BP Weapon Shot question

[Drop Bear]

Ok how would Shot for pre-rifling Black Powder weapons react if it was made from generally poor quality scrap iron and bog iron?

I'm working on a bit of period/fantasy fiction, I'm going to have a Forge worker who sidelines in making Shot. as well as how it would act in flight and striking the target what would it do to the barrel of an arquebus, musket or BP pistol?

[TonUp]

Can’t speak from experience about shooting iron bullets or shot in a gun barrel.

Here, however, is a picture of shotgun barrel that was damaged by shooting steel shot shotgun loads (not my pic):



Off the top of my head, the issues with iron over lead are: Less density (which means less momentum, less range, and less penetration), About 2.5 to 3 times harder than lead (increased barrel wear/damage), and iron would have a higher chance to ricochet than lead.
 
Using iron shot would damage your weapon in short order. If the gun is of throw-away quality or it was a last-ditch effort, it might not be an issue. A thick paper or fabric patch/shot wad might reduce/minimize any damage, however.

I honestly think that shooting an un-patched/un-lubricated/un-jacketed iron bullet in a rifled weapon would catastrophically destroy said weapon and land the shooter in whatever equivalent your story has to a hospital. It would be more dangerous to be the shooter than the target.    #P

[Drop Bear]

The weapons in question will be Blunderbuss, Arquebus and early Muskets, all pre-refiling. the guy making the Shot is actually a fairly good gunsmith in his own right, only he's not from the "Engineering" class so he can't get in to the funny handshake brigade (AKA the Gunsmiths Guild) so he works as a forge laborer and gets gunsmithing work when their is a big order on.

I knew about the damage just not how quick it would be, and the density differential but didn't know if it was enough to effect the shot or the hardness would provide some kind of penetration effect, also I was wondering if the poor and irregular quality of the metals used causing fragmenting of the shot.

[glitterboy2098]

i believe japan actually used soft iron projectiles instead of lead in its earliest locally produced guns.