plastic shot cups

[toot]

i am starting to load MAG TECH. 12 gauge brass hulls and want to use plastic shot cups over the BP. load, shot, then over shot wad and ELMER'S glue to seal it in. would that not be any different than loading plastic shot cups over smokeless powder? has any one done it in this way?

[BUCKEYE BANDIT]

I don't think the BP is gonna play nice with PLASTIC .No expert for sure,but have read that is why the BP Guy's like paper or brass hulls.

[upnorthwis]

I've shot black in cowboy matches for years with plastic wads. The plastic will melt into long strips in the barrel. But it ends up being kind of a moot point since you're going to have to clean it anyway. I made a special tool with a 12 gage bore brush wrapped in cloth.

[Lead pot]

I use plastic wads in my cartridge rifle shells some with as much as 120 grains of black powder and I have yet to see one that I have picked off the ground that has any signs of melting or even deformed except for the land depressions. I also have shot AA shot shells with AA wads with black powder and the cups were still good but there were streaks of plastic in the shot gun barrels but I think that was from friction off the shot cup and not the base cup. I clean out plastic smears even shooting trap loads.

[curator]

If you want to use plastic shot cups in 12 gage MecTech brass shells, you'll need 10 gage shot cups. The all brass shells are much thinner then the modern plastic or even paper hulls. !0 gage wad columns work fine in 12 gage MecTech all brass shells. There is the plastic fouling that can result from follow-up shots with black powder fouling in the bore. I have found that some 50/50 bee's wax/lard lube inserted into the "shock-absorber" section of the plastic wad column helps a great deal with this issue. It is not the issue of black powder but rather the fouling left behind. The lube helps keep that soft and not interfering with subsequent shots. Once you are done shooting a water rinse and some "ed's red" bore cleaner and you are good to go.

[BrentD]

I've shot black in cowboy matches for years with plastic wads. The plastic will melt into long strips in the barrel. But it ends up being kind of a moot point since you're going to have to clean it anyway. I made a special tool with a 12 gage bore brush wrapped in cloth.

This has been my experience too, though I don't really understand it. Plastic over powder wads in a rifle cartridge do not melt. And one would think that a thick fiber wad between powder and shotcup would prevent this, but i get the same thing. Long strips of plastic melted to the barrel. Enough that I begin to worry that it may cause pressure build up - which is an issue in some of the guns I use. Or that I may not always get it all out of the bore when cleaning. I've given up on black and plastic shot cups. I use paper or mylar wraps however. the paper, if thick - like some watercolor painting papers, can really help prevent shot deformation.

[longbow]

And another vote for plastic fouling! Well... not actually a vote for but experience with.

I used to load BP in 12 ga. hulls for slugs for fun shooting and always found long strips of plastic in the BP fouling lining the bore. My take was that the BP fouling is hard and stripped plastic off the wads resulting in gas blow by melting the plastic.

I have experienced "gas cutting" using smokeless shotgun loads too when I decided to use up some shot cups I had cut off to get the plastic gas seals for slug loads. So I'd saved a bunch of these up and one day decided I'd use them for wad slugs over fiber wads and nitro card wads for gas seal. Well, nitro card wads do not seal nearly as well as plastic cups do! I found shotcups with petals burned and stretched quite badly indicating gas blow by.

I think that paper patching and card wads used for boolits do not burn because they do not leak significantly and exposure time to the heat is very short but once you get blow by I think the gas does work on the material damaging it. Think of gas cutting and leading with an undersize boolit. Same issue. The lead isn't exposed long enough to melt yet it does when gas squeezes between the boolit and bore. Get a tight fitting boolit and problem solved.

Longbow

[toot]

BUCKYEYE BANDIT, I mentioned that i was going to use MAG TECH brass hulls. and thanks guys for the input on my query. as i said if it doesn't melt the shot cup on top of smokeless powder such as RED DOT, BLUE DOT, etc, i thought that black would be ok!. i will use card board over powder wad, felt wad, and over shot card, the old tried and true way.

[17nut]

12 gauge Magtech brass uses 11 gauge wads.

I have shot many hundreds of 12 gauge roundballs using plastic wads and have yet to find a single spec of plastic in the barrel.
I'll bet $$$ for donuts that it is not the flame of the bp burning that is the culprit but barrel friction.
Think about this: The load is in contact with the burning bp for 2-3 milliseconds, take an Oxy+Ace torch at full throttle and pass it over a plastic wad as fast as you can, that will be way slower than 2-3 milliseconds and now check that wad with a magglass. Nothing right?

Hech the old timers used beehive/hornets nest as an over powder wadding with no ill effects.

[longbow]

Could be bore friction, could be hard BP fouling stripping plastic off, could be hard BP fouling damaging the seal then blow by, and maybe other causes too. That it has happened to me is not a question.

I don't think bore friction with BP would be the issue when smokeless loads are generally higher pressure and velocity so bore friction should be increased. But something is doing it for sure.

A lube may minimize or even eliminate the issue both by keeping fouling soft and by keeping any plastic that does strip off for whatever reason from sticking to the bore.

[cajun shooter]

I'm afraid you will lose your dollars 17nut. I've been shooting BP since the 70's and it burns much hotter than smokeless. After just a few rounds of full case loads in my 44wcf rifle, the bbl will burn your skin. Read back in history about the first lever action used in the Civil War. The Henry model 60 was a very deadly rifle but many shooters learned fast to use something to hold that bbl besides that off hand.
BP burns just opposite of smokeless powder and it's grain shape is not the same with each grain and this adds to a longer burning process which makes it very hot.
Do a search on this site and you will find plenty on this subject.