We have found WW balls will work well down to .54 calibre in paper ctgs. in a slow rifled bore. I used them exclusivley in my 14 bore gun, but only with paper ctgs.
: Pure lead allows a much tighter ball patch combination as pure lead can 'move' as the land presses the patch into it on the lands. This lead movement helps also to tighten the grip in the grooves by expanding the diameter of the ball slightly to help fill.
: WW balls are too hard to allow the metal to move and thus will not allow loads of the higher pressure ranges. In the 14 bore, I could use no more than 82gr. 2F with a patched WW ball, as higher charges necessitated thicker patching to withstand the higher pressure and the WW ball could not be laoded with the thicker patching. It is possible that a greatly reduced diameter WW ball, coupled with a vdery much thicker patch would work. Too, I coul dhav eused a wad of some material behind the thinnly patched WW ball to prevent the powder gases from cutting the patch. I don't load that way, so WW balls were OUT.
; In the smaller calibres, pressures with normal loads are much higher than they are in the larger bores, necessitating tigher and tigher ball/patch combinations.
; For expample, in my 40 flinter match rifle, with it's .398 bore and .418 groove diameter, I use a ball that measures .400" with a .019" thick denim patch. This load, loads easily, however if the ball was not pure, you'd never get it down with any patch as the lead will not move easily enough. Even my normal plinking and deer load in the .450 barrel of a .445" ball and .018" patch would be impossible to load if a WW ball was used. A thinner patch merely blows and burns up.
; To illustrate the higher pressures as the bore sizes decrease, the working laods for both the .40 and .45 run around the 15,000 lup to 18,000 lup range, while the 14 bore runs only around 7,000LUP or 8,000 LUP with it's hunting loads of 165gr. charges, yet it's still to high for WW balls and cloth patches.
: The ctgs. worked with WW balls becasue the excess psper wadded up beneath the ball sealed the gasses beneath the ball and the thightness of the load spun the ball properly. We've not tried them smaller than .54 due to pressure rise in the smaller bores. They may work as smal as .50 - experimentation is all that's necessary to find out. Of course, everyone has their own criteria of what constitutes acceptable accuracy. Mine is quite defined, definite and not readily achieved with haphazzard loading - it also requires pure lead balls. Others are happy to hit the paper. Much room in between.
; I've not seen .50" to .680" balls of pure lead fail to penetrate on large moose due to over expansion, so only see a need for hard balls for dangerous game and for breaking large bones. A .50 or .54 is too small for that, even on our larger deer. A pure lead .735 RB(600gr.) from a .75 calibre ML will exit a moose with about any load form 140gr. upwards & form most angles. Many high velocity modern magnums cannot boast that penetraion.
; Again, I rant on - sorry.