Good stuff, Tinker! Right-on!
; I suggest whomever wants to load balls in their shotgun, that they buy a current shotshell loading manual produced by Lyman.
; Tinker's ball size recommendations are spot-on. Jeff Tanner will make you the mould you need. Once you are casting balls of the correct size,t hey can be cat of any alloy. The harder they are, the deeper the penetration. Do not get the notion that a pure lead ball won't penetrate - they do, like one side to the other on Moose and Elk. If you want to go lengthwise ont hise majestic animals, use WW for the ball. They do not need to be hardened further.
: As to BP loads, you can use as much Black powder as you can get into the case, along with the requisite wads. With black powder, you need a barrier between the BP and the plastic 'cup-wad' that centres the ball in the bore. Plastic wads will be melted by the BP flame and will coat the bore with plastic - you do not want this. Use an 1/8" hard card between BP and plastic.
: As to smokeless loads - you can start by using lower pressure 1oz. loads that develope the highest velocities. They are easy to spot in the manual. You are looking for velocities in the 1,300fps to 1,400fps or higher, that develope pressure in the 8,000 to 9,000 psi or lup or cup range. These you can use with wads that fill the base with the ball perched on top. Adjust the wad column to allow either a rolled or folded crimp, whatever you want. If you have other, had hopefully extensive handloading experience and I hope you do, you'll know what to do from here and this post will be easily followed by you. You will be able to develope much better loads than those presented here.
; Note that with black powder, there is more recoil than an identical velocity load with smokeless. This is due to the BP's method of burning and the amount of unconsumed or solid waste that results when shooting BP. Fully 57% of BP, when burned is solid waste. Some gets ejected, some stays to foul the bore. It and the heavy charge itself adds to recoil from adding to the weight of the ejecta.
: To clean BP fouling, merely pour cold water down the tubes, flushing the crap out the muzzles pointed down. Run cold water wet patches up and down the tubes until they come out clean, then dry with clean patches, then spray with a water displacing lube, like WD 40. That's what I use and it works well. Cleaning shouldn't take more than 7 min. once you gat the hang of it.