Low velocity round ball

[Lonegun1894]

Excellent thread. I have a H&R Tracker 2 that I put into a synthetic stock trying to see how light I can make it to have a very lightweight gun that gets carried a lot but shot just a little at hogs. It ended up being just under 4 1/4 pounds, but I’ve been using 20grs Unique under a .690” RB. Y’all have me thinking I need to put that .735” RB mold to use.

[longbow]

How are you loading that 0.690" ball? What sort of accuracy are you getting?

If you accuracy is good nothing wrong with the 0.690" RB. I have never had success with them myself, too small naked and too large for most shotcups, pinch petals in the shotcups I've tried. Donut wads or the inverted gas seal trick is probably a better approach. That I have not tried.

The disadvantage of the 0.735" RB is weight. They are about 1 3/8" oz. so not a lot of load data available. Okay if you want to use birdshot load data or download which I guess is your goal anyway.

The advantage is weight if you want low velocity and mass. They are also pretty easy to load and I found easy to get accuracy with. I got best results using a plastic gas seal then hard card wad column.

I like round balls and I got very good results using the 0.735" RB in my gun, but then I've gotten good results with 0.662" RB and 0.678" RB too.

Just occurs to me that you could probably use the Metro Gun load data. That is all subsonic and it seems to me they listed some heavy payloads. Its worth looking into. Maybe that's already been mentioned. I didn't read back to refresh my old memory.

Longbow

[Lonegun1894]

Longbow,
You’re going to want to choke me, but I have to admit having spent too much time shooting muzzleloaders. I use the cheap bulk pack birdshot shells that Walmart sells for around $23/100 around here for dove hunting, and save the empties. Reprime, load 20grs of Unique, then use 4 cards I punch out of cardboard with a .715” punch directly over the powder, and then patch the RB in cloth like you do for a muzzleloader. Then fold crimp it shut. I usually get 3-3.5”@50 yards, but this opens up to 6-7”@75, and over a foot at 100. I seriously don’t think I am getting a good gas seal, and recovered RBs do not show the rifling engraving on the RB, so the cloth is probably not doing anything except centering the RB. The shell gets thumbed into the chamber with very light pressure, but will not just drop in like a factory load will. These shells usually do 6-7”@50yards with my smoothbore shotguns with sights, and for some reason, do even worse in my rifled Mossberg 835 which has a scope. I’m still trying to figure out a load that thing likes tho that isn’t store bought.

Now to be fair, I have two Mossberg 500s that shoot both factory Winchester rifled HP slugs and .678” RB in a shotcup into 5-6”@100yards, but I often carry this H&R instead due to the much lighter weight and that most of my shots are usually at 20-40yards on hogs.

[longbow]

Aaaahhhh... good to see some comments on 0.678" balls in shotcups in rifled gun. I get excellent results with 0.678" RB's in my smoothbore giving 3" to 4" groups at 50 yards. I was wondering how they would do in rifled gun. 5" to 6" dependable accuracy at 100 yards would do me just fine.

As you say, round balls from smoothbore can do quite well to 50 yards or so but groups do tend to open up well before 100 yards and frequent fliers become the issue.

You might want to pick up a 3/4" (0.750") punch. 0.750" wads should seal better but even then in my experience there is a lot of gas leakage past even nitro card wads and hard card wads without a plastic gas seal. It could be the gas leakage that is holding your patch in place though. Once out of the hull and through the forcing cone it should be good but the first part of the journey opening crimp and sliding out of a rough hull then jumping through the forcing cone must be hard on a patch.

I patch 0.662" RB's the same way you do but into a shotcup. That works slick and the the patch is protected by the shotcup so no issues. It is just a spacer to give snug fit. I doubt fit would be good enough for rifled gun or that the ball would be spun up to rifling twist. Works well in smoothbore though.

You know what... TRG3 posted that he uses 0.690" RB's in shotcup in rifled gun and his trick is to cut 2 opposing petals off the shotcup so only two hold the ball. Now don't ask why this should work because I don't know. It doesn't change the fit of ball and petal to bore but he says he gets really good accuracy that way. I'd just go with the 0.678" ball in shotcup and if it isn't quite tight enough put a wrap of paper in first.

Lots of ways to skin a cat (gruesome analogy, makes you wonder where that came from and just how many ways there are... and who figured that out!).

Longbow

[Lonegun1894]

You know, you’ve got me thinking about the gas seal. In some of my muzzleloader smoothbore loads, I’ve experimented with a couple of cards, about a 6” length of jute twine frayed into a fiber nest, and then a couple more cards. The idea is that the compression of the jute fiber nest between the two sets of cards creates a better chance of a gas seal. I may have to try this with shotgun shells, but no promises as to if it’ll work or be a waste of time.

[megasupermagnum]

I have not tried a round ball in a shot cup, but I could see where that would be nice. I will say I really like these .735" round balls. They just plain shoot. Super easy to cast, no messing with lube, and I am truly impressed with their short range accuracy. Since I started this thread, I've shot quite a few with 18 grains of Unique, and they are pleasant to shoot in all guns. They barely move my 10 pound ultra slug hunter, and are easy to handle in the 5.5 pound tracker.

[longbow]

Lonegun1894:

You might be better off using a scoop of COW, or for you Southern folks I'm told grits, between those cards but even then I doubt you'll get a good gas seal.

For example, I was shooting a lot of 0.735" round balls and needed gas seals so cut gas seals off some of my wads leaving the shotcup. I wound up with a lot of shotcups and I had bags of nitro card wads and 1/2" hard card wads so decided to try a wad slug in the shotcup sitting on a card wad column of two 1/8" nitro card wads then a 1/2" hard card wad then shotcup with slug.

Accuracy was horribly, the boom was kind of hollow and recoil lighter than same loads with a plastic gas seal. I recovered some shotcups and found out why. The card wad column didn't seal well enough and the shotcups were all gas cut and stretched. I was quite surprised but I am guessing slow powder (Blue Dot) and not good enough seal. Maybe not as much of an issue with faster powders but certainly an issue with my loads. These were all factory card wads which are a tight fit to bore too.

megasupermagnum:

I am in agreement! Round balls are easy to cast and easy to load. I like 'em! There is just something appealing to that big 'ol simple sphere.

I shot my 0.735" RB's without lube and had no leading issues at all in both smoothbore and a borrowed rifled gun. The rifled gun didn't see much shooting but the smoothbore did. If leading was an issue tumble lube or a lubed wad under the ball should take care of it.

Longbow

[BAGTIC]

"Lots of ways to skin a cat ..."

Perhaps that reference was originally applied to a cat-fish.

[Ginsing]

I believe this phrase is ment to express being prepared with back-up plans to deal with contingencies.

[longbow]

But what does one do with all those cat skins?

[megasupermagnum]

That saying is definitely derived from catfish, not a household cat. It simply means there are a ton of ways to the same outcome.

I'm not a big catfisherman, but I feed guts to the chickens. They will eat anything.

[Blood Trail]

That saying is definitely derived from catfish, not a household cat. It simply means there are a ton of ways to the same outcome.

I'm not a big catfisherman, but I feed guts to the chickens. They will eat anything.

I️ thought it was from when they used cat guts for instrument strings.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Ginsing]

http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-mor1.htm
Here is what I could find on the origin of the phrase.

[longbow]

To follow BT's line... and surgical sutures. While the catfish thing could be, I think it does mean a household cat. People had somewhat different views of animals and their uses not that long ago.

Wait a minute... weren't we talking about round balls?

[Lonegun1894]

Well, a cat is a fur ball, which has potential for a gas seal... wonder what gauge that would be? And just what are the aerodynamic properties of the average house cat anyway?

[Mr_Sheesh]

Depends entirely on the cat. Also relevant: How much blood are you willing to lose, trying to force said cat into the barrel?

[Lonegun1894]

You know, I’ve bled for things I thought were worth it in the past, and willing to do so again, but, um, uh, stuffing a cat down a pipe in the interest of science just doesn’t rise to that level for me. Thank you for bringing me to my senses. I’ll stick with lead RBs.

[MusicMan]

Off topic but just remembered this;
I worked with a woman that was a cat fanatic and I had note paper made up with the first line on the top and the 2nd line at the bottom, and sent all communications to her on them. You could hear her holler through out the building every time she received one of my notes.

1st line = Well you know how I like cats.







2nd line= BBQed!

[megasupermagnum]

I just came across some load data that I thought was interesting. It is an IMR manual from 2003, and in it, there are numerous field loads for 1 1/4 oz with none other than 700x powder at a respectable velocity. I was really surprised. At some point I'm sure I'll be trying it with round balls, backed off a couple grains. It's on page 35.

http://stevespages.com/pdf/imr_reloading.pdf

[dsh1106]

megasupermagnum - I'm interested in this idea, are the components you used with the 18 grs of unique listed in post #16 or did you use something different?

thanks
Scott