Got the mold this week, washed with a soft brush and Dawn detergent. Read so much about how everything had to run hot with that mold but found that not to be the case. Maybe it's because I've cast zinc, but nothing seemed unusual to me. I'm using a hard antimonial lead and slugs dropped nicely, weighing +/- 495 grains. Filled bases with hot glue which seems to be preferred and used a hard wad column for all loads. Cut the shotcups off 2 different wads, the first a Trap Commander and used a 20 ga hard card in base over 42 grains Alliant Steel. All loads out of Ultra Slug Hunter. Those wads were a perfect fit but were totaly destroyed. Accuracy so-so at 60 yds. Today I fired 5 each of three different charges at 100 yds ranged off a bench, all components the same except powder. The wads today were some old Active wads I have as they are thicker material. No hard card in bottom and they were a nice fit with petals almost to top of slug. Here are the results in order fired.
40 grains blue dot, new 3" cheddite primed hull, 6-pt crimp. pretty soft shooting and hulls ejected briskly.
33 gr 800x, components same. More recoil and POI higher than blue dot. Hulls didn't eject but came out easily with fingers. One is high above the 3 group in blue tape. A nice geoup but for the one flyer left.
40 gr Alliant Steel, components same. More muzzle blast as I've come to expect with Steel recoil similar to 800x charge. I expected better with this load.
The petals were ripped off the bases of the wads with all charges as I expected with thin shotgun hulls, but the bases themselves looked good. No imprints of slugs or blowouts. Recovere 5 slugs from hard clay bank and they were compressed lengthwise by about a third. No expansion to speak of with this hard lead and hot glue was still in cavity of all but one.
As usual I've not learned enough. They seem to like the higher velocity of the 800x which I guesstimate in the neighborhood of 1500fps, as this scope is zeroed for my Zlug load. I'd like to find a thicker petal wad but don't think I will. Maybe dead soft lead would help bit I have none at the moment. The mold itself is great, just really heavy and slugs dropped like a dream.
The Lyman book loads for these things seem really hot to me, all the way up to 49 gr
Blue dot. I'll try a few more grns of blue dot and some othe wad combos as this progresses. Hope this helps and I'm open to suggestions to tighten this up.