Historical information

Bullets for early firearms were made as lead balls in iron scissor moulds. The moulds had scissor action, with ends shaped as a hollow half-sphere that formed a ball when the handles closed. Melted lead was poured into a small filling hole in the top of the closed mould. When the lead was set the handles were opened and the ball was released from the mould. Excess lead was trimmed using the cutting edge of the mould.

The task of pouring the melted lead into the mould had to be performed slowly so that air pockets didn’t form. The shot would have a join line around it, which would make it inaccurate; the join needed to be carefully filed to make the ball into a smooth sphere.

Larger quantities of lead shot were often cast in a multi-bullet mould that was used in a similar way.

Physical description

Lead shot mould; cast iron, scissor type metal object with sphere shaped mould at end used to make lead shot balls for a shotgun. Mould has a cutting edge to trim off excess lead.