A.C.E. 12 Ga 740 Gr HB slug

[338RemUltraMag]

I was awaiting your assessment of my mold, but to clarify one point. The pins are made from stainless steel not aluminum.

All in all I am changing the alignment pin system for further designs and will also be cutting steel molds.

As far as accuracy beyond 100 yds I think this design will closely follow a wadcutter boolit once it gets past 50 yds. It is just too blunt to be a "long range" slug.


I want to thank everyone for giving me the opportunity to make these molds, it is a learning experience and the knowledge I gained here is invaluable.

[AlaskanGuy]

Wow... Thanks turbo... Nice write up... We all needed a senior slugger to weigh in on this one....

I am still gunna cut that full choke off my bolt 12g just for this gun.... It is just too long as it is.... And i want to make it more of slugger....

When you get a chance, please post some of the component combo's that you are using, would love to hear about over powder and what sort of crimp and stuff like that... I have herco, unique, and 2400 to load with a 2 3/4 in gun... Any suggestions??? It will be a bit till I get out to shoot though... Just snowing to beat all here...

AG

[turbo1889]

@ 338RemUltraMag

Okay, I couldn't get a magnet to stick to the pins and they didn't heat blue and their electric conductivity seemed too high for stainless but was still slightly lower then the blocks. Thus I thought they must be a different harder alloy of aluminum (aluminum normally has significantly higher electric conductivity then steel especially stainless which tends to be less then normal steel).

Long story short I didn't know for sure what the pins were made of but based on sticking an Ohm's meter on them I thought they were a much tougher harder aluminum then the blocks, Ohm's meter didn't seem high enough for stainless. Future steel blocks will probably handle soft alloy better due to thermal conductivity differences compared to aluminum.

Now that I know they are stainless now it makes putting a simple L-handle on them much easier. I'll just grab a couple scrap chunks of thin wall small diameter tube stock from my home-made 304 stainless bicycle frame making stock cut to length and give it a couple zaps with some 1/16 stainless rod and I'll have that done in a jiffy !!!


@ AlaskanGuy

Powder charge, I used the old standby Blue Dot for my first paliminary loads except for the big bull barrel 3-1/2" super magnum loads with the solid slugs for my rifled barrel slug gun. Blue Dot charges varied from 28gr. to 35gr. depending on the exact load

I was basically experimenting with components and just loaded up a random assortment of 2-3/4 and 3" hulls I had laying around some with just card wads, some with 12S4 wads with the petals cut off, and some with both the 12S4 wads with petals cut off over the powder and then nitro cards on top of them before the slug, and then a few with various plastic gas seals and then nitro cards.

The tightest constriction gun I fired the soft lead hollow base ones through has an internal muzzle diameter of 0.715" and the tightest gun I fired the hard ones through has a 0.727" barrel but the squeeze down on that one takes place in the guns throat where the steel is nice and thick and the slug isn't up to full velocity but just started moving rather then at the end of the barrel in a choke moving at speed.

As to the powders you mentioned the first two you mentioned are generally considered too fast burning for this heavy of a slug. But Herco can be used to make sub-sonic loads if you do not use modern plastic wadding components and use just nitro cards/cork/felt/fiber wadding and keep the charges nice and low. 2400 works well as a heavy slug powder in the 20ga. but has ignition issues in the larger 12ga. size magnum primers are an absolute must along with good compression and extremely tight gas seal. If you can your paws on some 8-ga. industrial primers (AKA = core burner shotgun primers) then they in combination with 2400 powder make superb loads its just getting your hands on them is usually harder then just getting a different more suitable powder.

Long story short unfortunately none of the three powders you mention are ideal.


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As to long range shooting with these slugs, couldn't resist the temptation to try some of the solid ones in the rifled barrel scoped slug gun with the big 3-1/2" super magnum bull barrel only loads. I figured due to the pretty blunt nose shape they wouldn't hold as accurate as more wedge shaped nose slugs but still wanted to try.

Main reason I was interested in this slug was to increase my "overkill" short range potential for smooth bore guns. Before this mold the heaviest slug I had that was smooth bore capable was just barely 1-3/8oz. and din't have near as big of flat solid "thumper" nose as this one does !!! You remember that "Do you feel lucky?" scene from the first Dirty Harry movie? Think the same thing only with a this slug loaded into a pump tactical shotgun instead of that medium sized wheel gun he had, that is what I bought this slug mold for, to be able to say the same thing with the same attitude to a 13'-square Kodiak if need be (and yes if its what's handy a 2-legged punk as well).

[longbow]

AlaskanGuy:

You might get a decent light to moderate load using Unique. Ross Seyfreid worked up a load for a 12 ga. Paradox gun using the original Kynoch style bullet of 730 grs. IIRC over 21.5 grs. of Unique. I don't remember velocity but can dig out the article to double check. It seems to me he was getting basically BP velocities of 1000 to 1100 FPS.

A difference though is that the Kynoch slug is sized to 0.001" under bore size so is a slip fit (very little bore friction) and it is not hollow base so the same load under your 740 gr. slightly over bore size hollow base slug may produce somewhat higher pressures.

It would not be a high performance load but it would be shooting... and I bet that slug would leave a mark when it hit something! I'll look out that article and post info.

I tend to avoid such heavy slugs due to lack of decent load data. There a few like turbo and Greg and of course Ed Hubel who have sorted out loads for the heavy weights but not a lot of published data.

Also good to see turbo has put the choke test to the test as it were. Probably saved me a gun. I know some have shot some large, hard, full bore slugs and balls through chokes but I have not been willing to try that with my Browning. I figured the 0.715" ball (even ACW) would swage down as there isn't much meat at the equator and it is only 0.005" oversize for the 0.710" I/C choke but having had one shotgun go to pieces in my hands, I tend to avoid questionable activities ~ that is another story that I posted a while ago to save others some mishaps.

Longbow

[AlaskanGuy]

Wow, thanks longbow... I cant wait to see whatcha have in that article.... I am gunna be cutting the barrel tomorow soon as the weather clears and i can get to town for the right cutoff blade for my chop saw.. Snowing like crazy right now... Sure dont look like it is gunna let up, but the weather guessers say it will.. I cut the barrel of my 410 today with my arrow chopper, and it worked great... Need to figure out sights and such next for both guns.....

AG

[turbo1889]

Okay, found the battery charger for my old 5-mp dig camera that although not nearly as nice or good as my good dig camera is way better then the trash camera on my cell phone. Re-took some photos of the slugs I saved out for photo shoots and didn't lube, load, and shoot:



Soft (Nearly Pure) Lead Hollow Base Slugs:







Hard WW Alloy Slugs:







----------------------------------------------------

And then, Decided not to weld scrap pieces of stainless stock to the back ends of the pins directly but rather took an old screw-driver I had laying around and a cheap steel 1/4" size drill bit depth set collar and put the arc welder on the lowest setting and used part of a 1/16 6013 mild steel rod to weld the two together to make this new pin handle for the hollow base pins for this mold that the handles came off of. Not the prettiest weld I ever made but it is slightly tedious arc welding something this small together and especially not messing up the little steel collar with its set screw in the process:








As you can see I ground a little flat spot in the side of the pin shank for the set-screw on the collar to lock into nice and tight !!! Should work like a charm.



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Here are a couple short 10-second or so video clips to show how an L-shaped handle like this on the hollow base pins allows one to easily drop the the slug off the hollow base pin, even if it wants to stick by knocking the handle down over the edge of the catch container:

http://flickr.com/gp/54455625@N04/8o26y8
http://flickr.com/gp/54455625@N04/43WQ40

[turbo1889]

Oh, yah, forgot to mention. With soft nearly pure lead with no tin added my slugs came out at 0.732" diameter or so. Hard WW alloy slugs were 0.735" or so.

[longbow]

Good thing AlaskanGuy poked me, I had forgotten to look up the Ross Seyfried article.

The powder charge was indeed 21.5 grs. of Unique and the "slug" was a traditional Paradox bullet of 750 grs. solid or 735 grs. HP. This was used in an original Paradox gun with ratchet rifled choke of 1:36" and with 0.030" constriction (0.050" at lands). Since this gun was designed for BP the load should be quite low pressure. Velocity with the 21.5 grs. Unique was just under 1000 FPS.

Longbow

[AlaskanGuy]

Great article by the way.... Many thanks to Longbow....

[X-man]

I received my mould and pins today. Nice surprise given that I'm home dying the nine deaths with this damn flu that doesn't want to go away. Then there's this stupid "Polar Vortex" the news keeps yammering on about. Minus 29 Celsius today and expect the same temps for the next two weeks! I'm sick of winter! Even so, I was tempted to brave female wrath and head out to the shed and attempt to melt some lead, assuming the old Pro-Melt has a chance in hell of overcoming our now Arctic climate. But then some threats were made and I coughed up part of a lung and decided to stay in bed.

[AlaskanGuy]

Anybody else shooting these yet???? My wads should be here today.... This is what I bought to use with brass shells.....



Ag

[jmort]

Love the Vintage box. Is that for over powder or to raise the slug?

[turbo1889]

I plan to get some more load development and test shooting in with them but right now I'm pretty much snowed under and its all I can do to just keep up with my chores and responsibilities and keep my road clear enough to get in and out. Got over a foot of fresh snow in the last 48 hours and its still comming down and things were barely passable before that due to the blowing drifting blizzard last week.

Got a few ideas for some loads with Herco, HS-6, and Lil-Gun in addition to the load development I've already done with Blue Dot and Steel, was also hopping to get some penetration and wound channel tests done firing into the end-grain of big fire-wood round and then splitting them to show the penetration and how well the slugs held up like I did with my twin Brooks slug molds when I first got them.

All those plans for this weekend got canceled due to heavy snow and "digging out" at my place this weekend. Just an update letting all you guys know I'm still "on it" just getting sidetracked by stuff that is forcing precedent over the fun stuff. Not to mention having to rescue one of my best neighbors that managed to get both his car, his plow truck, and his tractor all stuck in a row in that order and having to plow out his nearly two mile long private road and plow a path between where he winters his cows and his hay storage areas and I had to use my big six axle 18 wheel drive custom tractor rig to do it !!! (Okay, maybe I didn't HAVE TO but it was a good excuse to use it.)

[jmort]

"I had to use my big six axle 18 wheel drive custom tractor rig to do it !!!"

One thing every man should own. Had a tractor trailer get stuck at the bottom of my hill post delivery. Poor guy spent the night in his truck, and was stuck until neighbor with D6 yanked him out.

[AlaskanGuy]

Yep morty, it is for over powder, and has a wax ring around it for a good seal... It is 11ga wad, old school type that should be about perfect for use with this slug i am thinking..... Especially in a brass shell in my bolt action heavy 12ga from the 60's.... Just waiting for the front sight to get in, and if it gets here today, i hope to start loading tomorrow.....

Here is a pic of the gun I am building up for my sons birthday...

.

lol. Like his sling?? I used a special waterproof twine that we use for mending commercial nets and a para cord type weave attached to the tube....

It was my first shotgun at my dad bought me for christmas back in the 1960's... A JC Higgins from sears... It is heavy barreled, and I drilled the stock and added a couple lbs of lead and corks to help manage recoil... I will do a bit of testing while the son is at school at the range and then on the 19th, it is his....

AG

[AlaskanGuy]

Oh and by the way.... For you guys that are fighting with snow and such, welcome to my world....

[jmort]

"Like his sling?? I used a special waterproof twine that we use for mending commercial nets and a para cord type weave attached to the tube...."

Yes. That is a beauty. Yes the cord is nice detail. I think that would be most useful in Alaska, or most anywhere for that matter.

[turbo1889]

As to the "welcome to my world" as to fighting the snow. Yah, I've said something very close to that more then once when watching TV news and seeing all the yo-yos in the south east freaking out when they get an inch of snow and closing down their schools and everything. But at the same time, we had a good solid base of about six inches of ice crust over the ground and rural roads followed by at least a foot of drifted hard pack on top of that up to three foot plus drifts in spots but a good foot everywhere on top of the ice crust base left from the last thaw. Most non-private roads had been cleared down to the hard crust base left from the last thaw and we had at least partially cleared out the drifts from the storm during the week on mine and his private roads. Then we got dumped on with a full foot plus of this wet, heavy fresh goo on top of that. He was in worse shape because he hadn't cleared out his private road as well as I had done mine before the dump but still it was an annoyance to say the least.

Granted, part of me would just like to lay in supplies and hole up during the winter but that would stretch my finances too much to not work at all, all winter so its got to get cleared out. Not to mention emergency access or even just to get the vet in if necessary or better yet make a run to town for meds. to take care of it myself if something goes wrong with the animals (which always seems to happen right after a huge snow storm and the bottle of anti-bods or B-boost shots or such just happens to be empty).

As to the "6-axle 18-wheel drive tractor" and everyone should have one, I doubt there are many like the one I've got. The axle and chassis was something me and my buddies build many years ago when I was a lot younger man for unlimited wheeled tractor pulling competition where we managed to get our hands on three matching sets of old 4-wheel drive 2-ton truck axles (Dodge 600 model I believe) and mounted them all together (as in three rear dually axles and three front steering axles) under a single chassis spaced tight together so its a sold wall of wheels on both sides powered by a big 400-something V8 engine with a single central drive shaft running the length with massive chain drive sprockets connecting all six axles to the power shaft.

It's basically a freaking tank just with a whole bunch of wheels rather then tracks and for many years it sat idle on my folks property until I needed a heavy puller for clearing some land with stump pulling and deep ripping and I didn't want to chuck out the dough to buy a dozer so I though "Why Not?" and got that beast running again and used it and to this day I use it around the place. Rigged up a good standardized PTO on the back end and I use it like a tractor for plowing, hay bailing, etc . . . and it works great so long as what your doing you don't have to worry about all those wheels running over live plants or such.

And, it plows snow really well too with a plow rigged up to it and works really well for pulling stuck neighbors out, especially with chains on all those wheels.

Most people would probably just buy a dozer and/or tractor but its something that I already had even though built for a different purpose and I've made it work for my needs.

[Hogtamer]

Turbo, your written description of that vehicle I'm sure doesn't do it justice, so how about a pic? It could make you an honorary redneck! Especially if you're shootin road signs from it with those big old new slugs!

[Lee S. Forsberg]

If you want additional pins PLEASE either PM or state it in this thread, I will offer:

Round
Flat
Turbo bell

Single cavity is $110
Each additional pin $20 due to the size of the material

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