This for no crimp slug?

[Hogtamer]

The Tarhunt slugs pictured earlier reminded me of something I wanted to try with my Zlugs. Here's a pic a cutaway and a live round.
These are Winchester 3" hulls that I loaded new and roll crimped, once fired with Zlug loads. It's takes some effort to get the components in the hull and the zlug is a nice tight fit where the old roll crimp is shrunk a bit. OAL is 3.2 and chambers well IN USH. The point, of course, is to get the zlug closer to the lands to avoid some of the jump through the forcing cone. This was a pressure tested load at normal length with a roll crimp, but does anyone foresee a problem with an additional 1/2" of wad column? Will the load generate enough pressure as this is certainly not tight as a roll crimp.
Pretty accurate load as is but still dream of cloverleafs.

[longbow]

Looks good to me Hal.

Between the hardness of that Zlug and the extra friction of the additional wad I think you'll do okay. Depends on powder a lot too I think.

Also, you have positioned the Zlug close to the rifling and it should be engraving before wads have left the hull so I think it will work okay.

Ross Seyfreid wrote an article on Paradox/Kynoch style boolits with the single large groove loaded in plastic hulls and he used a tool to "crimp" the hull into that large groove. I can't imaging it would provide as much resistance at ignition as a good roll crimp but it worked well for him.

If ever I get a rifled gun that is the boolit and load method I would try.

One poster here whose handle I don't recall used to load slugs in uncrimped hulls then poured beeswax (IIRC but wax anyway) over the slug to seal, lubricate and retain the slug. He claimed it worked just fine. I have shot slugs from uncrimped hulls as well with no issues but again, powder choice will make a difference. Really slow hard to ignite powders may want that initial resistance to get things going. But with the slug so close to rifling even that may not matter.

Go try some then report back that way we all know for sure.

Longbow

[Hogtamer]

34 gr 800x is the load, I had 35 tested and it was fine. One other thought...I could dull up a tubing cutter blade and crimp plastic into the top groove. Redneck engineering at its' finest. And there's always JB Weld.

[uncle dino]

Hal. I'd save that tube cutter blade.. I think even dull it'll cut hull..my thought is a something like a modified roll crimper but with a spring loaded plunger of some type that will ride on the side of hull and create a friction heat groove into hull..going to need some type of heat to set crimp..friction seems to be the best bet..d

[Hogtamer]

ok, a tool for every job! Done!

[OnHoPr]

More wad column = less pressure IMO. If those a hard wax cards, they are generally not consistent in thickness or even level which IMO can cant a projectile leaving the barrel like a lopsided GC on the base of a boolit. They also create different seating pressures. This is when the slug leaves the barrel but is still being pushed by the wad column until the wad column leaves the barrel. Nitros, felts, and corks are more uniform in thickness. Nitros are a little hard though for complete wad column structure if the wad column is of a longer length such as pictured. The wax idea sounds good too. Put the zlugs in a cake of beeswax and candle wax, punch them out, insert or load into case. Maybe make a something like a wood workers wood clamp with two boards and some threaded rod and put the load shells in and seat a group of shells at one time. It may help with uniformity. When they are in the clamp take a hair dryer and reheat the wax until melted to seal the shell and also create a fixed projectile. I think a couple of the major detriments to slug accuracy in these modern slug guns in wad columns and quality sabots.

[bikerbeans]

HT,

I loaded some of Uncle Dino's fullbore 12ga slugs sticking out of the hull without a crimp. The velocity was much lower without the crimp but I was using SR 4759 which is slower than 800x.

BB

[Tackleberry41]

I could not find data for slow powders with slugs in the Lyman book. IM running a 20ga in a H&R rifled gun. All the slug data was for slow powders. Blue dot did poorly w regular crimped sabots, more of a pop and very low velocity. I would like to do similar to the OP and get the sabots right up to the rifling.

[cpileri]

I know the british loaded paradox slugs outside the hull using a hot ring-style crimper to melt the plastic into a very wide groove in the projectile.

Might have to squish down the entire length of the zlug in order to get a firm grip on the many small grooves in the zlug.

[Blood Trail]

I second that. Lube them up!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[longbow]

Yup! I am on board with OnHoPr's comments on wad columns. I am pretty well convinced that inconsistencies in wad columns are a major factor in accuracy issues. I think nitro card wads are pretty good but the hard waxed wads are not terribly even and tilted wads will tilt a slug and/or possibly upset it as it leaves the muzzle.

Doesn't much help Hal here though.

Have you shot any of those yet Hal?

Longbow

[Hogtamer]

Decided not tight enough "crimp" for adequate pressure.

[runfiverun]

definitely need a good crimp for a shot shell to work. [you need initial resistance in everything actually]
you could try a metal case and work on neck tension though, it does fine for rifles and such. [just a thought on the accuracy thing]

you might also get quite a bit of help by using a plastic gas seal.
I know they cut the powder amounts by a bunch back in the day just by using them instead of the inefficient cardboard ones.

[Cap'n Morgan]

you might also get quite a bit of help by using a plastic gas seal.
I know they cut the powder amounts by a bunch back in the day just by using them instead of the inefficient cardboard ones.

Plastic seals definitely make a significant difference. I would not be surprised if you could skip crimping altogether and still get uniform ignition with some of the faster powders when using a thin-lipped seal like the x12x.

[bikerbeans]

HT,

I loaded some of Uncle dino's jacketed slugs with the slug protruding out of the hull. I used once fired factory slug hulls so the stretched case mouth held onto the slug. Using 70 grains of SR 4759 I had perfect ignition and good accuracy, but I was shooting offhand at 25 to 40 yards. This exact same load in a fired fold crimp hull performed very poorly. Your idea of using a fired roll crimped hull is a good one.

I am going to test the load on a pig saturday, shots are less than 25 yards. This is an inside the fence "hunt" so I know I will get a close shot.

BB

[Hogtamer]

I do use the x12x seals and they always perform nicely. I had to expand the mouth of soft Winchester hulls to get the components in and the slug was fairly tight. Had the bright idea if I heated up the slug mold I could lay the round in the mold and crimp with that. Seemed to work nicely except the mild heat actually shrunk the plastic a bit but in on itself, not the Zlug. Plastic got hard too and after that could rotate the zlug easily with my fingers. Thought about heating the zlug, then inserting in hull, but considering the batting average of most of my great ideas put that one aside until later. Bow hunting is taking up my reloading time, will be in the woods every day next week so will get to this later. BB, how about an autopsy report on that pig please, but at 25 yds it will be a zip through with just a nice round hole.

[bikerbeans]

The Uncle Dino hollow point jacketed 12ga slug did a number on a pig. Slug entered the pig's forehead just above the right eye and the pig dropped. The copper jacket separated from the lead core and stopped in the meat at the base of the neck. The lead core went into the chest cavity and chewed up the front of the lungs. No exit hole and the diaphragm was intact but I didn't find the lead core, but didn't go digging through the gut pile.

BB

[longbow]

How are the Zlugs shooting for you guys? Is accuracy good?

[meauxcg]

What is a Zlug?

[Hogtamer]

It's pretty long but here's the thread. Zlug = zinc slughttp://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?277201-The-ZLUG-Thread