Questions on Lee 1 oz cast slug.

[44 WCF]

Years ago I remember seeing in a magazine, cut away of a slug round showing spiral rifling on the skug which I now understand imparts spin in a smooth bore. Would a shot cup with similar spiral externally help accomplish the same

[longbow]

The main reason I like round balls to 50 yards anyway is just what OnHoPr experienced... hollow base slugs have tended to be inconsistent for me. Not bad to 50 yards in many cases but not as good as round balls and not as consistent as round balls.

I launched a lot of lead downrange coming to that conclusion. My good round ball loads are dependable and give good accuracy of 3" to 4" out to at least 50 yards.

Consistency in components and loading is a key point though as Hogtamer points out. I am sure it affects round ball loads too but so far I have not found them to be as picky or troublesome to get good accuracy with as hollow base slugs.

However, my original goal was 4" to 6" at 100 yards from smoothbore and I have not yet put together a load that will do it consistently. I have shot factory loads that will but my handloads won't. Again, with brand new hulls and well made wad columns and with perfect crimp maybe but like most I am using more than once fired hulls and without taking excessive time, building custom and precise wad columns is not so easy. The factories can order what they want by the thousands or make what they want by the thousands where we home tinkerers make do with what is available.

Round balls in shotcups are pretty impressive to 50 yards though and those loads are not hard to reproduce.

Longbow

[44 WCF]

Longbow, what is approx weight of 12 GA round ball, and are those loaded in a shot cup

[mac60]

Years ago I remember seeing in a magazine, cut away of a slug round showing spiral rifling on the skug which I now understand imparts spin in a smooth bore. Would a shot cup with similar spiral externally help accomplish the same

The "rifling" does nothing to impart spin to the projectile. What it does do is allow a slug to be safely fired in a choked barrel.

[44 WCF]

Just shows how the uniformed can draw the wrong conclusion. I really appreciate your taking time to explain purpose of the spiral ridges on that type slug.

[Cap'n Morgan]

I believe the jury is still out on that one. The most accurate smoothbore slugs - the original Brenneke and the discontinued Vitt slug both use helical fins. George Vitt went to great lengths to explain the science behind it:

http://www.google.com/patents/US3200751

My own experiments seems to confirm this; past fifty yards the helical finned slugs will outshoot the straight finned all else being equal.

[44 WCF]

There is lot more to slug shooting than I ever imagined

[OnHoPr]

I am not sure of all the in depth science jargon, but I believe the spiral type fosters do help with stabilization. Cap'n Morgan just posted a youtube info vid on a similar point. I can't find it now, but it had to do with some sort of effect of spin with a basketball. Even the the jargon concept was new to me and I could not relate it to the lead projectile because of so many variables but the base core of it had concept. The spiral slug IMO would go the the air like a soft undersized cast boolit pushed to the limit in a Swedish 6.5. There would be a lot of bullet stripping and leading. With air it may just take 50 yd to get the slug to actually start spinning and its spinning would increase with down range yardage. The only thing is with its poor BC wind deflection would come in to effect unless you were in a tunnel. This spin may be 1 in 120 or more than a 1 in 66 RB twist, but still a twist. This twist would prevent knuckling. I use to be a pitcher. There is the fastball, the fastball with movement, the curve ball, and knuckleball, plus a whole lot of other junk ball pitches. With great spin even being fast the ball can still have off line movement. Slow it down and you have the curve ball or other junk ball movement. At the right rotation the ball will hardly have any movement. Throw the ball slow without spin or hardly and spin and it will do all sorts of funky things movement. Funky enough to strikeout a couple of grown men in class B/C slow pitch softball sometimes per game. So, without the spin the ball or projectile will have the tendency to knuckle. With the spin (or at least roughly correct to its nature) it will have a stabilization effect.

[44 WCF]

All in all, there is accuracy and plenty power to humanely harvest legal game. Plus a bunch of shooting for testing and fun. This thread has provided tons of personal experience which had been great reading.

[mac60]

All in all, there is accuracy and plenty power to humanely harvest legal game. Plus a bunch of shooting for testing and fun. This thread has provided tons of personal experience which had been great reading.

I won't argue that. I know for a fact that a 12 ga. 7/8 oz. or 1 oz. slug will hammer a deer. At ranges to 50 yds. or so a foster slug has always given good accuracy for me. As far as the Lee drive key slugs go - I have never been able to get the 1 oz. version to shoot well at all. The 7/8 oz. version showed promise with this load.
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...highlight=#top

[longbow]

44 WCF:

It all depends on what round ball you want to shoot.

I started with a 0.690" round ball about 40 years ago because that's all I could find. I never did get any decent accuracy from it though either naked or in shotcups of which few have thin enough petals.

A few years ago I decide to revisit round balls in smoothbore and picked up a few moulds to try:

- 0.662" weighs exactly 1 oz. in pure lead
- 0.678" weighs about 1 1/16 oz.
- 0.690" weighs about 1 1/8 oz.
- 0.715" (haven't shot that one)
- 0.735" weighs 575 grs.

All in all I have gotten best accuracy using 0.662" patched up to snug fit in shotcup and 0.735" shot naked over hard card wad column. Both turned in consistent groups of 3" to 4" at 50 yards. 0.678" is about a perfect fit for standard Winchester shotcups and seems to perform well but so far I have not shot many of those. That is my most recent mould. No reason it shouldn't perform as well as the other two.

0.690" while popular has not worked well for me. Too small naked and too big for most shotcups. I did find some with thin enough petals for it but they sheared so accuracy was poor. Lee makes inexpensive 0.690" ball moulds so maybe that is one reason that size is popular. I have an old Lyman mould that I don't use anymore. In fact all of my round ball moulds are Lyman.

The smaller balls can be shot safely through chokes though I wouldn't recommend shooting a 0.678" ball that is a snug fit in a shotcup through a full choke. I use cylinder bore mostly and always with the 0.735" ball and I/C choke in my browning slug and buck barrel (fixed choke) for undersize slugs and balls.

Unlike mac60, I have not had good results with home loaded Foster slugs. I could never get my Lyman Foster slug mould to shoot decent groups at all but then it casts 0.705" so way under bore size but way to big to fit into a shotcup. I did get acceptable results with the Lee 1 oz. slug but get better accuracy to 50 yards with round ball. Good loads with the slug should hold up at longer range than the round ball.

Anyway, that's what I have found.

As for the spiral grooves on Foster slugs, they are not near as big as Cap'n Morgan's Brenneke ribs nor original Brenneke ribs. I have read that studies have been done with high speed cameras and the Foster slugs do not spin due to the spiral ribs/grooves. They just are not big enough to catch any air. However, I can believe that the Brenneke style ribs might impart some spin due to air drag.

Longbow

[mac60]

Longbow, I should have stated above I was referring to factory loaded slugs. I do have a quantity of foster slugs (pull downs from factory ammo) that I have loaded in straight wall hulls - just haven't had the time to shoot them yet. Over the years everything I've ever read leads me to believe that a rifled slug doesn't get spin imparted to it by it's flight through air. This has been repeated an untold number of times - I guess that makes me guilty of believing what I've read. Here's a link to a very short (5 second) video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNIL0bChyPk
I realize this is immediately after exiting the barrel - am I to understand that it starts spinning after traveling downrange 50 yds or so? At any rate, as you pointed out - Cap'n Morgan's slug and the Vitt and Brenneke slugs are a totally different animal than a rifled foster slug.

[OnHoPr]

I am not stating my basics physics theory is fact. But, what is the source of the data that states that it does not and how was the data test performed. Was it just a 12" length of video frame 5' from the barrel. Or, was there a test that was performed from a well loaded slug which would not deform on ignition and through the length of the barrel which would be a true cylinder so that it would not deform the slug like a Modified for example. Then after 50 yds in 5 yard increments check to see if there was rotation with a marked slug with high speed cameras. The Brenneke style ribs should create some form of rotation or more than the Foster, but the Foster still has a rifled fin style.

winchester rackmasterfederal rifled slug
winchester super X fired from Mossberg 500 no choke stipulatedfederal truballbrenneke

Notice how the fins may be deformed through the barrel on the one super x. Does the choke deform the slugs? Does going from the hull through the forcing cone or lead deform the slugs fins? Does the sonic air wave from the bluntness of the projectile force air away from the fins even on the Brenneke? They may not catch enough air for rotation. When the slug starts slowing down after 50 yards and there is no deformation on the fins will they catch air? How much spin might effect the slug if the fins actually started to catch air? Is it all shuttle cock physics?

I shot a Savage 67 a few years ago. With the remington slugger, and winchester super x it shot decent from my point of view, but those Federal trueballs were quite accurate, with little wind. I think the Rackmasters would be accurate in the same gun. It had a modified barrel. Now from what I have heard during my years is the true cylinder or IMP is always best for the (foster styles's's) slugs, but once in a while the Modified works well. What would you call accurate, maybe less than 3 or 4 inches at 100 yards for a smooth bore good with 5 shot groups. Has anybody shot the Lyman foster with that type of accuracy?

[longbow]

I won't argue the point but my belief is that the rifling grooves in a Foster slug are not large enough to be called fins and that if they impart any spin at all to the slug it would be minimal.

The shuttlecock effect however is proven to work and the Lee slugs are a good example ~ no ribs but reasonably accurate from smoothbore.

A 12 gauge ball or square slug doesn't need a fast twist and about 1:120" is right but that translates to 9000 RPM. I do not believe that air drag will get a slug with low ribs spinning remotely close to that speed.

I think the main purpose of ribs on shotgun slugs is to reduce bore friction and in the case of Brenneke's and the like, to allow shooting through a choke where the ribs can collapse. Fosters do not need that since they are thin all the way to the nose and certainly the Lyman mould and Rapine full bore moulds had no ribs.

I can say for a fact that my Lyman Foster slugs obturated to fill the bore at firing even though they started out drastically undersize because I have recovered them from deep snow and they were undamaged yet much shorter and fatter than when they started out ~ they filled the bore after recovery. If they obturate to fill the bore and they are safe to shoot through a choke but they have no rifling/ribs. They have a thin skirt and thin nose, there is nothing "solid" about them.

As for the video, what caught my eye is the condition of the attached wad. Pause the video at around the 2 second mark and look at the distortion in the felt and cardboard wads. I have to think that they rebound a little and are still in "compressed" mode as the slug exits the barrel in that video as Brenneke's are quite accurate.

That wad distortion is what smoothbore shooters have to overcome be it collapsing skirt of a Foster or distorted attached wad on a Brenneke.

For that matter, I recovered some Gualandi DGS slugs that not only had badly crushed cushion leg but the lead slug itself had also had a distorted skirt from the cushion leg collapsing against it.

Consistent accuracy from smoothbores is a challenge... for me at least.

Longbow

[44 WCF]

I certainly have gained respect for slug shooting. In all my years hunting here and Colorado, the only slugs that I've known to be carried were blue grouse and turkey hunters that had black bear permits. Is there a recognized competition for smooth bore and or rifled barrel slug shooting.

[OnHoPr]

I certainly have gained respect for slug shooting. In all my years hunting here and Colorado, the only slugs that I've known to be carried were blue grouse and turkey hunters that had black bear permits. Is there a recognized competition for smooth bore and or rifled barrel slug shooting.

Yes, there was an online venue for slug shooting competition, but it stopped a few years back. The site is still going but only a couple of people visit it for discussion. You can buy slugs from it though. I can't remember the actual name, but it was something like Slug Shooting Association.

[glenr1]

Would this be it? http://www.slugshooting.com/

[Maven]

All, If you need to calculate the weight of a roundball, as above, why not try this application? http://www.beartoothbullets.com/resc....495&v2=2876.1

[Cap'n Morgan]

A 12 gauge ball or square slug doesn't need a fast twist and about 1:120" is right but that translates to 9000 RPM. I do not believe that air drag will get a slug with low ribs spinning remotely close to that speed

Longbow.

The slug doesn't need rotation for stabilizing. It is already being drag stabilized due to its design. But I believe even a modest rotation will improve on accuracy as it will tend to cancel out any asymmetric flaws in the slug. Like shooting a crooked arrow with helical vanes compared to straight vanes.

As for the fins or ribs on slugs. They may look too small to have any effect, but remember that air resistance quadruples when velocity doubles. Even at a modest 1200 FPS there's a lot of pressure on those ribs - although it's probably only the foremost part that do the work.

My first helical design had a large flat nose and didn't shoot as well as the Brenneke clone with its rounded nose. It probably has to do with the way the airflow is guided over the slug.

When weather improves a bit I will test the Brenneke slug in my Beretta Xtrema semi auto. It has a 3-1/2" chamber and a .733 back bore which mean the slug will rattle along and precision should be awful. The plan is to see if shooting a light mod. choke (.720) will improve results compared to a cylinder choke. I may also try making a short rifled choke if time permits it.

[Blood Trail]

I tried shooting foster slugs (factory) out of a rifled barrel and the results where quite comical.