Hello all! I acquired a huge trove of shotshell components from a friend after his BIL passed away. He was primarily a 16ga. shooter so there's a bunch of slug loading stuff for his Browning Sweet Sixteen. Among that were a number of different thickness 16ga. card wads, which is just what I needed for my 12 ga. RB loads! So, last night I loaded a box of test loads consisting of:
Once fired W-W AA hulls (Old style compression formed)
W-W 209 primer
19.0 gr. Red Dot
Federal 12S3 wad w/ .140" card in the cup
.662" RB
8 pt. fold crimp
At the bench last night, I needed to increase wad pressure from 50# to 70# in order to crimp successfully. Even at that crimps weren't as neat as I would have liked them. I admit, I'm fussy about crimps. I thought about increasing the pressure a little more but thought perhaps I should shoot these before I do that. The 12S3 has a very stout crush section, as I would find out!
At the range this AM, my first 3 shots were almost touching at 50 yards (2" group). I'm shooting a smoothbore 870 with IC choke tube with a scope on it for testing. My next two shots were 6" high and left, about 5" apart. Hmmmm...... I walked down to see if I could find any wads; I found 4 of the 5, two were missing one petal each, the other two looked fine, just like they had come from a skeet load.
I continued firing 5 shot groups, walking the groups around the outside edge of the bull with my scope adjustments. I noticed a repetitive pattern; good groups (around 3") with 3 or 4 rounds and 1 or 2 flyers opening the groups to 6-7". Once finished, I picked up as many wads as I could find, 22 in all. Six of them had either a sheared petal or a broken but still attached petal. I noticed that the crush section on these wads didn't show hardly any compression, I thought that was odd. This load is supposed to generate 1300 fps, wads I used previously showed much more compression. I'm sure the damaged wads accounted for some of the flyers. I mean, "Hey--It couldn't possibly be me!!"
So, now I'm wondering:
Do I drop to 18.0 gr. of powder to slow it down and (hopefully) improve the crimp?
Do I increase the wad pressure to squash the crush section a little more?
With a .140 card and the ball on top there isn't any room left in the cup for filler of any kind. I feel like this load is right on the cusp of being a good oe if I can iron out the wrinkles. What would you do?