Custom .410 Slug Loads

[Saiga .410]

Hey everyone I'm new here on the forum, and I think I should start of by telling yall what gun I'm gonna be doing this with. Saiga .410 22"bbl 3-9x40 Tasco Pronghorn 3" mag chamber cylinder,mod.full,xfull.

What Im trying to do is make a bear load (call me crazy!!) but it can be done, I've even heard of moose being taken down. Winchester makes a 3/4 ounce shot load going at 1100 fps . I converted ounce to grain and got 328 but Im gonna do 325. So a 410 slug going a 1100 fps with a 325 grain slug gets 873 lbs of energy, and I pretty sure I can get it to go faster. Meaning it should pass thru a bear at 50 yds, if the correct alloy is used. So I need help on the design of the slug and what alloy is best for this ( I heard WW would work good for this.)

Design:
It needs to be front end heavy and be designed as a hunting round. No key holing. Is rifling necessary on the slug, I heard it doesnt matter?

Alloy:
It needs to expand but not too much because its goona be pointless to hunt with if it breaks apart alot in the animal.

Thanks everybody!!!-Saiga .410

[izzyjoe]

that slug sounds kinda heavy to me. a 44 mag uses a weight of 240gr. on average, and they are moving around 1600fps. you could have a custom mould made for 325gr. .410, but that boolit is gona be a little long. but anything is possible.

[Crawdaddy]

Send pics after getting him. Leave the camera visible so the bear can take and post in case things don't work out. just kidding. Would love to know how the tests go.

Good luck and have fun.

[SuperBlazingSabots]

Hello Saiga, people have killed a leopard and even a tiger with a .22 cal in India but that does not mean its Ok to hunt a leopard or tiger with a .22 cal. To me its like taking a baloon and hoping to stay afloat with it! My advise, dont do it or choose a deer instead and that too within 20 to 40 yards with a smooth bore .410
Hope it helps.
Ajay
Video Memories
www.PreciousVideoMemories.com

[eye shot]

Hi
If you can't machine gun him with that Saiga and the bear eats you don't dispare. you can go to this sight and look at .410's that can do the job, Hoening Big Bore South. They use up to 375gr. cast GC. I'm building my own in single shot .444. A little chamber and .410 hull work and some heavy cast bullets 300-375gr.
Good Luck

[maglvr]

Without going into a lot of typing, I will say this........
Most folk that try to make a .410 into a smoothbore rifle always assume the projectile has to be weight forward.
While that is one way to get it to fly true there is another way, that is installing some sort of a "tail" on a flat base bullet, like a kite uses.
It can be made from untold numbers of things, thick felt wads, string, a piece of wooden dowel etc. etc.
Happy experimenting.

[Saiga .410]

Despite the fact of what I'm gonna use it for, is anyone willing to try and help me design it? I would greatly appreciate it. I took apart one of the Paraklese Technologies .410 Slugs (3" 168gr)
last night and talked to the guy, and found a 1/8" cardboard card wad I guess you could call it, attached to the back with no rifling on the slug. I gonna try and post pics,hopefully they show up. Thanks !!

[Saiga .410]

Here they are!!!!

[Saiga .410]

Heres the other one

Click on them to get a really good view

[Saiga .410]

Another question I had is , whether or not it is illegal to use someone else's bullet design in a custom slug mold?

[Crawdaddy]

Another question I had is , whether or not it is illegal to use someone else's bullet design in a custom slug mold?

As long as you don't sell the mold commercially you should be fine.

[blaster]

As long as the design is not patented you will be fine. Commercial use is not the only consideration in patent law.
"Every patent shall contain a short title of the invention and a grant to the patentee, his heirs or assigns, of the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling the invention throughout the United States or importing the invention into the United States, and, if the invention is a process, of the right to exclude others from using, offering for sale or selling throughout the United States, or importing into the United States, products made by that process, referring to the specification for the particulars thereof."

[tacklebury]

Winchester makes .410 Slugs that go 1800 FPS and weigh 1/4oz. Kinda seems like a lot of work to get less performance...

http://www.winchester.com/Products/s...s/X413RS5.aspx

If the idea is simply to make your own, why try to make a custom mold. Maybe something like this 180gr. cast HP would work well. I know it isn't rifled, but if someone were a thinking dude, I think a slotted item or saw blade might make that so...

http://westernbullet.com/lyman40143.html

Just a couple thoughts...

[turbo1889]

You asked me about this project of yours on my "old as the hills, keeps getting brought up from the dead thread" from when I first started working with the 410 for slugs. I'm going to post my comments here instead of over there.

First of all, for a smooth bore gun 325 grains is going to be almost impossible to stabilize out of a smooth bore gun. The heaviest prototype slug I have ever been able to successfully stabilize out of a smooth bore 410 slug gun was about 220 grains weight and that required an impressively long tail assembly and was barely stable in flight. My original desired weight was 300 grains but I was never able to get anything that heavy stable in flight despite many, many potential design prototypes being tried. I posted in another thread concerning 410 slugs only a few days ago so I will start by providing a link to that thread if you wish to take a look at it:

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=127581

First of all I should let you know that I have a Saiga-410 as well so I am quite familiar with the gun in question and its capabilities. First of all use the #0 thread protector ring which will give the gun a true uninterrupted cylinder bore when shooting slugs especially a big heavy hard cast slug such as you are suggesting and don’t use any of the screw on choke tubes. Especially not the #3 which is a full millimeter constriction choke tube which is nearly twice the choke constriction of a standard full choke in the 410 bore and I highly discouraged for shooting any slug through since it is essentially a “super full” or “turkey” choke tube for that gun.

The first thing I want to address is “rifling” on slugs for smooth bore guns. It isn’t there to give the slug any spin it is there to provide a relief point if the slug is shot through a gun with a choke. The little rifling grooves squeeze down much easier then a solid slug would and reduce the stress on the choke tube if the slugs are shot through a constrictive choke tube. For a slug that could be fired in any gun it is an important safety feature. The four parallel “fins” on the Paraklese Technologies slug (with which I am familiar as well) serve the same purpose; four small narrow contact points to get squeezed down instead of the whole slug when it hits the choke.

If you are casting and loading your own and can be extra careful to only shoot them through a true cylinder bore gun (which your S-410 with the #0 thread protector ring on the end of the barrel is indeed) then you can go full bore solid with no rifling; using a 41-mag Lee tumble lube type boolit with an attached tail can be made to work and the tumble lube grooves will give you a little bit flex and a little bit of the safety margin that the rifling normally provides.

You are also going to need to do a built up attached tail design since I’ve never been able to get anything heavier then about 150 grains or so to shoot straight out of a 410 smooth bore with only hollow base foster slug type stability and have only been able to go heavier then that and keep the slug stable and flying nose first by using an attached tail assembly.

I suggest you purchase a cheap two cavity Lee TL410-210-SWC mold and start your experiments there:

http://leeprecision.com/xcart/MOLD-D...0-210-SWC.html

You will need to purchase some small screws and 0.430” diameter nitro cards (I find they work better then 0.412” nitro cards for making attached tails). The best commonly available screw I have found so far is the #4x3/4 steel flush head #1 philips drive screws. Make sure to use a #1 drive bit on them not the #2 bit which is the “normal” philips bit size. You will need to drill a hole in the boolits to get the screw started. I have found that a 5/64” size drill bit is just about perfect and I suggest a small cordless drill that drills fairly slowly be used for best control if you don’t have a drill press and can build a jig to hold the boolit in perfect alignment while drilling. You will also need to drill center holes in the nitro cards you use to form the tail. I suggest using four 1/8” thick nitro cards for you first attempt to make a 1/2” long tail with the screw going a 1/4” deep inside the boolit which will form the head of the slug. You might have to drop down to a tail of just three nitro cards or find a longer screw depending on how things work out to get enough “bite” in the boolit to keep the tail attached and also have a long enough tail to stabilize the slug.

As for loading for best possible velocity to make up for the slug not being as heavy as you would like use Reloader-7 powder with a hot magnum primer (Fed-209A or CCI-209M). Start at 30 grains of powder and work up the load until it cycles the action.

As for casting with the Lee mold, get yourself a small bottle of 100% synthetic 2-cycle mix oil like they sell at the chain saw store and a small paint brush like kids use for water-colors. Open the mold and very sparingly apply just enough of the oil to the two vertical waffle iron grooves on the front and the back of the mold block to just barely wet them and then apply just one swipe with the brush tip to the top of the mold block and open and close the sprue plate a couple times to spread that out over the top of the mold block and bottom of the sprue plate. I would suggest Bull-Plate sprue plate lube applied the same way since it is slightly better but I understand its current and future availability is up in the air and you can’t just run down to the chain saw shop and get a bottle on short order but have to mail order it. Do that instead of “smoking the mold” as Lee suggests and re-apply ever hundred boolits or so and the mold will behave itself much better and last longer then using the mold raw or smoking it.

Don’t just screw the tail to the base of the boolit, also try doing it backwards and screwing the tail to the nose and shooting the boolit backwards with the boolit reversed so the base is the nose and the nose is attached to the tail. Usually, with making an attached tail slug out of a SWC type boolit they work better and are more stable and shoot straighter with the boolit backwards with the base of the boolit forming a full flat nose and the taper that was the nose of the boolit forming a wasp-waist before the attached tail but there is also more air drag shooting them that way so it is a trade off.

I can't be absolutely sure the Lee TL410-210-SWC used as the head of the slug with an attached tail will work since I haven't used that exact set-up myself but it is the closest your going to come using off the shelf components with minimal expense to some of the combinations I was able to get to work in my experimentation realizing of course that I was mainly focused on building a design that would be "choke safe" where as what I am suggesting to start with is not a "choke safe" set-up and you will have to remember to only fire them out of your S-410 with just the #0 thread protector and no choke tube on the end of the barrel.

[Saiga .410]

Hey Turbo, I have been on the site a few times before I signed up, and noticed you were into a 410 slug project and I was hoping you would comment.

I do have the cylinder choke, that's what I shoot the commercial slugs out of and what I'm gonna shoot my customs with. Please excuse me, I don't know to much about bullet casting and all that goes with it, kinda a new guy.

I was wanting to make the front of the slug be so heavy it cant tumble. The Paraklese slug i posted pics of has a single 1/8" cardboard wad on the back attached with some sort of glue. I'm really needing this slug to make it to, if not past the 300 gr. mark.

[Crawdaddy]

As long as the design is not patented you will be fine. Commercial use is not the only consideration in patent law.
"Every patent shall contain a short title of the invention and a grant to the patentee, his heirs or assigns, of the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling the invention throughout the United States or importing the invention into the United States, and, if the invention is a process, of the right to exclude others from using, offering for sale or selling throughout the United States, or importing into the United States, products made by that process, referring to the specification for the particulars thereof."

I stand corrected.

[Saiga .410]

Is there a design that would be aerodynamically correct for the project? Even 300 instead of 325 would serve my purpose.
People think of Black Bear as a big mean killer and hard to kill, but its not the case. They are thin skinned like deer and have lungs and a heart...just like deer again. if it gets into the vitals(which it should go further) then its a done deal.

Here's some 410 designs commercially produced, and a pic of a deer killed with the Paraklese slugs and a grouping.....look at the damage. A 300 grainer going at 1100-1200fps will easily handle a 300lb bear.

[Saiga .410]

I only need them to shoot good out to 50 yards with a 3" or so group which is basically my max anyway.

[turbo1889]

Long story short.

Based on my experience.

Short of casting with an exotic super dense metal significantly denser then lead I don't think there is a way to reach 300+ grains with a 410-bore slug that has natural positive stability for firing out of a smooth bore gun. 200 grains or there about can be done from lead with an attached base like a Brenneke slug. Whatever they make Hevi-Shot out of might be the thing to use. Depleted uranium would almost certainly work but it’s a little hard to get a hold of and a little dangerous to work with not to mention eating anything shot with it.

The problem becomes a length to diameter ratio issue. A one-to-one ratio between length and diameter is the definition of natural stability. Any projectile that is longer then its diameter or short then its diameter is harder to stabilize and the further the ratio gets from a 1:1 the more unstable the projectile becomes. The important thing being that this is not a linear relationship but rather an exponential relationship. Take an attached tail Brenneke type slug where the solid lead alloy metal head has a length that is already one and a half times as long as it is diameter and requires a fairly long tail to stabilize (about what you have with a 200 grain 410-bore slug) and increase the length to diameter ratio for the metal head from 1.5:1 to 2.25:1 by increasing the weight by 50% (300 grains) and the difficulty of stabilizing the resulting projectile doesn’t go up by an equal amount it goes exponential and in my experience is nearly impossible to stabilize without rifling twist in the barrel to give the projectile a gyro spin.

I understand what your trying to achieve and I’m not trying to be a downer but I have learned from experience that it just doesn’t work. 200+ grains is just about the limit of what is possible with 410-bore slugs made from lead alloy as I have learned from direct experience. If you want to go to 300+ grains your going to need to find something to make the head out of that is at least 50% denser then lead.

[Saiga .410]

"As for cartridges, you can use anything from .41 Magnum up to the .500 S&W. One of the most experienced hunters I've met says that any big-bore cartridge that throws a solid bullet weighing 200 grains or more at 1,000 fps or more is a thorough ticket-puncher for any black bear. By that standard, a heavy .44 Special or .45 Colt handload in the right gun would serve admirably.

Wayne Bosowicz carried a .357 Magnum Colt Python for years. Then he encountered a situation in which a charged-up bear came down from a tree and tore into his hounds and soaked up an entire cylinder full of 158-grain bullets in its chest without slowing down. Bosowicz immediately changed over to a Ruger Blackhawk in .41 Magnum, which has never failed to stop a bear.

Bullet selection is probably more important than anything, in fact. A black bear is tough-muscled with thick fur, hide and fat layers. You need a bullet that will penetrate through all that, and most hollowpoints used for .41-, .44- and .45-caliber commercial cartridges and handloads aren't good choices. Bosowicz uses commercial Remington 210-grain JSP softnose loads in his .41 Magnum, and recommends any similarly structured loads. In .44 Magnum a 240-grain JSP, or a 220-grain (or heavier) silhouette-style bullet like Federal loads commercially, or Sierra and other bullet-makers offer as components, would be a good choice.

A jacketed softpoint powered for complete penetration through an average size bear is probably a better choice than a hard-cast SWC solid. The JSP will deform when penetrating, create a larger disruption channel, and if it goes all the way through, will leave a larger exit wound than will a hard, non-deforming cast bullet. If cast bullets are to be used, a medium-hard alloy with good deformation potential is a better selection.

The specific choice is yours, but if you use a minimum .40 caliber, a minimum 200-grain solid deformable bullet and a minimum of 1,000 fps velocity from your chosen gun, you'll have a handgun load that will take any bear that shows itself. If you can stop shaking long enough to shoot." -Dick Metcalf


That piece of an article just goes to show its capabilities when numbers are worked out.

Do you think I could get away with this? :

http://www.midwayusa.com/Product/215...eck-box-of-100