Modified Lee 7/8 oz. Slug Mould ~ Brenneke'ized!

[tomme boy]

Randy if that is all yours is you have a tight one! But then again you are a guy and live in Cali! LOL!!!!!

[W.R.Buchanan]

Still tight over here!

Randy

[longbow]

Okay then... it's been a while!

I finally got to the range with some more Brenneke'ized Lee slugs and some Moose Minie clones. I'll report both here then see if I can find my Moose Minie clone thread... at least I think I started one!

I'll recap a bit on both the Lee Brenneke'ized slugs and the Moose Minie slugs.

Brenneke'ized Slugs

If you look back to the first post you will see the 7/8 oz. Lee slug cast from a mould that I modified the core pin for to create a post with screw hole for attaching tailwads. I wanted a post so I could either run a screw in part way then cast on a tailwad or screw on a wad Brenneke style from behind. I have modified both Lee 1 oz. and 7/8 oz. moulds. Weight increased by about 1/8 oz. or a little more. Don't have it handy and I'm typing so... I'll check later.

Initially I just added the post then had to chuck the slugs in my lathe to drill them. That was a pain so I added a pin to leave the screw hole. That works great!

So, I started with dense felt wads using the felt that goes under chair legs or appliances. That's the best I could find locally. Ideally Durofelt is the way to go. They have a felt used for shotgun wads. Anyway, I used the available felt and as usual had the problems with consistency... or lack of consistency, The felt squirms a bit when punched so I didn't get real clean cylindrical wads. I also didn't have a source of fairly thick softish plastic/rubber for washers so wound up using thin polyethylene from a kid's snow slider/Magic Blanket. It is a bit too thin so wrinkles easily.

So, my initial Brenneke'izing of both Lee slugs and full bore slugs suffered from less than perfect tailwads. Accuracy was okay but not great.

Back to the drawing board! Hot melt glue has been my go to material for tailwads and when good tailwads turn out accuracy from attached wad slugs can be quite good but it is difficult to get good and consistent tailwads without bubbles or shrinkage... this is not injection moulding! It is poor man's injection moulding.

I recently came up with an idea I have used for both cast on and screw on tailwads using the hot melt glue that has worked out quite well, make them overlength so bubbles rise into the waste area and shrinkage is in the waste area then cut it off. That seems to be resulting in much more consistent tailwads.

For this trip I had both screw on glue wads and cast on glue wads but unfortunately I didn't record info as well as I should have.

All shooting was done at 25 yards. Groups didn't start out as well as hoped so I stuck to close range.

Group #1



Without the one low shot it isn't horrible!

Group #2



I am going to largely blame myself here. I don't like the rear sight and have a bit of trouble with the bead. I have to open the rear sight some more so I can see the bead better. I think I held in two different spots for elevation. If the 3 high shots were lower that would be a good group but was it me or the slugs? I'll load more like this and try again.

Group #3



Not quite sure what happened here! I would swear I shot 6 shots and have 5 empty hulls but...? It appears to be just 4 hits,. I can't imagine one slug veered off that far at 25 yards.

Those black diamonds are 4".

So, not stellar accuracy by any means but I learned some things:

- The screw on pre-cast glue wads are easier and better I think
- Recovered slugs appeared to expand a bit at the bottom of the skirt and wad petals were damaged (see below)
- Shooting 25 rounds off the bench is unpleasant! Well, I knew that but it was confirmed yesterday. I shot 10 Moose Minies first which was a mistake but then I thought they would shoot better.
- Vettepilot sent me a link to a guy on Youtube modifying Lee slugs by casting tailwads on them but using melted recovered plastic wads! Maxx Bear on Youtube. Great idea I have to try! The glue is difficult to handle and guess what... when it's hot it sticks to everything! And it can't be used for bore size slugs unless paper patched or...? Re-using plastic wads is brilliant! I'll try that in my wad forms.

Moose Minie Clones

I saw a video on Taofledermaus where they shot the Lyman .69 Minie at 740 grs. and also a .69 cal. Moose Minie which appears to be modeled after a .58 Lyman target Minie and weighs 535 grs. IIRC which is a much more reasonable weight. These Minies both cast about 0.685" so fit into standard shotcups. Had I not seen it I wouldn't believe it but both Minies stabilized perfectly from smoothbore shotguns. Both gave good accuracy as well.

So, I decided to modify one of my moulds to make a Moose Minie clone but no lube grooves. I guess I set my core pin wrong because they came out at 494 grs. instead of 535 grs. but I decided to use them anyway. I also made the mould a bit oversize but they fit perfectly in Claybuster 1 oz. wads (Winchester clone). Having read the Ranch Dog write up on removing cushion leg and using the slug in just the cup and on hard card wads I decided to try that.

The Minie's were filled with hot melt glue as well to prevent HB collapse.

All shooting was done with my Mossberg Slugster smoothbore 12 ga. with open sights and at 25 yards... well after the first shot at 50 yards the rest were taken at 25 yards.

I usually shoot at 50 yards and pretty much always hit the target... somewhere and I am used to getting acceptable groups most of the time but this time the first shot missed a 2' x 3' target! To be fair it was only about 4" off the side of the paper so "only" 1 1/2' from the bullseye!

I decided 25 yards might be a better range! So I shot 9 more rounds at 25 yards and got a 13" group. Not what I expected! Holes were clean and round but really far apart! I won't both posting the target!

Recovered slugs



Left to right:

- 1 oz. Lee slug with screw on tailwad
- 1 oz. Lee slug with cast on tailwad
- 1 oz. Lee slug with screw on felt and polyethylene tailwad from my last outing many months ago
- Moose Minie clone with glue plug
- Moose Minie clone more or less in one piece
- Screw on glue wad that obviously didn't stay screwed on

Recovered Wads



Left to right:

- Winchester yellow 1 1/8 oz. wads with cushion leg and without
- Pacific Verlite wads without cushion leg
- Claybuster 1 oz. wad without cushion leg (used for Moose Minie)

Note that the petals on the Winchester and pacific Verelite wads are clipped off at the height of the glue tailwad. Like I said, it appears that the skirt is flairing a bit and pinching the wad petals.

I should also mention that these Lee slugs were sized to 0.672" to remove the taper then cloth patched up to fit wad/bore using 0.011" cotton shirt. The wads I have do not have much taper to the petals so I wanted cylindrical slugs.

The short story is that the Moose Minie appears to be a bust at least in this test. I think I'll stick to the modified and Brenneke'ized Lee slugs and do some more testing.

The thread started out about Lee 7/8 oz. slugs but I didn't shoot any yesterday. I will next time. I will likely revisit things and make some adjustments to to slugs and loading procedures too... and record info better!

In the past I got better accuracy from Lee slugs with added tailwads than without. This time I am not so sure! I do think that adding a tailwad is the way to go so will carry on for now. I want to get as good accuracy from these Lee slugs as I get with round ball loads out to 50 yards. If I can do that they should give better longer range accuracy than round balls. I am still on my quest for 4" 100 yard groups with smoothbore... okay, I'd accept 6" 100 yard groups with smoothbore. Maybe one day!

Longbow

[Blood Trail]

Okay then... it's been a while!

I finally got to the range with some more Brenneke'ized Lee slugs and some Moose Minie clones. I'll report both here then see if I can find my Moose Minie clone thread... at least I think I started one!

I'll recap a bit on both the Lee Brenneke'ized slugs and the Moose Minie slugs.

Brenneke'ized Slugs

If you look back to the first post you will see the 7/8 oz. Lee slug cast from a mould that I modified the core pin for to create a post with screw hole for attaching tailwads. I wanted a post so I could either run a screw in part way then cast on a tailwad or screw on a wad Brenneke style from behind. I have modified both Lee 1 oz. and 7/8 oz. moulds. Weight increased by about 1/8 oz. or a little more. Don't have it handy and I'm typing so... I'll check later.

Initially I just added the post then had to chuck the slugs in my lathe to drill them. That was a pain so I added a pin to leave the screw hole. That works great!

So, I started with dense felt wads using the felt that goes under chair legs or appliances. That's the best I could find locally. Ideally Durofelt is the way to go. They have a felt used for shotgun wads. Anyway, I used the available felt and as usual had the problems with consistency... or lack of consistency, The felt squirms a bit when punched so I didn't get real clean cylindrical wads. I also didn't have a source of fairly thick softish plastic/rubber for washers so wound up using thin polyethylene from a kid's snow slider/Magic Blanket. It is a bit too thin so wrinkles easily.

So, my initial Brenneke'izing of both Lee slugs and full bore slugs suffered from less than perfect tailwads. Accuracy was okay but not great.

Back to the drawing board! Hot melt glue has been my go to material for tailwads and when good tailwads turn out accuracy from attached wad slugs can be quite good but it is difficult to get good and consistent tailwads without bubbles or shrinkage... this is not injection moulding! It is poor man's injection moulding.

I recently came up with an idea I have used for both cast on and screw on tailwads using the hot melt glue that has worked out quite well, make them overlength so bubbles rise into the waste area and shrinkage is in the waste area then cut it off. That seems to be resulting in much more consistent tailwads.

For this trip I had both screw on glue wads and cast on glue wads but unfortunately I didn't record info as well as I should have.

All shooting was done at 25 yards. Groups didn't start out as well as hoped so I stuck to close range.

Group #1



Without the one low shot it isn't horrible!

Group #2



I am going to largely blame myself here. I don't like the rear sight and have a bit of trouble with the bead. I have to open the rear sight some more so I can see the bead better. I think I held in two different spots for elevation. If the 3 high shots were lower that would be a good group but was it me or the slugs? I'll load more like this and try again.

Group #3



Not quite sure what happened here! I would swear I shot 6 shots and have 5 empty hulls but...? It appears to be just 4 hits,. I can't imagine one slug veered off that far at 25 yards.

Those black diamonds are 4".

So, not stellar accuracy by any means but I learned some things:

- The screw on pre-cast glue wads are easier and better I think
- Recovered slugs appeared to expand a bit at the bottom of the skirt and wad petals were damaged (see below)
- Shooting 25 rounds off the bench is unpleasant! Well, I knew that but it was confirmed yesterday. I shot 10 Moose Minies first which was a mistake but then I thought they would shoot better.
- Vettepilot sent me a link to a guy on Youtube modifying Lee slugs by casting tailwads on them but using melted recovered plastic wads! Maxx Bear on Youtube. Great idea I have to try! The glue is difficult to handle and guess what... when it's hot it sticks to everything! And it can't be used for bore size slugs unless paper patched or...? Re-using plastic wads is brilliant! I'll try that in my wad forms.

Moose Minie Clones

I saw a video on Taofledermaus where they shot the Lyman .69 Minie at 740 grs. and also a .69 cal. Moose Minie which appears to be modeled after a .58 Lyman target Minie and weighs 535 grs. IIRC which is a much more reasonable weight. These Minies both cast about 0.685" so fit into standard shotcups. Had I not seen it I wouldn't believe it but both Minies stabilized perfectly from smoothbore shotguns. Both gave good accuracy as well.

So, I decided to modify one of my moulds to make a Moose Minie clone but no lube grooves. I guess I set my core pin wrong because they came out at 494 grs. instead of 535 grs. but I decided to use them anyway. I also made the mould a bit oversize but they fit perfectly in Claybuster 1 oz. wads (Winchester clone). Having read the Ranch Dog write up on removing cushion leg and using the slug in just the cup and on hard card wads I decided to try that.

The Minie's were filled with hot melt glue as well to prevent HB collapse.

All shooting was done with my Mossberg Slugster smoothbore 12 ga. with open sights and at 25 yards... well after the first shot at 50 yards the rest were taken at 25 yards.

I usually shoot at 50 yards and pretty much always hit the target... somewhere and I am used to getting acceptable groups most of the time but this time the first shot missed a 2' x 3' target! To be fair it was only about 4" off the side of the paper so "only" 1 1/2' from the bullseye!

I decided 25 yards might be a better range! So I shot 9 more rounds at 25 yards and got a 13" group. Not what I expected! Holes were clean and round but really far apart! I won't both posting the target!

Recovered slugs



Left to right:

- 1 oz. Lee slug with screw on tailwad
- 1 oz. Lee slug with cast on tailwad
- 1 oz. Lee slug with screw on felt and polyethylene tailwad from my last outing many months ago
- Moose Minie clone with glue plug
- Moose Minie clone more or less in one piece
- Screw on glue wad that obviously didn't stay screwed on

Recovered Wads



Left to right:

- Winchester yellow 1 1/8 oz. wads with cushion leg and without
- Pacific Verlite wads without cushion leg
- Claybuster 1 oz. wad without cushion leg (used for Moose Minie)

Note that the petals on the Winchester and pacific Verelite wads are clipped off at the height of the glue tailwad. Like I said, it appears that the skirt is flairing a bit and pinching the wad petals.

I should also mention that these Lee slugs were sized to 0.672" to remove the taper then cloth patched up to fit wad/bore using 0.011" cotton shirt. The wads I have do not have much taper to the petals so I wanted cylindrical slugs.

The short story is that the Moose Minie appears to be a bust at least in this test. I think I'll stick to the modified and Brenneke'ized Lee slugs and do some more testing.

The thread started out about Lee 7/8 oz. slugs but I didn't shoot any yesterday. I will next time. I will likely revisit things and make some adjustments to to slugs and loading procedures too... and record info better!

In the past I got better accuracy from Lee slugs with added tailwads than without. This time I am not so sure! I do think that adding a tailwad is the way to go so will carry on for now. I want to get as good accuracy from these Lee slugs as I get with round ball loads out to 50 yards. If I can do that they should give better longer range accuracy than round balls. I am still on my quest for 4" 100 yard groups with smoothbore... okay, I'd accept 6" 100 yard groups with smoothbore. Maybe one day!

Longbow

Great report, LB!

Where these fold or roll crimped?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[longbow]

I wish results had been better and my pics aren't so great but hey... I'm an amateur! But thanks!

These were fold crimps for all. I usually roll crimp but I think I decided to fold crimp because Ranch Dog found better results using fold crimps.

I should probably expand on why I did some of the things I did but the story gets really long... yeah my posts tend to be long anyway but I mean really long! As briefly as I can...

I bought the Lee moulds several years ago to try and got reasonable accuracy out to 50 yards first time out with the 1 oz. slugs. Reasonable being 6" +/- groups. Not as good as my round ball groups but not horrible and way better than the Lyman Foster ever did. That was a box stock as cast Lee 1 oz. slug in a wad.

I decided to try adding a tailwad so bored some CPVC pipe to suit the nose of the Lee slugs but as you know they are tapered so this results in two major issues for casting tailwads on:

- Since the tail of the skirt is smaller than the nose the slug can tilt in the form resulting in misalignment between the tailwad and slug axis

- The taper also results in a gap around the skirt so hot melt glue will flow in and make for an uneven leading edge on the tailwad

Based on some work I had done prior with cylindrical TC solid slugs in forms and cast on tailwads I decided to make a sizer to remove the taper from my Lee slugs. The 7/8 oz. mould has more taper than the 1 oz. slug with base at something like 0.662" IIRC. So I made a sizer to suit then pushed a slug through... it broke up! Too much sizing.

I don't recall exact details or sequence but in the end I made a sizer that takes the slugs to 0.672". That removes all taper from the 1 oz. slugs and almost all the taper from the 7/8 oz. slugs so then they will fit a form nicely and glue tailwads can be cast onto them quite neatly. That works. At 0.672" they are just the right size to fit into Winchester AA Red wads, a hair small for Pacific Verelite wads and quite small for Winchester yellow 1 1/8 oz. wads so they have to be patched up. I used cross strips of old cotton shirt at 0.011" thick. That has worked quite well in the past with the solid slugs.

These slugs were cast assembled and loaded quite a while ago and have been waiting for me to get them to the range! I have since come up with a better way of making tailwads using hot melt glue and possibly old melted shotcups thanks to Maxx Bear for the idea and thanks to Vettepilot for sending me the Youtube link!

Anyway, the improved method is to pre-cast glue (or maybe recast wads) into a form with a pin through the middle so I get a glue "log" with a hole all the way through. The logs are cast vertically so bubbles rise to the top... or near the top and shrinkage is from the top down. Let the glue cool then push out a log. Put the log in a jig and cut off the top with defects then slice the log into 3/8" or so disks. Use a #6 wood screw to screw the nice disk onto the post in the middle of the modified Lee mould. The tailwad is anchored to the slug with a screw, easy to put on and quicker to make than casting each one onto a slug in a form plus the tailwads have nice sharp clean edges instead of sometimes rounded, uneven or frizzy edges. This is what will be tested next time with unsized slugs.

I should also add that after more examination of recovered slugs from the Friday outing it appears the glue tailwads did indeed push up into the cavity some causing the skirt to bulge out, I believe at 90° from the drive key rib. This bulge is what likely pinched petals damaging wad petals.

In retrospect I am thinking I should follow in Ranch Dog's footsteps with his solution to the Lee slug accuracy issues as he got rather impressive accuracy in the end. if you haven't read it, here are a couple of links:

https://castboolits.gunloads.com/sho...-Tail-Feathers
https://castboolits.gunloads.com/sho...-Tail-Feathers

Does the Lee slug need a tailwad or not? Apparently not for Ranch Dog! In my early tests accuracy seemed to improve noticeably with the addition of a tailwad, Brenneke like. I will certainly agree with Ranch Dog on his view of the cushion leg though.

So, next round of testing will be Lee 7/8 oz. Brenneke'ized slugs with hot melt glue tailwad screwed onto the slugs. No sizing!

I'll try to get better pics and organize my details better for the write up!

Why don't I just buy a Russian slug mould, cast and shoot you ask? Well, stubborn and not too bright is the answer! I wanted to get good consistent accuracy from Lee slugs so am still trying. If this doesn't do it then I just may buy a Russian slug mould!

Sorry, more info than you asked for BT but yes, fold crimps.

Longbow

[FullTang]

Interesting results, Longbow, and I share your disappointment. This seems like a worthy project, and I've done some of the same kind of experimentation, though with a slightly different focus. I suspect the Russian slugs will render all of this experimentation moot, and I have one on order right now, so we'll see. However, reading through your results, I did have 2 thoughts (at the risk of throwing more fuel on this particular fire!)

Idea #1 was to screw from the top down into a factory wad; the BP brush wads by Gualandi seem to be the best choice, but it also occurred to me that in this application a discarding-petal wad like the PT wads or the Trap Commander would solve 2 problems at once---bringing the diameter up to full bore and centering the slug almost perfectly. My experience with PT wads is that they crush down hard and straight---they're not springy like most others, so they're less likely to form a crooked tail wad. More like a hard ball of plastic, which should also hold a screw better. Could you modify any of your slugs for this? I'm sure you've tried something along these lines, but it seems the choice of wad is critical, and you may not have tried the PT wads (I got a whole case of PT1215s that I use for everything, so that's why I though of this!)

Idea #2 for creating a ride-along tail with a factory wad is to skip the screw entirely and set the Lee slug in wax (or hot melt glue, or resin of your choice) inside a factory wad, but use an un-slit wad like the C-LBC or CSD078; this way, the wad will ride along all the way to the target. These wads are thicker than most, so diameter would be an issue, but you've already figured out how to size the slugs down, so I think you're all set to try this. I've made wax slugs with un-slit C-LBC wads and shot them out of a rifled barrel with good accuracy to 100 meters. They're not as accurate from a smooth bore, but still way better than conventional wax slugs at 50 yards.

I have seen experiments on YouTube where people set Lee slugs in wax in a regular wads, in hopes of improving accuracy, but that doesn't seem to work (wad discards erratically, wax sticks randomly, etc.)

[longbow]

FullTang:

You bring up some good questions and ideas.

To start, for a guy who gets hung up on details I left quite a few out here!

I should fill out a standard form with all the gun and shooting details when I do this so I'll do that belatedly then carry on.

Gun ~ Mossberg Slugster smoothbore 12 ga. with open rifle sights
Hull ~ Federal Field Hull with paper basewad, 2 3/4"
Slug(s) ~ for this report Lee 1 oz. Drive Key slug modified with center post and screw hole and sized to 0.672"; modified slug with attached hot melt glue wad ~ 3/8" long, some cast on and some screw on (weight of slug without wad = 455 grs.); and one very bad group of Moose Minie clones loaded into Claybuster clones of Winchester 1 oz. wads; slugs with attached hot melt glue wads are lightly tumbled in talcum powder so the glue doesn't stick to patching or wad petals; completed slugs are cloth patched back up to good fit to wad/bore using cotton cross strip patches of appropriate thickness (in this case 0.011")
Wad ~ Some Winchester yellow 1 1/8 oz., some Winchester yellow 1 1/8 oz. with cushion leg cut off and hard card wad column with plastic gas seal, some Pacific Verelite with cushion leg cut off and on hard card wad column with plastic gas seal; yes this is confusing and I didn't keep track as well as I should have and since these were loaded months ago I have forgotten some of those details. I had intended to load and shoot but... The moral here is write it all down and keep good records! Do as I say, not as I do!
Powder ~ Blue Dot and SR4756 as marked on targets
Crimp ~ fold crimp for all loads
Range ~ all Lee slugs shot at 25 meters (not yards, meters). Not much difference at 25 but still, I should get the details right!

The original purpose was to test modified Lee 7/8 oz. slugs with attached wads. Due to issues at the time casting wads onto the tapered slugs I sized to remove taper. Since this had worked well with solid slugs in the past I figured it would with the modified Lee slugs. In the meantime I made the same mod to my 1 oz. mould and wound up with 1 oz. slugs to test. I am, sure I have some loaded 7/8 oz. slugs in my reloading room but it was the 1 oz. slugs that got taken to the range this time.

Since I made the mould mod I have come up with a better way of making wads for attchment by screw. Quite Benneke like.

I should also clarify that these are wad slugs, not patched to full bore but patched to fit inside a wad so petals/slug/bore fit is good. Original intent was to use the as cast O.D. in a wad with no patching, just the addition of the tailwad.

I have a love/hate relationship with wad slugs/wads for slugs. I like that they are self contained and easy to load, I hate that the wad petals vary so much in thickness so making some wads suitable and some not for any given slug and that petal thickness is not necessarily consistent. This is one reason I had decided to use undersize slugs then patch to suit depending on wad and gun. That is extra work and relegates loads for specific guns... at least to a certain extent.

A good full bore design should fit the largest standard bore and be designed to swage to suit anything smaller... in my opinion. That should eliminate the wad issue. Having said that, we have several people here who have succeeded rather well using both the Lyman sabot slug and Lee slugs in wads ~ notably Hogtamer with Lyman sabot slugs and Ranch Dog with Lee slugs. So it can be done but with specific load components and details.

In my defense, I have had a few slugs cast in home made moulds that have performed very well, both full bore and wad slugs but I was wanting to succeed with Lee slugs so have been tinkering to get that to happen. I am returning to basics with the new wad style and unsized 7/8 oz. Lee slugs in wads for the next test so will be back on track with the original post and title. If successful or reasonably so I will will also do a round of testing with the 1 oz. slug modified in the same way so, Brenneke'ized Lee 7/8 oz. and 1 oz. slugs with attached wads.

On that note, I have also tried felt wads screwed on and again consistency in wads has eluded me. The felt is "squishy" when punching and tends to squirm in different directions as it is punched making for bulged or sloped outer diameter. My suspicion is that Brenneke factory attaches oversize felt wads and washers then runs a rotating cutter over the complete slug to trim the excess wad off to get consistent and centered tailwads. That is my speculation based on trying all sorts of ways to get nice, clean, cylindrical punched tailwads that have not been as precise as I want or think the slugs need. The cast in form tailwads are very nice so that is what I will use.

I think that covers the missing details.

Now for FullTang's questions and comments:

Idea #1:

-Screw from the nose down into a plastic cushion leg brush wad:

- Yes, I have thought of this one but not really suitable for wad slugs unless I could use a 16 or 20 ga. brush wad then put the whole works into a 12 ga. deep wad. I think this is better suited to a full bore slug and I do plan to try it. To note, I have tried several different attached wad materials and is they are squishy and srewed on Brenneke style from the back they tend to crush and not return properly... in my experience anyway. The hot melt glue wads seem to work very well this way.
- This is in my plans to try with full bore slug. It works well for the Russian slugs so why not?
- I have not tried PT wads. One of the issues I have is that there is little if any shotshell reloading components available locallly so I have to order in and have been reluctant to just randomly order to see if something fits or works or not. Trying to make do with what I can get or use already for shot loads. Not the smartest approach I guess.

Idea #2:

- Using a slug in wad as non-discarding sabot slug: Yes, this actually works! Greg Sappington asked me to make him a mould many years ago with that in mind and diameter to suit CSD steel shot wads unslit. The a couple of nitro card wads are dropped into the cup then the slug pushed in and it is a press fit if right diameter. Cup may have to be trimmed so suit slug length. 0.662" RB's fit perfectly this way and I have made short TC solid slugs with full bore band at the nose and CSD cup size shank so kinda like a Slug "R Us HammerHead slug. They work but Suffer from wad distortion. I think the shortest CSD cushion leg is the way to go and I will try some more of these eventually but this is a Lee slug thread so... Lee slugs are too big to fit these CSD wads and in my experience ACWW slugs cannot be sized down that far. Soft lead Lee slugs likely can be and that should work but a 0.662" RB works so... why not? I have a couple of those made up so will post a pic.
- There may be other wads available with thick petals and unslit but the CSD wads do work. As Greg pointed out though they tend to have very uneven petal thickness so are not a good choice for rifled guns which was his goal. They do seem to work okay for smoothbore in the very limited tests I did with CSD wads he sent me.
- I am not sure if there are standard trap wads available unslit and in a suitable petal thickness to hold Lee slugs but if there are and they have a "good" cushion leg that is an idea worth trying

I will carry on with the Brenneke'ized Lee slug test for 7/8 oz. shortly I hope and with better detail and record keeping. I'll post results here, good or bad, and possibly include results for Lee 1 oz. slugs as well.

Sorry for piecemeal report with missing details, I will try to better next time!

Longbow

Link to new thread "Slugs I've Made and Tried": https://castboolits.gunloads.com/sho...75#post5307175

[Petander]

Such a superb thread.

[W.R.Buchanan]

OK; let me add my .02 here as far as production goes. On my Slugs with screw on wads (BW12) I put the wads in a collet on my lathe and do a 1/16" pilot hole Dead Center. Then before removing the wad from the collet I use a very sharp cutter to trim the Front End Gas Seal down to where it is flush with the center portion of the wad. This insures that the wad will be concentric to the hole in the slug and not get pushed off to one side by the gas seal, which is why I trimmed it in the first place. All the ones I did before trimming that gas seal ended up sliding off center as the screw was tightened. Also knowing when to stop tightening the screw is another point that must be mastered.

It should also be noted that the trailing edge of the wad/gas seal is the steering end just like on a Cast Boolit. So concentricity matters, and if your wad isn't screwed on right, the slug won't fly strait,,, Period.

In the pics below the center slug is the one I'm looking at right now, and you can see with the top gas seal trimmed down the slug is centered nicely on the wad.

This slug would be "drag stabilized" from a smoothbore, and need to be PC'd so it doesn't lead the bore, Same for a Rifled Barrel but Spin Stabilized, so the concentricity will be of even greater importance.

The slug shown was cast from a Russian mould and the pin hole on the face of the slug was not round so I put all those slugs in the lathe and drilled those holes out for a #8 screw. They are now concentric.

End of .02

Randy

[longbow]

I made it to the range again! Yay! Its been a long time with too little shooting!

Results were better but not as good as I had hoped.

This time, staying on topic, I shot only 7/8 oz. Lee slugs... "box stock" original Lee 7/8 oz. slugs and Brenneke'ized 7/8 oz. Lee slugs which actually weigh 470 grs. assembled.

The modifications to the core pin to add the screw post takes the cast slug weight up to 420 grs., then there is attached wad weight and screw weight to add to that.

So, as a recap the modified slug looks like this:



With screw on hot melt glue tailwad it looks like this:



The hot melt glue is poured into a form lined with parchment paper and with a pin through the middle to leave a screw hole. After cooling the glue "logs" are cut to length in a jig which leaves pretty nice faces and edges. In this case the glue tailwads are 0.4" long. I was shooting for 3/8" but overshot.

These were tumbled in baby powder to keep them from sticking to anything then loaded into 3 different shotcups (4 styles):

- WinAA12F114 shotcups complete
- Claybuster Win. 7/8 oz. clone complete
- WinAA12F114 cup only with cushion cut off
- Pacific Verelite cup only with cushion cut off

5 groups were shot using four different loadings:

- control group of box stock Lee 7/8 oz. slugs loaded into Claybuster 7/8 oz. Win. clone wads
- Brenneke'ized Lee slugs loaded into whole WinAA12F114 wads
- Brenneke'ized Lee slugs loaded into WinAA12F114 shotcup only with cushion leg cut off over nitro card wad and 1/2" fiber wad
- Brenneke'ized Lee slugs loaded into Pacific Verelite shotcup only with cushion leg cut off over WinAA Red gas seal cut off and 1/2" fiber wad

I decided to follow in Ranch Dog's footsteps (more or less) by eliminating the cushion leg for some of these to see how that worked. I am in total agreement with Ranch Dog and what Randy says above... the cushion leg/gas seal is the last thing to leave the muzzle so if it is damaged, tilted, bent, uneven in any way, that will affect the accuracy of the slug leaving. And of course if the attached wad is tilted or not dead center accuracy will suffer.

What I didn't think of is that I have done this once before with poor results. That is using nitro card wad instead of plastic gas seal. Recovered wads show why. Yes, I can be a slow learner at times! I should have remembered but didn't so repeated a mistake. Ranch Dog uses 3" hulls and quite a long stack of hard card wads and achieved excellent results using Lee 1 oz. slugs that way. I suspect that 1 nitro card wad and a fiber wad just isn't enough to stop gas blow by. Recovered wad pic here:



From bottom to top:

- Claybuster 7/8 oz. wad looking not bad all about the same
- Pacific Verelite cups looking not bad (Win AA gas seal used under these), all recovered looked very good
- Win AA12F114 cups kinda burned and beat up (these were loaded over nitro card and fiber wad), I recovered 6 of 10 and all were damaged
- WinAA12F114 wads looking quite good

Results this time were better than last time but not what I would call stellar... or even good. But again, some lessons learned or some relearned! Note that the Winchester wads are burned when no plastic gas seal was used but Pacific Verelite wads look great when the only change was to replace the nitro card wad with a plastic gas seal. I was confident the card wad column was going to work so loaded 10 of those for groups 3 & 4.

I limited shooting to 25 yards due to dismal results last time. I figured if I got one hole groups at 25 yards that would be a good thing then I could move to 50 yards. Not there yet with these!

I should add that I can only get Federal 209A primers right now and so dropped powder charges some to compensate for the hot primer. Also of concern were solid wad columns that I believe can result in pressure spikes due to less crush (smaller volume) at ignition compared to cushion leg wads. I will say that last outing left me rather sore! Recoil was brutal with Blue Dot loads. This time I used Unique at guesstimated appropriate charges after cross referencing. Recoil was much more tolerable this time and good ignition with Unique even using the box stock 7/8 oz. slug.

The Claybuster wads give a somewhat loose fit to bore.

The WinAA12F114 wads are a good push fit.

The Pacific Verelite wads are a snug fit.

So, on to targets! The black diamond is 4" on a side.











I think all the info you need is on the targets.

Surprisingly the box stock Lee slugs in group #1 shot the best! Better than I have seen before. Not sure if groups would hold up at 50 yards but if so then a 5"group at 50 yards wouldn't be bad. I guess I will have to test that out too!

At this point I am thinking that the hard card wad column with a bore diameter Foster, like a scaled up Lee slug, might be a better option than slug in shotcup on hard card wad column or complete wad with cushion leg. I can convert my Nessler Balle mould to do that so just may give it a go if the next round of Brenneke'ized Lee slugs don't dazzle me. Vettepilot has commented on wanting a bore diameter Lee slug as well.

Having said that, my goal was to try to improve Lee slug performance and my early Brenneke'izing with cast on tailwads seemed to accomplish that. This go around hasn't been so good thus far! I'll make some more Brenneke'ized Lee slugs to try one more time but If I don't see improvement, I think it is time to move on! It seems the Russians have been working hard and producing some very nice looking and performing slugs so it may be time to pick a Russian mould. One more round with modified Lee slugs first though!

Something else I should add here is that in the past I have used my old single shot Cooey with cylinder bore and rifle sights for slug testing. The last trip and this trip I used my Mossberg Slugster which is also cylinder bore and has rifle sights. I have shimmed the barrel to receiver fit with a brass shim shown earlier in the thread. I also put in an MCarbo trigger spring set because the trigger was horribly heavy when I got the gun. The trigger is much nicer now. I really should take both guns to the range for comparison as the Cooey has been very consistent and accurate in past slug testing. It might not make any difference but I should confirm results by using the old benchmark testing gun.

I think that covers the outing.

At least one more round to come. If similar results I'll call it quits. If I see improvement worth pursuing I will.

Longbow

[Petander]

Oh my great report,Longbow.

How to center the attached wad...? I'm on that important mission,too.

[Vettepilot]

Wow! Truly excellent work, posting, write-up, and all. Nice!! You've surely put a ton of work into all this.

Just one comment I guess... it seems that it rarely works to use two gas seals if I read right and you sometimes do that. Many think of it as "double insurance", but most often one seal, (or nitro card), bashes up into the next, damages it, and both end up failing. Particular to hard, nitro over powder wads, I recently watched a video whereby the creator had a method that might be worth trying. He said he got better consistency and reliable seal using an 11 (eleven) gauge overshot card first, and then a standard, 12 gauge nitro card. One thing about nitro cards though; I think if they can at all push up into hollow base slugs, they deform and lose seal. Anyway, Circlefly is a great source for any/all cards.

Lastly, just an idea about making your felt tails. If you are just punching them out, you might try sharpening a punch really well, and use it in a drill press, spinning. Back the affair with end grain wood to protect the sharp edge of the punch.

Another idea there might be to soak the felt with wax to make it more firm for easier, more precise cutting. This would also help lube the bore. I can highly recommend Durofelt. She's a nice gal...

Keep up the great work!

Vettepilot

[longbow]

Vettepilot:

No, only one gas seal. Any shotcups I used along with over powder nitro card wad were just shotcups with no cushion leg or gas seal. It was either plastic gas seal or nitro card wad over powder and only fiber wad above.

I will say that I would have preferred to use all hard card wad column but I am out of 1/2" hard card wads so went with a nitro card wad over powder then fiber wad and since the tailwads are solid I didn't use a 16 ga. nitro card wad under any Nrenneke'ized slugs.

These were all hot melt glue tailwads, no felt this time.

I haven't tried the drill press idea for felt wads but may alter my punch or make a new one so I can try that. Good idea with the wax! I tried soaking the felt in Titebond II glue but that didn't work worth a poop! Wax or thick lube might be a good idea to stop squirming. I like the idea of punching out tailwads rather than casting. That I will try.

Also, still have to get around to trying the melted wads per Maxx Bear. If I am going to use a cast tailwad that seems like a better material than the glue mostly due to handling. The glue is actually very tough and light and if tumbled in baby powder nothing sticks to it. I should have mentioned that in my report. I did mention tumbling in baby powder but not wad release. All indications are that wads release quickly. I haven't seen a sticker yet so I can't blame large groups on that. The shotcups still have baby powder in them when recovered.

Another thjing I didn't mention in this last report though I didn't recover any slugs this time... too much snow and too little time, last outing I did recover slugs and some of the Lee slugs showed an odd expansion that appears to be at 90° to the drive key. This would be from the tailwad pushing up into the cavity a bit. There was no obvious damage to the tailwad but some shotcups showed a cut at that level. So, I may fill the cavities for next range trip and testing to prevent any of that... that takes me back to cast on tailwads which obviously fill the cavity. I have not noticed this issue with Lee slugs and cast on tailwads.

Still a few things to check but I am thinking more and more of the bore diameter "Lee" slug you talked about. I have modeled it and will proceed with making a new core pin for my Nessler Balle mould.

If that works then I will likely abandon the Lee slug developments. If not then I am looking hard at the Russian moulds. Time will tell!

Longbow

[Vettepilot]

You would really like any one of those Russian slugs Longbow. Santa really needs to bring you one! Or two!

I got lucky this year. Santa brought me a Lyman 8 turret press, and an RCBS Chargemaster Lite electronic powder dispenser. (Yeah, I peeked...)

Hey, ya only live once, dammit, and in the end, when it's all over, you'll only regret the things you didn't do...

Vettepilot

[Petander]

Hey, ya only live once, dammit, and in the end, when it's all over, you'll only regret the things you didn't do...

Vettepilot

Wise words. Super thread.

[longbow]

Yes Petander, I believe you have said much the same to me!

I have been window shopping but not buying for a long time. Hard habit to break when I am used to making do with what I have.

However... I'm working on it!

Longbow

[Cap'n Morgan]

Longbow, just for the fun of it; try gluing a few of the slugs into the Verlite wads to make a "solid" full bore slug.

Something tells me the separation of slug and wad are causing trouble when shot through a smooth bore. Both target #3 and 4 have three slugs close together with two fliers opening up the group. It could be a fluke, but it's interesting that the Win AA wads (with significant flared petals) gave good results with the original Lee slug. In my humble opinion, the wad should either separate immediately or never!

[Petander]

Yes Petander, I believe you have said much the same to me!



Longbow

I hope I haven't been pushing, that's just the way I do things so I tend to mention it often. I do things NOW. I Can't wait for tomorrow because I just can't take much about tomorrow for granted.

Many of my friends have laughed at me and my logic for decades. Life can be planned but the plans seldom work out.

Now what was the topic again? Ahh, smoothbore!

With very limited experience I prefer fullbore slugs now. To eliminate shotcup petals.

Off to the range!

[longbow]

With very limited experience I prefer fullbore slugs now. To eliminate shotcup petals.

I am in agreement here! Loading slugs into trap wads is convenient and minimizes components and effort but the wad is both a variable and weak link.

I guess if you have a good selection of different brands and style of readily available wads and find one that works well for you then stick with that you should get repeatable results.

Full bore slugs/balls require custom wad columns but eliminate the cushion leg and petal thickness variables plus allow for easy wad column height adjustments for crimp height.

I think more advantages than disadvantages to full bore slugs/balls.

Having said that, I plan on wringing out the 7/8 oz. Lee slugs both stock and modified as best as I can to complete this test.

Petander... I need a push!

Enjoy your range day! I'll watch for your report.

Longbow

[Petander]

You would really like any one of those Russian slugs Longbow. Santa really needs to bring you one! Or two!

I got lucky this year. Santa brought me a Lyman 8 turret press, and an RCBS Chargemaster Lite electronic powder dispenser. (Yeah, I peeked...)

Hey, ya only live once, dammit, and in the end, when it's all over, you'll only regret the things you didn't do...

Vettepilot

No kidding?