buck shot loads

[kjg]

Any one casting .311 diam balls for buck, looking for Idea's planing on using win aa's, I have 8,000 empty hulls, going to make bunches of buck loads as well as lee's 1oz or 7/8 slug haven't decided on them as of yet, but the .311 fit on a win waa12 wad, so fella's give this old redneck some solutions. kjg

[Sam]

Buckshot and suitable molds for casting buckshot are relatively hard to come by.
I use a DoIt mold designed to make slingshot ammo.
2 sizes made from this mold, the smaller of the two measures 310 out of my mold. IIRC it is 11 balls per pour

Cast hot they fall off the sprue, I tumble them for a bit with a couple of pencil leads and they look like factory stuff.

Of all the slugs I have tried the best for me has been the Lyman "air rifle" slug.

I played around with all kinds of different loads from the manuals, with weird wad combos and slow powders etc. and the best performance with both the buck and the slugs was with
AA Hulls, the White AA wad and Red Dot powder. The buck patterns very nicely at that speed (1230 fps) and is pleasant to shoot. Likewise with the slug load. It groups at about 4" at 50 yards from my gun and opens up to 9-10" at 100 yards. Plenty good for my uses and at just shy of 1300fps, it hits hard enough.

Sam

[Dixie Slugs]

Just some toughts about custom buckshot loads. Look around and find a good wad (straight walled) that you can stack your buckshot in stacks of two (2) instead of the standard stacks of three (3). Mike the wads sidewalls and the diameter of your buckshot.....two ball diameters + two wall thickness = sugested choke diameter. Use the Teflon buffer instead of the Poly buffer....it does not pack, but flows. Use the hardest buck (Hornady is good) you can find..or heat treat your cast buckshot. Dust your wads wiyh Motor Mica.
Regards, James @ Dixie Slugs

[Nazgul]

I have a mold similar to a Do-It mold. It is not the handiest thing, it doesn't have a sprue cut off, and is two sided. It works surprisingly well if the temp is at its' highest setting, and the mold is very hot. I can open it and bump it on the bench, all the balls fall out, 20-.310, and most of the sprue falls off. Have practiced this technique and it works.

Cast about 10 lbs in an hour the other day. Use them in a Win AA12 wad.

[6pt-sika]

The Lyman shotgun manual says use a 12 gauge AA hull with a Winchester 12AAR wad and 9 OO Buck with buffer and using SR7625 powder I think !

I recently picked up 3 boxes of Hornady 00 Buck for loading . They are selling for about $26 a box . I got these for about $12 a box . So I got 15 pounds for $36 !

I had thought of making my own buck but it kinda seems like a pain in the ass [smilie=1:

[DLCTEX]

I cast about 15 lbs. of .311 balls with Lee 2 cav. in about 2 hours, using ww. Load 12 balls in Federal hulls(12 ga. 2 3/4") over 36 gr. Blue Dot, Rem. wad, buffered. Awesome load. DALE

[kjg]

were do yu find this buffer stuff? is that the stuff they use in turkey and waterfowl loads similar to white powder. kjg

[EMC45]

Could cornmeal be used for buffer?

[turbo1889]

were do yu find this buffer stuff? is that the stuff they use in turkey and waterfowl loads similar to white powder. kjg

I've used "Cream of Wheat" with good result loading nine pellet OO buck loads (three layers stacked in a pattern of three) in 2-3/4" hulls on top of a 12S4 wad with the petals cut off. Just used the data for a 1-1/4oz. shot load with WSF powder and it worked great. But if you plan on loading loads with a significantly larger number of pellets (like my 18 pellet load for 3-1/2" shells) you need to go hi-tech and get some of that fancy teflon based buffer otherwise you will get packing and have high pressure loads. Cream of wheat works great though for the shorter pellet stack loads though. Don't try just regular flower though --- that will make high pressure loads that could be dangerous. The reason the cream of wheat works is because it doesn't pack like flower will. Not sure on the corn-meal idea it might pack like flower does. Gritts (hard, uncooked) works too but is a little bit too course and doesn't help the patterns as much as the cream of wheat does.

[Dixie Slugs]

There has been a great deal of writings about buffer! The first record of buffer was bone dust. I am somewhat suprised that anyone would try for a cheap buffer, when there are some excellent ones formulated for loading. There was an ongoing arguement of flour between Labisky and Zutz. It can be used, but is very pressure tricky! At Dixie, we tried various types, some good and some poor. Even the Poly buffers tend to pack some. After testing many, we settled on Precisions Reloading's Spherical Buffer (PSB) - PRPSB22. It is a Teflon instead of Poly and will not pack...but flow.
Regards, James

[DLCTEX]

If memory serves, I obtained finely ground buffer from BPI(?) some years ago. Prior to that I used flour. I put buffer on top of the shot and hold the case against my vibratory tumbler to settle it. I worked up my loads from Lyman's shotshell book and used my Win. 1300 pump with it's rotary bolt for test firing. DALE

[turbo1889]

After testing many, we settled on Precisions Reloading's Spherical Buffer (PSB) - PRPSB22. It is a Teflon instead of Poly and will not pack...but flow.
Regards, James

Interesting -- presently I'm using BPI#47 buffer for my loads where I must absolutely have a non-packing high-performance buffer. I'll have to check out the Precision Reloading buffer.

[Dixie Slugs]

I think you will be well pleased with it!.....James