Help With The Lee 1oz Slug

[GBertolet]

I have been following the posts on the forum on the Lee mold, and finally purchased one. I am having problems getting it to shoot well. My slug gun is an Ithica 37 with a rifled barrel with a .727 groove diameter. I am not after maximum velocity, as the light weight of this gun, the recoil is brutal. 1300 fps range is good, as shots on deer here are seldom over 50-60 yards. What is the accuracy potential of this slug? I moved up my testing to 25 yards, and am lucky to get a 5 shot 4 inch group, often 3 shots touching with 2 fliers, often keyholes. I have 3 kinds of suitable wads on hand. AA red, AA white, and PC 1oz purple. I also have a box of 20ga 1/2" fiber wads on hand for spacer use. I don't know how they stack up vs the nitro cards for this application. The powders I have used so far, have been 40gr of Blue Dot, 30gr of WSF and 22gr of Red Dot. I have tried 3 different ways, cutting the petals down, adding the 20ga filler wad underneath the slug in an unaltered wad, and just shooting the slug alone in an unaltered shotcup. The only time the petals did not get shredded was using the AA white wad, with the 1/2" filler wad under the slug. My Lee slug casts at .685 diameter and weighs 455 gr. I did notice that the petal thickness is .025 on the AA white wad, .030 on the AA red and .028 on the PC purple wad. Possibly the petal thickness is a factor. Even using the AA white wad, the total diameter is .025 + .025 + .685 = .735, making things a tight fit. Here are a few other things I noticed. There is no key drive mark on the wads with the filler wad. All other wads have the mark, and occasionally wads were recovered on the other side of the target in the dirt, leading me to believe some wads never seperated from the slug. I have been using AA hulls in my tests. Any info would be appreciated.

[UNIQUEDOT]

The cushion wad is a poor substitute for a platform since it's too soft it will flow into the slug around the drive key. You may need to get some card wads and start over. You should be able to get good results with the waa12 wad alone however, some folks have said they just can't get good enough results with this slug in some guns. The only advice i can give is to not use the soft cushion wads and start with one powder and work with it till you either get desirable results or determine it just isn't going to work... then move to the next.

Your barrel may not like the lee slug or your alloy. You might need to work with the 525 grn. lyman slug.

[GBertolet]

How loose or tight is the rivited pin that holds the drive key plug? I noticed at times my plug binds, and doesn't want to turn freely, or move verticaly to properly align with the blocks, other times it does move freely. I have burrs appearing along the edges of the groove in the blocks where the plug goes. I think this must be from misalignment of the plug. Fortunately they are not in a critical area of the mold and were removed. I lubed the mold as Lee requires, and I feel no abnormal resistance when closing the blocks, and the halves are properly aligned. This happened after only the first use. I was thinking of grinding off the rivit and replacing it with a screw. Did anyone else have this problem?

[Harmon_Greer]

buy they lyman, or a round ball mould. they have been the most accurate. the lee slugs didnt shoot as good as i would have liked.

[MarkW]

I have the 7/8 oz mould and was never able to get it to shoot how I wanted either. Don't laugh, but the best grouping I got was after I'd put 3 wraps of teflon tape over the slug and then loaded it into the shot cup. (I know, kinda silly to have teflon INSIDE the shot cup instead of outside and I am sure that paper strips could be used but I liked the ease and uniformity of the teflon.

I have always been curious about the Lyman mould but I pretty much only shoot my shotgun slugs during deer season and have had pretty good results with the BP "dangerous game slugs" regarding accuracy and knockdown so I'm going to stay with them for a while.

[Harmon_Greer]

mark, are you shooting a smoothbore gun?

[GBertolet]

I am starting to have some success with the Lee slug in my Ithica 37. I cut the shotcup off an AA white wad, to shorten it, and eliminate the compression legs of the wad. I use a Ballistic products GS2 gas seal + 2- .125 nitro cards, the cut off shotcup, with a .125 20 gauge nitro card under the slug, in a Federal trap hull. Blue Dot powder seems to be the most promising with 40 to 45 grain loadings. I don't want to go anymore, as this is a light shotgun and the recoil is brutal. I have gotten sub one inch 5 shot groups at 25 yards. This works much better than using the AA wad alone. The wad column height is better suited for the shell, as the crimps do not open up over time, and possibly the solid platform helps also. I guess if I dig up some AA hulls I could use the tapered gas seal from the shotcup instead of the GS2 gas seals. I measured the diameter of the shotcup with the slug inside, and it is .730 diameter, and my bore is .727. I might make a push through sizer die to reduce the slugs diameter a few thousandths more and see what that does. One thing I have noticed that shotguns are very finicky on how they are held, especially when shooting from a rest. Point of impact and group sizing are affected more so, by the longer barrel time, due to low velocity and effect of heavy recoil.

[TRG3]

This season, I used my H&R USH 12 gauge to take deer with the Lee Key Drive slug, Lyman 525 slug, and .690 roundball. By far, the most accurate (1" @50 yards) and least recoil was with the pure lead .690 roundball load, as follows:

Fiocchi 2 3/4" new hull
27.0 gr Herco
overpowder card
Federal S3 wad with .125 20 gauge hard card in base supporting the .690 roundball which was rolled to remove sprue
Roll crimped

The deer shot with the .690 roundball were complete pass throughs,
they ran about 70 yards, and there was less meat damage than with the Lee Key Drive or Lyman 525. Lee makes a .690 roundball mold for less than $20 and the roundball is easier to mold than the slug.

[Splatter]

UniqueDot: I haven't started my own experiments yet; however my understanding was that the soft wad is supposed to flow around the drivekey on the Lee slug. That's how it imparts the rotation from the rifling.

[mdr8088]

I've tried different hulls in my Mossberg 500, smoothie. The Federal gold medal and name brand Fed12s3 wads with 36gr HS6 in them shoot bullet hole to bullet hole at 35'. Don't try the Claybuster 12s3 copies they have ribs on the inside of the petals that bulge the hull when loaded with the Lee slug. Remmington and Winchester hulls also do well.

[UNIQUEDOT]

UniqueDot: I haven't started my own experiments yet; however my understanding was that the soft wad is supposed to flow around the drivekey on the Lee slug. That's how it imparts the rotation from the rifling.

It was designed so that the plastic wad would flow around the drive key and lock to it until it leaves the bore which in theory would guarantee rotation of the undersized slug, but a soft fiber wad can break apart around the key (the key acting as sort of a dull knife) and cause damage to both sides of the skirt.

I do not know this from fact, but this is my assumption from years of working with fiber wads. I know that several people use a hard card wad under the slug and get great results as the key shouldn't be necessary in the first place as the wad petals should provide the fit for positive rotation.

[35remington]

I am not sure that many reloaders I read of understand the Lee DK slug to any degree.

The slug itself is undersized; that is, well under standard diameter of the 12 gauge barrel. Nominal diameter of a 12 gauge is around .73", while the Lee slug cast of pure lead runs around .675 to .680" depending upon where the measurement is taken. This is because it is designed to be used inside a wad's shotcup, not without it.

Removing the wad petals means a considerably undersized slug is rattling down a very oversized barrel, whether rifled or smoothbore. I read of reloaders removing the petals, then complaining the slugs don't shoot. The reason why should be apparent.

(The OP knows this.......I am referring to some posts made elsewhere here).

Try various wad combinations. Run some slower velocities at lower pressures as well. Recover your wads and look for those that are intact as opposed to having torn petals, as this helps the slug take the rifling properly. Torn petals are a considerable problem in my experience, and eliminating this helps vastly.