Lee slug

[stumpjumper]

Folks I'm trying to load the lee 7/8 slug with a published load. The load was a cheddite hull with a LO78 wad, and 29 grains of green dot. I had wheel weights with 2% tin in my pot already so I cast some up. I tried to push the slug and wad down my barrel and it wouldn't fit. It's a improved cylinder choke. I had some old aa wads and it fit. So I measured the 2 and there was about .009 thousands different anyone have any ideas

[stumpjumper]

Would there be that much difference between wheel weight and 2% tin and pure lead in diameter

[stumpjumper]

Sorry guys there a thread very similar to mine down the page. I should have looked before I posted.

[longbow]

I doubt the slug casts significantly different in WW or soft lead... not that much anyway. Wads do vary greatly in petal thickness though.

I'd say you'd be fine with an I/C choke. Even in WW the Lee slug should swage and so should the plastic petals of the shotcup. I wouldn't worry about that except with a solid slug where the slug isn't going to swage and the plastic has nowhere to go.

My Lee 1 oz. and 7/8 oz. slugs both cast over 0.680" to 0.685" at the nose. They both shoot okay from my oversize cylinder bore gun but nothing to write home about. I've had better results after putting a hot melt glue "attached wad" on them by casting it in a form. The moulds both cast very well for me and slugs fit wads well for my gun.

I'll have to try some through my Browning BPS with I/C choke. I generally test slug loads in my single shot with cylinder bore.

Longbow

[stumpjumper]

Thanks longbow. I'm wanting to shoot these threw a modified choke for three gun practice. So I think I'm going for a wad change I looked up a load and they were showing the federal 12s0. So I'm going to see about finding them local to me so I can measure the pedal thickness. My slugs measured same as yours I think the biggest was .686. Thank you for your time.

[longbow]

If your old AA wads were the Winchester AA red, they seem to be quite a bit thicker than my new Winchester yellow wads (1 1/4 oz). My Claybuster clones of Winchester 1 oz. are even thinner than the new Winchesters. Wad petal thicknesses vary a lot!

Probably best to use a Lee endorsed recipe at least to start out then take it from there. Lee also recommends using pure or soft lead but many do not including me... though I am not a Lee Drive Key slug expert! I have both moulds but have probably only shot a total of 200 to maybe 300 lee slugs. All have been cast from wheelweights or range scrap so no experience with soft Lee slugs here.

I've cast and shot quite a few Lyman Foster slugs in the past and mostly as Lyman recommends being cast in soft lead and loaded to Lyman recipes but I had no good results at all with that slug and the soft slug definitely gets shorter and fatter on ignition but it is so undersize it does not obturate evenly (for me anyway) so accuracy was terrible. Paper patching it to bore size helped but too much work. That's another story!

Longbow

[longbow]

I see Lee lists Win AA wads but I am not sure if those are the AA Red. The AA Reds are a thick and softish plastic much different than my other Winchester wads... or any others I've had.

While I won't argue that soft lead might be better than WW for slugs, I'll dispute their claim that WW slugs stick! Both my Lee moulds cast beautifully with WW and slugs drop out and off the core pins perfectly.

They are two of the easiest and best casting moulds I have and for $20 + each!

Longbow

[dsh1106]

I see Lee lists Win AA wads but I am not sure if those are the AA Red. The AA Reds are a thick and softish plastic much different than my other Winchester wads... or any others I've had.

While I won't argue that soft lead might be better than WW for slugs, I'll dispute their claim that WW slugs stick! Both my Lee moulds cast beautifully with WW and slugs drop out and off the core pins perfectly.

They are two of the easiest and best casting moulds I have and for $20 + each!

Longbow

I don't think the Win AA called out are the REDS, I assume (bad thing sometimes) the Win AA are the standard white ones and the other listed is Win AA 12SL.

This is the data you are referring to correct ? see attached

[huntnman]

WAA 12SL is a wad a AA shell is solid one piece compression formed hull. No fiber base. Such as the AA trap and the expert field loads. There are two types of AA hulls the old style, and the new HS, that have the HS stamp on the brass head. The HS is supposed to be an improvement, in the plastic. My Mec presses prefer the old style AA hulls, I'm lucky to have a large bunch of the red AA hulls held in reserve.

[Ginsing]

I have had great luck with waa 12 (white) wads in Remington hulls with my Lee 1oz slug. For my particular load they hold out better than federal wads in federal hulls. I get better slug release and less lost petals with winchester wads. I'm not sure why it works but I have stuck with them.
I was even shooting my Lee slugs through a modified choke this summer and the wad petals were just squeezing down paper thin at the widest part of the slug.
Just my experience, YMMV

[longbow]

Yes, that's the data. Lee lists WAA 12 wads. I agree that I think the Win AA Red are usually called just that. All mine are Win 12F 114 or Win 12SL or similar designation and are much thinner and harder plastic than the Win AA Red I have. The WAA 12 may well be the 1 1/8 oz. white wads... or at least not the dreaded red wads. I have had poor success with those! The rest work well.

I think my next batch of hulls will be either Fiocchi again or Federal Gold Medal. The Fiocchis I ordered from BPI were pretty good plastic and lasted well but limited load data. Since they are a straight walled hull with lower basewad I suspect they will take same load data as Cheddite and similar straight walled hulls. The Win AA hulls and my old Remington RXP hulls and similar are tapered and much smaller combustion area in the head. Its not good to use those hulls with straight walled hull data.

I wish there was a guide that listed all the hull equivalents betweens styles and brands. At least I don't know of one. I am pretty sure that using straight walled hull data in any straight walled hull will be safe though different thickness base wads may result in volume changes requiring longer or shorter wad columns to get proper crimp.

There is a bit of black magic involved in reloading shotgun slugs and interpreting data if you don't have all the exact components. Roll crimping helps because crimp height is not as critical. If you are at all unsure best to stick with exact published load data.

Longbow

[Ginsing]

Here is a rough guide to hull volumes
https://pipesf16.wordpress.com/12-ga-2-75-hull-volumes/
It's a fairly good comparison I find helpful

[Ginsing]

I found no love with those waa12r (red) wads either.
At least with the buckshot loads I have tried with them. The wads I did find looked like gobbed up balls of red plastic.
I havnt tried them with slug loads yet, I have a few loaded up with blue dot and the 525 slug but havnt tested yet. Come to think of it I loaded those up over a year ago. I should give them a go and see

[longbow]

Yes, I saw that link on another thread. I should review that closer. It might just give me what I want. I try to stay away from any significant substitutions... especially primers and hulls unless I know the primer performance. Primer changes can result in radical pressure changes up or down depending..

I suspect that for any comparable hull volume with straight walled hulls the load data is interchangeable or very close. The compression formed hulls with shaped compression chambers like Win AA not so much!

Yeah, we need a range day! I just had the Slugster out to check and see if I can shim the barrel to receiver snugger. I'll cut some shim stock tomorrow and try to fit it. The M*Carbo spring set made a big difference to trigger pull and snugging that barrel up so the receiver should help too.

But This is thread wander.

Longbow

[Ginsing]

From what I have gathered most of the European hulls are very close in hull volume and what many people do is use gold medal data for the euro hulls. The exception being the 16mm base fiocci hull. I have heard that on numerous forums and websites. Seems steel shot reloading sites discuss hull volumes at length.
I have been using the challenger hulls mostly now, and just use gold medal data. Challenger hulls (cheddite) have good volume and are free.
You should stop by the silver city trap club longbow and snag a bag or 2 of the hulls they have. That way you likely won't need to buy any for a good long while.
Anyways now I'm rambling

[W.R.Buchanan]

LB: shimming the barrel to the receiver shouldn't have any effect whatsoever. The bolt locks into the barrel when in battery which appears to be the way most shotguns work. I think Browning figured this out and everybody just followed along. all the receiver does is hold everything together, there is no alignment purse' .

Doesn't your barrel have a Cantilever Scope Mount?

Shimming might have some benefit on a 500 or 590 with the receiver sight as then you would want the barrel to maintain alignment with the receiver so the sights didn't move.

Randy

[longbow]

No mine is the smoothbore slug barrel with open sights.

I wish I had jumped on the used barrel they had at the same store in Ontario but I thought about it a bit too long. It was rated as in very good shape for $150.00 CDN which is a good price. They have another for $225.00 CDN which is cheaper than new but not by a lot.

I didn't buy it because it is 24" long and cantilever scope mount... plus of course it has the fast twist rifling for sabots. The fast twist may not be particularly detrimental but I was making seemingly good progress on my slow twist rifled choke tube at that point. Not so much anymore!

I restarted that with a single tooth scrape cutter but now the rifling head is cocking some in the back and forth movement so I either have to use two or three teeth for longer bearing surface or possibly add shoes to the rifling head so there is not so much clearance below the cutter.

I really want to try the slow twist! I think it will be better with all the short fat slugs like Lee and round balls. But this is a thread about Lee slugs so I shouldn't get off topic here. Mind you, my next outing will be with the Brenneke'ized Lee 7/8 oz. slugs.

Oh... and on that note and back on track some for the OP... For the Winchester wads I currently have the Lee slugs are slightly undersize but one wrap of paper snugs them up nicely. I just measure a strip around the slug with width from base to just past the large nose radius then cut several to that width and length. They roll into a tube easily, push into shotcup, add slug then into hull. So if fit is a bit loose a wrap or two of paper can easily fix that if you don't have a tighter fitting wad. Gives a guy custom fit. I haven't tried it for rifled gun since I don't have one but have to think it would work fine. It does work well for round balls (0.678") and the Lee slugs in smoothbore.

Longbow