roll crimp the lyman pellet slug

[Mr Peabody]

I haven't seen any loading information using a roll crimp on the Lyman 525gr 12ga slug. Has anyone here crimped it that way?

[garrisonjoe]

No. But I've got a nice load with that Lyman slug in a ClayBusters SW-250 wad, 40 to 43 grains Blue Dot, in a Federal plastic-base-wad cheap hull.
Good luck, garrisonjoe

[centershot]

Forty to forty-three grains of Blue Dot ........Wow! I can feel that from here!

[Mr Peabody]

Best load yet with this slug was yesterday. 40grs Blue Dot, CB-WA-12 wad and Federal one piece hulls. 3 shots touching at 50 yards, through a Carlsons rifled choke tube. I'm just curious about roll crimping them.

[Hogtamer]

Info with the slug specifically says "fold crimp only" That does nothing to dissuade those who believe roll crimping is the answer to everything. Nice results by the way!

[SuperBlazingSabots]

Greetings Peabody, you got a winner load, don't look elsewhere, if you want to try then try two with roll crimp and shoot and see.

They all have .125 nitro cards below the slug in wad of 16 ga or 20 ga based on the wad inner diameter to raise the slug like in the picture..

Best regards,
Ajay K. Madan
Super Blazing Sabots

[toallmy]

I load the MP equivalent slug both ways , but with a much lighter powder charge ... 25 gr of Herco beats me up enough . I have found a lot more joy in shooting more slugs with less kick - since taking the scope off my shotguns and shooting for the fun of it .

[W.R.Buchanan]

I have loaded many of these in Federal Blue Hulls and roll crimped them. 20 gr of Green Dot and a Claybuster Blue Wad with .125 card under the slug. Out of a smooth bore they are all over the place with either a fold or roll crimp, basically useless beyond 35 yards. Wanting to try some from the A5 with the Hastings Rifled Barrel as is it my most accurate shotgun.

The round on the left is a Roll Crimped Lyman Slug, the right is a 1 oz. Lee Slug with a Roll Crimp which works just fine out of a smooth bore. With 20 gr of Green Dot they are both running in the 1200-1300 fps range which is more than enough for what I do with them.

I might add that these Blue Federal Low Recoil Slug Hulls reload better than any others I've tried. The Maroon Buckshot hulls are as good. I pick up everyone I find, and especially at a big shoot or my main source is Front Sight Shotgun Classes.

I have shown how I recondition these hulls in other threads and they are worth doing. You can see that the Roll Crimps are perfect, and were done with a BPI tool. This is mainly due to the hulls being Roll Crimped from the factory and brought back strait before reloading.

However I have yet to get anything that I would call Accuracy from a Lyman Slug from a smooth bore. My thinking is that unless you can launch that slug perfectly square to the bore for every shot, any variation in that alignment will send it on its merry way to some other destination. Rifling should fix that?

I have yet to see any decent Pellet Gun with a smooth bore and this is nothing more than a 500 gr Airgun Pellet.

Randy.

[Mr Peabody]

Thank you all! I ran out of Blue Dot. I do have Unique and Herco, the Herco is a good one for me in the .45 Colt too

[44Blam]

Sooo... I have basically no idea of what I'm doing, but that slug is about the same weight as the shot I was shooting and it shot well.

My buddy said "you should make 1.75" slugs"... Well, I made 3 - haven't shot them yet...

They are that lyman slug with a cup where I cut the buffer off. They come out to just under 1 3/4". It's sitting on top of 27 grain of Herco.

[dsh1106]

Sooo... I have basically no idea of what I'm doing, but that slug is about the same weight as the shot I was shooting and it shot well.

My buddy said "you should make 1.75" slugs"... Well, I made 3 - haven't shot them yet...

They are that lyman slug with a cup where I cut the buffer off. They come out to just under 1 3/4". It's sitting on top of 27 grain of Herco.

I would be sending those off for pressure testing before I squeezed the trigger.

[garrisonjoe]

"That's a real good shoulder on a man who gets to the bottom of the Blue Dot bottle."

cut the buffer off.

Buffer is granular filler often used in buckshot and large bird shot loads to stabilize the balls/pellets during the trip through the barrel.

No, you apparently cut the cushion section and gas seal off the wad and used just the shot cup. That will not seal the combustion gases, and I'd expect lots of gas blow-by past the shot cup/slug.

It would be better to seek a very short cushion section wad (like the winchester, claybuster or downrange 12F114 style wad) and use the whole wad. You need a gas seal at the very least. And a little bit of cushion helps protect and support the gas seal so it does not distort. There's really nothing magical about a 1.75" shell length. If I needed to have room for a standard shotcup to hold the Lyman sabot slug without cutting the wad up, I would gladly settle for a 2 or 2.25" shell length.

And, unless you have a REAL good reason to roll crimp this slug, I would follow Lyman's STRONG recommendation to fold crimp over the slug, even if it means adjusting a loader to do so.

Some folks find better accuracy filling the bottom of the Lyman sabot slug with hot glue to make a flat base (and prevents the skirt from blowing apart as it leaves the barrel).

Ditto on having these "new innovations" pressure tested! In fact, the testing company may just turn down doing the test.

Good luck, garrisonjoe

[toallmy]

I have cut the cushion section off of clay buster wads , to just use the gas seal and shot cup in short loads but well below 27 Herco , in your picture it seems like you didn't use the gas seal .
Be safe

[Hogtamer]

You got insurance?

[44Blam]

I am curious - why would I get a pressure spike on that load?

I've been shooting #4 birdshot with the same wad/shells and the Lyman SS reloading book / Lee data corroborated 27 grain. And it's kind of a light load.

According to Lyman SS Reloading Handbook, my shell should be loaded with 35 grain of Herco... It seems like I am well under the suggesed load. I was actually concerned that the load was too light...

[Cap'n Morgan]

I am curious - why would I get a pressure spike on that load?

I've been shooting #4 birdshot with the same wad/shells and the Lyman SS reloading book / Lee data corroborated 27 grain. And it's kind of a light load.

According to Lyman SS Reloading Handbook, my shell should be loaded with 35 grain of Herco... It seems like I am well under the suggesed load. I was actually concerned that the load was too light...

The problem is that by shortening the wad, you're messing with the setting depth of the load and pressure is guaranteed to rise. Powders for shotshell loading are all on the fast side and very sensible to volume changes under the load. To give an exeampel I ran a 45 LC load through Quickload (think of it as a small slug load in a straight wall hull):

A 255 grains Lyman boolit over 8.5 grains Herco, seated to a depth of 0.30" will take up 50% of the volume in the case and give a pressure about 12.000 psi

By setting the boolit 0.24" deeper, the free volume in the case is reduced to 25% and the pressure will rise to 19.000 psi - well above the maximum for a 45 LC.

Going to extremes and setting the boolit directly on the powder will raise the pressure to about 28.000 psi - more than a doubling from the original load.

Be careful!

[44Blam]

The problem is that by shortening the wad, you're messing with the setting depth of the load and pressure is guaranteed to rise. Powders for shotshell loading are all on the fast side and very sensible to volume changes under the load. To give an exeampel I ran a 45 LC load through Quickload (think of it as a small slug load in a straight wall hull):

A 255 grains Lyman boolit over 8.5 grains Herco, seated to a depth of 0.30" will take up 50% of the volume in the case and give a pressure about 12.000 psi

By setting the boolit 0.24" deeper, the free volume in the case is reduced to 25% and the pressure will rise to 19.000 psi - well above the maximum for a 45 LC.

Going to extremes and setting the boolit directly on the powder will raise the pressure to about 28.000 psi - more than a doubling from the original load.

Be careful!

I get that - I reload pistol/rifle rounds. I do understand that pressure is based on case volume.

But a shot shell round - the case volume is whatever you seat the wad to, right? Generally, it is right on the powder... The wad tends to have some buffer and then a cup. Does the OAL of the plastic shell play into the pressure?

[Little Oak]

One thing that folks who substitute slugs for lead shot weight for weight don't realise is that when a lead bird shot cartridge is fired the lead shot is both slightly crushed and squashed together. This effect reduces the initial 'bump' and therefore regulates pressure.
A solid slug does not crush or squash so does not provide this, effectively increasing the pressure.
It's quite a common but certainly not a safe procedure. It does show how well modern shotguns are made but you very rarely hear anyone being proud of blowing the chambers out of grandad's old hammer gun!

[Cap'n Morgan]

But a shot shell round - the case volume is whatever you seat the wad to, right? Generally, it is right on the powder... The wad tends to have some buffer and then a cup. Does the OAL of the plastic shell play into the pressure?

Even a felt wad will allow some compression before the slug starts moving. For all practical purposes this compression is similar to free space between powder and payload as the weight of the "moving" part of the wad is only a few grains. With compressible (buffer) plastic wads the effect is even more pronounced. Modern 7/8 ounce competition loads with 2-3/4 shells have wads where the buffer zone/seal part are longer than the cup.


The OAL of the shell also has an influence on the pressure. A deeper crimp will often increase muzzle velocity, not only because it offers more resistance (and better ignition) but because it reduces the free space by compressing the wad.

[W.R.Buchanan]

Yeah,,, I am certainly all for safety. However the loads that are being talked about here IE: Trap loads with slugs substituted for shot are no more dangerous than the Trap Loads themselves. The pressures involved are well below critical and minor changes are not going to hurt you.

The Idea that shot compresses to absorb the initial shock of acceleration in a shot shell is hog wash. The cushion in the wad does all that work, and whatever is in front of it is going out the hole in the same manner as any other payload of the same weight.

#8 shot and #6 shot are not enough different to make any difference in the pressure. By extension a 1 oz payload of 00 buckshot has no more resistance to it's acceleration than the same weight of #8's. The only possible difference could be the shot bridging the shot cup in a manner that expands the shot cup and makes it tighter in the bore. This would ultimately result in either the plastic shot cup being deformed or the pellets themselves being deformed as a worst case. Either one is still going out the hole. If the pellets were so big that they physically jammed in the bore, that would constitute a "you were too dumb to figure this out" safety violation? and should be avoided !

Common Sense is applicable here?

Now: a slug that doesn't increase the size of the slug/wad payload beyond bore dia. is not going to increase pressure any more than the same wad loaded with #8 shot. The slug doesn't compress, or at least it shouldn't, and deform so much that it jams in the bore. Federal Tru Ball Slugs have a plastic ball stuck in the back of the hollow base of the slug and are designed to expand the slug to bore dia so that accuracy is increased. They actually work too and they are a hot factory load so anything loaded below that should be safe with a similar slug.

My whole point here is that intelligent experimentation with low pressure loads is not something to be scared of. I have not loaded any slugs or buckshot above my normal Trap Loads of 20 gr of Green Dot or 23 gr of Unique in years because I don't need to. These are all tested loads from Lyman, STI, and Lee and others. There is no reason for me to load hotter as the intended uses are for paper or steel targets and even so, a Lee Slug at 1200 fps will knock down any game animal in the US with authority as long as the range is not too long.

If you simply cross reference your load data across several known sources that include pressure #'s and velocities, it is easy to Interpolate between them and make minor changes that are not going to kill you or blow up your gun. This is how you learn "Reloading," and I have been doing this for 40+ years and still have all my fingers and guns. Now that I think about it, I have never loaded a full power load for anything, Rifle, Pistol or Shotgun.

Cautious Yes, Scared NO!

Randy