXTREMLLY portable,wherever you have sand and water,you have a mould! Rolling chunks of lead between to flatish rocks works pretty good to,tried it once on a survivale skills hunt. Didn't work too bad,once you got the hang of it.

[shootrj2003]

Those are some great ideas guys ,it's something that I've thought about here and there throughout the years and I guess I always was thinking on how to make the perfect bullet,rather than making one that would work.[ as Capchee said]A wood one made undersize would eventually become better and better and''polishing'' them between blocks   would probably ,with practice render  quite nice ones[nice enough to keep you alive]Just a bit of a far-fetched scenario,but fun thinking on.
  I'm gonna try these ideas,useing simple hand tools[knife,homemade hand drill,fire] and see how the result looks and works and shoots.

[Gordon H.Kemp]

Shootr , keep us posted on the results of your  exieriemts  ?  Should prove interesting .

[Ironhand]

You might need balls for a rifle but if you are shooting a trade gun you could use cut shot.

Pound the lead into a thin sheet with two rocks cut into strips and then little cubes with a knife.

Would work, at least at close range.

[shootrj2003]

believe it or not they made cube shot at one time,early 20th century-late 19th I'll have to dig through my bookss,its mentioned in an old gundigest or shooters digest reloaders edition,might even been around 1946[ the book]The cube shot idea was older I believe,I guess it would be horrible to get hit by shot with all them square cornerd cubes ,heh?

[Uncle Russ]

This thread reminds me a story I read once about the Buffalo Hunters.

According to this story, 'Buff Hunters' had a 'double extra-thick piece of leather sewn onto their right, or left, thigh.
The purpose of the heavy piece of leather was three fold...it served as a 'honing' piece for their skinning knives, it served as a 'wiping' piece for the heavy tallow that would accumulate on their blade while skinning plus it was easy to wipe and wash off,  then  lastly it served as a place to "roll" a fresh cast ball while in camp casting roundball.

As was mentioned, it seems they may have simply stuck a finger into the sand, poured a touch of lead, grabbed it out with a gloved hand and rolled on this heavy leather using another heavy / stiff piece of leather to roll it into a "round" ball.

Is there any truth in this story? I doubt it very much.
Is it even remotely possible?  Maybe.
Was I interested in such a strange tale? Definitely.
Have I tried it? Of course, don't think for a minute I could let a story like this go unchallenged.
Did it work? Nope, for me it didn't.


Uncle Russ...

[shootrj2003]

uncle Russ,Don't go tryin' to discourage me ,I'm deetermined,my wife knows once I get to chewin'on a idee i'll gumm it to death afor I give up! Alot of times I'll cheww on the same Idea two or three timesbefore I forget it again!

[Uncle Russ]

Don't mean to discourage ya...in fact, I do encourage you to try it.

I honestly believe such stories have at least a "tinge" of truth....perhaps not exactly as what you just read, but something very similar.
Someone thought of this before, someone tried this before, and they told the story, which was retold over and over before it actually came to be recorded in print.
Did it change in the telling?
Did the writer embellish things just a bit? Filling in things that he thought were appropriate... even though he had never done this before in his life?

Just because it worked for the Buff Hunters does not mean it's going to work for me, or perhaps because they couldn't get it to work, so they passed it on more as a joke.
Maybe I can make it work.  maybe they overlooked some small aspect that I can easily see, or perhaps they place more importance on some minor aspect of this that can easily be overridden by doing this....then, who will the joke be on?

None of the old stories are carved in stone, exactly as you read them, IMO.
In fact, I think many of the old ways of doing things were so common place that no one even took the time to write about them, only a fool would write about something so widely used and accepted as making bullets from little holes in the ground, everybody already knows all there is to know about such things, nothing special about that.....see what I'm going with this?

Like I said, for me it didn't work. But there ain't nothing that says I can't try it again, and maybe again after that, and since you've never tried, you'll never know if you can do it or not...right?

No, please, don't let me discourage you...you need to know for yourself exactly what can be done with this. Or, more importantly, what you can do with this.
You won't rest until you do, trust me.

Uncle Russ...

[Ironhand]

believe it or not they made cube shot at one time,early 20th century-late 19th

My reading indicates that cube shot was common during colonial times, especially on the frontier. Modern shot or even swan shot would have to be imported as shot towers were not that common at first. Cube shot was the easiest to make.

As was mentioned, it seems they may have simply stuck a finger into the sand, poured a touch of lead,

Not sure about the rolling a ball but I can see how a short stick, properly sized, could be stuck in wet riverbank sand to pour a sort of short conical. It would be a one time mould but you could make a whole row of them and pour a batch in short order.

Insert stick to premarked depth, remove, pour lead in hole, let cool, dig out and trim with knife. Instant conical

Not as accurate as a ball perhaps but who knows. It would be worth trying. You would just have to get the stick diameter, end profile and insertion depth correct. Small stick like that would be easy to carry.