I have been seeing all over youtube that people are cutting open shot shells, mixing the shot with wax, and pouring mixture back into the hull for a poor mans slug. I paln on trying a few.
Here I go thinking again... Why not cast the shot into a slug and put said slug over existing load?
Our Bill of Rights does not say what we can do....it specifies what government cannot do.
i don't see the point, i'd just use buckshot. but if you don't have buckshot, then it would be worth a try.
Why not shoot shot as shot? It's far more valuable that way than as a slug. At current rates shot is worth around 8.5 cents or more, right now a bit more, for one ounce. If you're paying $1.36 per pound for lead or more, then melt that shot and make a slug out of it. If you are paying less per pound break out the slug mould and mould them out of your scrounged lead instead.
The shot cast as a slug may not fit in the existing wad correctly for a proper crimp. Depends upon what kind of slug.
In my opinion the only benefit of doing the wax/slug thing is to lob a load of shot further in solid form then have it break up on impact for destructive effect. It may be useful against relatively small predators or self defense against humans with bad intentions. It is not a slug and it will not penetrate like a slug, it will break up on impact if not before.
If you want an easy to make and easy to load slug using birdshot cartridges buy yourself a 0.662" or better a 0.678" round ball mould then buy 1 1/8 oz. birdshot loads, open them up pour out the shot melt, cast into balls and reload the hulls with the balls. 0.662" balls weigh exactly 1 oz in pure lead so a little under with hard lead and the 0.678" is just under 1 /18 oz. in pure lead so about 1+ oz in hard lead.
Balls are easy to cast, easy to load, can be quite accurate to at least 50 yards (under 6" groups) and penetrate like there is no tomorrow. Oh, 0.662" and 0.678" balls will fit in any standard shotcup for lead shot as well.
The Lee Drive Key slug mould is the next best option and is likely cheaper as the only other cheap ball moulds in the sizes required are the Dixie or TOTW scissor moulds and I think even they are more expensive than Lee.
Just my $0.02.
Longbow
OK. So let's forget whether I am melting shot or casting from ingots. I have a boat load of 12 & 20 gauge #7.5 shot target loads.
With the todays prices on ammunition I was thinking of just replacing the birdshot with a slug. Lee has a 12 gauge mold that they claim can be loaded in standard shotgun trap hull with standard wads using a conventional folded crimp.
Can a slug replace the birdshot with the existing load function properly and safely?
Longbow,
I was composing this message when yours posted. Thanks
Last edited by miner49r; 02-27-2013 at 12:16 AM.
Our Bill of Rights does not say what we can do....it specifies what government cannot do.
Right or wrong I have started converting some of this Federal and Winchester economy target shells to slugs and in the near future probably #3 or #4 buckshot. Reading this forum I have found a great deal of knowledge on this subject. Thanks Guys.
The shotgun is a 20 gauge Stevens model 315 SxS Ranger that was probably won in a **** game by my grandfather. The loads started out as 7/8 oz. of #7-1/2 rated at 1200 fps. A Lee .572" ball mold is casting at 278 grains from wheel weights. At about 100 grains lighter than the shot load this ball should move out pretty good.
The Federal cup can take the ball without sizing. The first picture shows the wads with two and three cards under the ball. I am favoring the two card setup with an inset crimp. Two and a half cards would be perfect.
Does it matter if the crimp is an inny?
The second photograph shows the Winchester wad with the ball sized to .556" to compensate for the thicker petals. Since the ball is now sort of a flat ended pill shape I am planning on bonding the ball to the wad to see how it would perform.
Does anyone think Shoe Goo would be strong enough?
Last edited by miner49r; 03-15-2013 at 07:48 PM.
Our Bill of Rights does not say what we can do....it specifies what government cannot do.
Making a wax slug with bird shot is basically making a frangible slug. When the slug hits its intended target it will cause the bird shot to break from slug form and revert to similar characteristics of a bird shot load at the muzzle. The energy deposited into the target will depend on the distance fired obviously. I have made and fired these in a 12 gauge with interesting results. The groups were good at 100 yards. About 5". They will penetrate cleanly through a metal filling cabinet at that distance
When i make them i end up putting less shot back in the shell because the wax takes up volume in the hull.
Okay then I apologize, I had assumed you were talking 12 ga. If 20 ga. then your selection of slug moulds is rather limited.
In all honesty for shooting to about 50 yards the round ball loads are hard to beat. Good round ball loads should produce groups of around 4" or better at 50 yards.
If you want to bond a ball to a wad I suggest getting unslit wads from BPI or whoever. Not sure of selection for 20 ga. but they sell 12 ga. steel shot wads that are quite thick and a good press fit for a 0.662" ball. These can make pretty good attached wad slugs simply by putting in enough nitro card wads to get the ball seated to just past the equator in the cup and no glue required. The cushion leg has to be pretty stiff for this to work though and generally I have found that the cushion legs distort and cause inaccuracy.
I have tried a variety of methods of attaching wads and cushion legs and for the most part found it did not work well. Another option is to make an AQ clone by making up a form that the ball fits in then drill the ball for a wood screw, put grease or some slick stuff on the form as mould release, slide the ball in with screw up then fill with hot melt glue. Once cool push out the ball and attached wad. That works quite well... but you have to make it all fit into a shotcup or paper patch or use some method to keep the glue away from the barrel or it will smear and make a mess. I make 12 ga. TC slugs using this method and load them into shotcups. They shoot not badly at all.
I use 1/2" CPVC couplings bored out to make my attached wad forms. Not sure if there is a close enough size to suit 20 ga. or not but you could use metal tubing or something else if not.
Plain round ball loads work pretty well though and are simple to make and load.
Longbow
That is some good info Longbow. I have never messed with larger round ball loads in a shotgun but have a feeling it is about to begin.Originally Posted by longbow
Hicks,
I thought that might be the case. The wax keeps the energy in a single mass until it hits it's target. Could be there are some uses for this.
Longbow,
It's all good. I am planning on doing 12 gauge. Per your previous suggestion a Lyman .678 ball mold arrived the other day and the fit is right on in both Win or Fed cups and hulls.
Continuing with the tailed 20 ga. idea... What was I thinking that I could bond anything to these nylon wad cups! The ball and cards fell right out of the cup but look like they should hold together after cup seperation. Could just be the trick.
A "Lee 58cal/440gr Real Bullet" sized to .569" and cut down to .700" weighs in at 7/8 ounce. (383 grn.) Using the Federal cup and piston looks promising. I may try the bullet upside down also.
Last edited by miner49r; 03-17-2013 at 12:03 PM.
Our Bill of Rights does not say what we can do....it specifies what government cannot do.
Miner,
There are uses for them. Some of them are the "he was thinking outside the box" type.
Another "disposable" way to turn birdshot into a "slug" is to cut the shell in the middle of the wad. Only cut the shell, not the wad. Miss the original cut by 1/8" so the shell is held together loosely. When fired, it will act just like a slug. This is a quicker way, but obviously the shell is non-reusable since half of it becomes projectile.
I haven't tried cut shells although there are lots of videos on the subject. I tried casting the shot and wax into a projectile that fit into the wad and that didn't work. The pressure at launch caused the wax and shot to separate. Since there was a lot of loose shot with wax on it the shot pattern expanded even more. I have now poured the hot wax and shot into the wad just like in the videos but I haven't shot them yet.
Last week, I purchased a Lee .690 RB mold and cast about 100 balls. I have been forming a single piece wad using paper pulp to center the ball. For my first test run the wads were not thick enough and the ball was about 1/8" below the fold crimp. My next test wads are drying.
Once the wads have dried they are not solid so they have some spring to them. I'm hoping this next batch does ok so I can take the wax/shot slugs and the round ball loads to the hills. Once I get good results I will write it up with pictures.
Common sense Gun Safety . . .
Is taught at the Range!
miner49r:
Yeah, Brenneke like slugs can be made like that. Greg Sappington made up some smoothbore slugs using BPI wads (IIRC) that were unslit. He pressed a properly sized slug in and had a simple attached wad slug that worked pretty well. He reported results here a couple of years ago. I tried using some steel shot wads I had (in fact Greg sent them to me) but the cushion leg was not stiff enough and distorted at firing so accuracy was not good. The idea is fine but you need a good wad/cushion leg.
It looks to me like that wad you are using is slit. If so then the petals will open and destroy any chance of accuracy. Get yourself some unslit wads and you should be good to go with that set up. The long stem may be a problem but you will have to try and see if it holds up. The new style Brennekes use an awfully long skinny stem too but they seem to work.
With that 0.678" RB, put at least one nitro card wad in the bottom of the shotcup then a small scoop of COW on top makes a nice cushion for the ball and sets the height for good crimp ~ you don't want a lot of petal sticking out past the ball. Those should shoot well for you.
Keep us posted on results.
Longbow
I'm with longbow on his advice for use of round balls in exchange for birdshot. Check out my recent threads... I just shot off like 200 rounds with the stuff in testing and can tell you that my grouping is 3-4' at 50 yds which is awsome and way better than even factory loads at the same distance. I used .680 scissor mould from track of the wolf with federal #8 and #7 1/2 birdshot for 12ga... the wads in that load is a two part wad... so after cutting the top 1/16" I used a .125 nitro card over the bottom piston typ wad and then placed the shot cup over the nitro card. However, through testing i found that cutting the shot cup at the midway point of the round ball produced the best results. The other thing i did was roll crimp instead of fold crimp. for two reasons, first when cutting the shell you loose too much material to get a proper fold crimp but more importantly i found that the pressure of the roll crimp may help keep the round ball in the shell long enough to get the proper gas pressure for proper release. most, if not all factory slugs are roll crimped. I purchased the roll crimper from precision reloading (don't bother with BPI roll crimpers they didn't work nearly as good for me). The PR crimper works with less effort and gets a nice crimp.
Good luck, hope this helps. Longbow TY for all of your advice... worked perfectly.
mossbergman:
Glad to hear that all worked out for you.
Wad petal thickness makes a big difference for sure and like I said, I have as yet to get 0.690" balls to shoot well in any shotcup I have found yet others do well and missionary5155 swears by his 0.685" ball mould (like yours but from Dixie). He opens up factory rounds and replaces shot with 0.685" RB's and gets good accuracy. Who would figure 0.005" would make that much difference?
Personally, I find that a slightly loose fit with light drag gives me better results than a snug push through fit as Ajay describes. Maye be a combination of components and forcing cone.
The 0.678" RB's are a perfect fit with Win AA white and yellow wads and also with Pacific Versalite. Haven't tried them with anything else yet.
In any case, with round balls it seems to be pretty easy to get decent groups to at least 50 yards and they are my go to projectile. Easy to cast, easy to load and predictable accuracy. What's not to like?
I think you are right about the roll crimp too. I think roll crimps give me better results though I would have to do some side by side comparison shooting to be sure. I always wonder how the petals of a shotcup with undersize ball survive opening a roll crimp but they certainly seem to!
Longbow
Longbow,
Yes, I'm sertainly on my way and narrowing things down. Last week was my second test run (first with round ball) and found a boolit that worked as described above. I do have to do quite a bit of modification to the existing wad though. Shell, primer and gun powder stays the same I add the round ball and nitro card and walla 3-4" grouping at 50 yrds. Sooo happy with that. I couldn't for the life of me get the lee slugs to group well with the existing federal birdshot wads. i had 6 variations with the lee slug and was getting groups from 7-8" and 10-12". not bad but sooo much better with round ball. My worse round ball group was better than the best lee slug group. However, i am sure if i get the winchester wads you mention it would improve things.
I do have a question and hope I'm not taking over the thread... I weighed the lee slug and its pretty much 1 oz. My round ball weighs 1.1 oz. Do you think that has something to do with accuracy? the birdshot loads i use weigh 1.125 oz. befor I melt it into a round ball. I didn't get a chance to weigh the nitro card but with the cutting and modification of the existing wad any weight in the nitro card is pretty much replaced by the removal of wad material. I am going to compare total weight of a birdshot and completed slug load and see what it weighs. Anyway, as you said fit is paramount so i think that had more to do with the lee slug grouping but what about going lighter??? or does that translate into. higher velocity since the lee slug weighs less?
In the future i plan to start reloading and hopefully the lee slug will get used. For now I'm casting full team ahead with my round ball mould and loving it. very slow going though, but whos rushing?
one last thing... I hope to get back to the range and shoot some at 100 yrds for giggles just to see how well the round ball does at those distances. However, there just isnt enough powder in birdshot to push it to those distances with accuracy. we'll see I hope to be surprisedThanks again.
longbow,
At this point I just want to check for signs over pressure. Will be doing a full 1 oz. slug and maybe a 3/4 oz. while I am at it. Gotta make time to get to the range and pull the trigger on these.
I agree that the BP commander wad is a fine choice. The cup petals shouldn't flap around and the crush legs are evenly placed. Waiting on their arrival.
mossbergman,
Feel welcome to ask anything you like. I am working on 12ga. ball also. The information is all good.
Our Bill of Rights does not say what we can do....it specifies what government cannot do.
To be honest, I have not done a lot of shooting much past 50 yards with slugs or round balls.
My quest for a modern "Paradox gun" started a few years ago after reading in the Lyman manual that the Lyman Foster slug is capable of 4" groups at 100 yards. So I ran out and bought a Lyman Foster slug mould. I wanted the versatility of the smoothbore with reasonable accuracy to 100 yards... just like the old Paradox guns.
I noticed right away that the slug was a "rattle" fit in the bore as it cast at 0.705" so about 0.024" undersize.
I loaded exactly to Lyman recipes using pure lead for slugs then shot in my Browning BPS slug gun. Well, no accuracy whatsoever ~ like 12" plus at 50 yards. I tried several of the Lyman recipes with no success at all so decided I would snug up the fit and paper patched the slug with heavy paper. That did improve groups dramatically and I had hope at last but I got regular wild fliers. I think there is no doubt that the sloppy fit is largely responsible for the poor accuracy and that paper patching definitely improved things but I suspect that rough hull walls and/or opening the crimp was hard on the paper so causing fliers.
At that point I started looking at the thimble shape of the Foster slug and did some more reading then decided it was a good design for penetration especially using pure lead.
A bit of time went by and I decided to try a variety of slugs both purchased and home cast. Virtually all the hollow base designs suffered skirt distortion so I decided solid designs made more sense and have been on the Brenneke/AQ path since and with some pretty good results but still not good enough for 100 yards. So, most of my shooting has been to 50 yards so I can check and analyze groups then pick the best and work on those.
I found that round balls are easy to get decent accuracy to at least 50 yards and they are solid so will penetrate well ~ should be excellent bear stoppers.
Along the way, I found that for the testing I have done, I tend to get better results using slugs/balls in wads than bore size so have headed down that road. Also, they are easier to load into slugs and I am lazy!
I recently bought a Lee Drive Key slug mould in 1 oz. as I had not tried the Lee or Lyman sabot slugs so figured I should give them a go. My lee slug mould actually casts very well, no complaints there. I find it is a bit tight in the wads I have (mostly Winchester and Claybusters) and accuracy at 50 yards is around 6" so fa but I haven't given it a fair test either. now even at 6" if accuracy holds up it may be better at 100 yards than a round ball. I will have to check that when I get some time.
I have had factory Foster slugs and AQ's shoot 6" =/- a bit groups at 100 yards. Not so with home cast and loaded slugs so far though. I have also had some pretty decent round ball groups at 100 yards but a bit large and generally a flier or two. I have not spent a lot of time yet with my best round ball loads at 100 yards but that is coming.
Goodsteel said he was getting consistent paper plate sized groups at 100 yards and beyond using 0.735" round ball loads. If I can get 6" to 8" groups at 100 yards I think my quest is complete. I have launched hundreds of pounds of lead downrange and been pounded senseless by recoil trying to sort this out. It has all been fun and educational though.
The main reason I tell people to try round balls is that for the most part I have gotten better accuracy and easier with balls than slugs at least to 50 yards. That might even stretch to 75 yards or so and again be good enough.
I have picked up a few tips and had a few ideas recently for new slugs again with the goal of consistent 6" +/- 100 yard groups. One that is showing promise is an attached wad slug I made a mould for and a Lee slug modified with an attached wad. 50 yards groups are pretty good so need to be tested to 100 yards now.
Anyway, I am rambling on here and this is becoming a long post.
Short story is that round balls work great to 50 yards or better and yup, there is enough steam to shoot to 100 yards, plus and do a lot of damage. Accuracy is another matter but round balls scooting along at 1300 to 1500 FPS will not only punch 12 ga. holes in targets at 100 yards, they will poke 12 ga. holes through substantial objects. There is a bit of drop over 100 yards but they get there and still hit hard!
Longbow
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