Foster Slugs in 12 gauge

[richhodg66]

Had some time to kill in Topeka today and went through a good antique store I hadn't been through in a while. There's always interesting stuff in there, but I don't buy much most of the time, though I've found a few treasures over the years.

Today, in a display case, was a Lyman 12 guage Foster slug mold in good shape with handles for $65 so I left with it.

I have played around a little with loading .690 RB molds but I also have a .72 RB mold I haven't tried yet. Gun is an Ithaca 37 Deer Slayer.

Is this Foster slug likely to shoot better than the RB? I also don't have a roll crimper, is this a difficult thing to learn how to do?

[gpidaho]

Rich: Foster slugs are somewhat undersized for most shotguns and I've had better luck with other options. Roll crimping is a very easy thing to do and the results get better with practice. I would recommend you search through the sticky above on crimping and tools. Lots of good information. Gp

[tomme boy]

There are swage dies meant for that slug but Lyman does not make them anymore. If you can find a set you will be paying major $$$$$ for it. And they still don't shoot all that well. ,

[ascast]

i SHOOT A MODEL 37 IN 16 GA. sry It shoots Remington sluggers at about 5 inch group at 100 yds. To date I have not fooled with reloading for it. I mean to, but at $1 a pop, maybe 5 shots per year, it has become a low priority. Rifles are now legal here so the game haS CHANGED IN A BIG WAY. sorry again. use dead soft lead if you make some. those "rifling" kits for the slugs are rare. I've seen 2 in my lifetime. good luck

[longbow]

I bought a Lyman Foster mould about 30 years ago and hate it!

It is and always has been a pain to cast with mostly because the slugs stick to the core pin. I could taper it more and polish it but just haven't bothered.

As said above, the slugs cast small and seemingly range from 0.685" to 0.705". Mine casts at 0.705" so too big for shotcup and too small for the bore. I found that when cast soft and shot into deep snow recovered slugs showed uneven bump up in that the noses were all cocked differently and the skirts tended to have uneven trailing edge so accuracy was poor. My groups ran about 8' to 12" at 50 yards.

I did manage to get some decent accuracy by using old brown paper shopping bag paper patches. That tightened up groups considerably but I still got fliers... likely patches not liking crimp opening or maybe splitting during the transition from hull to forcing cone as the slug bumped up... or patches not coming off properly.

And yes, if cast from soft lead they will bump up.

As tomme boy said, Lyman used to sell swaging dies to put rifling on these slugs and I thought that maybe once swaged that they were closer to bore diameter but someone here found a set of those dies and the finished slug was well under bore diameter so I have no idea why Lyman would make a mould so undersize... especially if the slug bump up to bore diameter anyway!

I thought about machining driving bands on mine to bring it up to bore diameter but decided not to bother. I just made my own bore diameter mould. Casts better and much more accurate. Buckshot (on this site) machined a Lyman Foster slug mould to add 4 driving bands many years ago and posted pics.

SluggerDoug wrote up his "knurling" process to expand the Lyman Foster slug to bore diameter:

https://www.shotgunworld.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=132184

and you can see Buckshot's machining job here:

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...n-foster-slugs

post #10.

I have been told that if the slug is cast from soft lead and set onto a hard wad column that it will bump up better and accuracy can be quite good. I was not successful at all. I gave up on that one.

Sorry!

Longbow

[richhodg66]

i SHOOT A MODEL 37 IN 16 GA. sry It shoots Remington sluggers at about 5 inch group at 100 yds. To date I have not fooled with reloading for it. I mean to, but at $1 a pop, maybe 5 shots per year, it has become a low priority. Rifles are now legal here so the game haS CHANGED IN A BIG WAY. sorry again. use dead soft lead if you make some. those "rifling" kits for the slugs are rare. I've seen 2 in my lifetime. good luck

I have a 16 gauge Deer Slayer as well, never shot it that far, but at 50, it's accurate enough for how I hunt.

[richhodg66]

I bought a Lyman Foster mould about 30 years ago and hate it!

It is and always has been a pain to cast with mostly because the slugs stick to the core pin. I could taper it more and polish it but just haven't bothered.

As said above, the slugs cast small and seemingly range from 0.685" to 0.705". Mine casts at 0.705" so too big for shotcup and too small for the bore. I found that when cast soft and shot into deep snow recovered slugs showed uneven bump up in that the noses were all cocked differently and the skirts tended to have uneven trailing edge so accuracy was poor. My groups ran about 8' to 12" at 50 yards.

I did manage to get some decent accuracy by using old brown paper shopping bag paper patches. That tightened up groups considerably but I still got fliers... likely patches not liking crimp opening or maybe splitting during the transition from hull to forcing cone as the slug bumped up... or patches not coming off properly.

And yes, if cast from soft lead they will bump up.

As tomme boy said, Lyman used to sell swaging dies to put rifling on these slugs and I thought that maybe once swaged that they were closer to bore diameter but someone here found a set of those dies and the finished slug was well under bore diameter so I have no idea why Lyman would make a mould so undersize... especially if the slug bump up to bore diameter anyway!

I thought about machining driving bands on mine to bring it up to bore diameter but decided not to bother. I just made my own bore diameter mould. Casts better and much more accurate. Buckshot (on this site) machined a Lyman Foster slug mould to add 4 driving bands many years ago and posted pics.

SluggerDoug wrote up his "knurling" process to expand the Lyman Foster slug to bore diameter:

https://www.shotgunworld.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=132184

and you can see Buckshot's machining job here:

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...n-foster-slugs

post #10.

I have been told that if the slug is cast from soft lead and set onto a hard wad column that it will bump up better and accuracy can be quite good. I was not successful at all. I gave up on that one.

Sorry!

Longbow

I'll have to cast some and see how big they are. The general wisdom is that Ithaca was the first to make a dedicated slug gun and made the Deer Slayers with tighter bores than most. Not sure if that's true or now.

[CastingFool]

I bought one of those molds about 40 yrs ago. Cast close to 400 slugs, and they looked good but I could never get any accuracy out of them. My shotgun had an IC bore, and I could get 2-3/4" groups at 50 yrs with either winchester or Remington factory slugs.

[longbow]

Yes, as far as I have read you are right. The Ithacas were supposed to have a much tighter than normal bore. I have never owned one so obviously have never slugged a bore but have read that they ran as tight as 0.710". If you one of those then that slug may work for you.

You may have to polish the core pin though! Or taper it more and/or use sprue plate lube on it. Be warned!

I'd also recommend not loading it over plastic wads with petals cut off as Lyman suggests in their manual. I found that the cushion leg just drove up into the cavity destroying accuracy... even worse than it was! Use a plastic gas seal over the powder and hard card wad column or at least put one or two nitro card wads on top of the cushion leg then the slug on those. Filling the slug may also help but I have a story about a gun with blown up barrel after filling a Lyman Foster slug. There is a little more to it than that but the experience made me very leery of using soft, thin skirted slugs with filled cavities!

Longbow

[ascast]

I had heard that Ithica bores were cylinder bored in the slug guns. No choke of any kind.
Also, that Remington had done a lot of research into slugs.

[SuperBlazingSabots]

Greetings, Lyman sure fooled us big time with the Foster slug mold, to me it seems they spent far more time at the bar drinking.




They were close to $100 with mold handles, what a waste.
Best regards,
Ajay K. Madan
Super Blazing Sabots

[RMc]

Had some time to kill in Topeka today and went through a good antique store I hadn't been through in a while. There's always interesting stuff in there, but I don't buy much most of the time, though I've found a few treasures over the years.

Today, in a display case, was a Lyman 12 guage Foster slug mold in good shape with handles for $65 so I left with it.

I have played around a little with loading .690 RB molds but I also have a .72 RB mold I haven't tried yet. Gun is an Ithaca 37 Deer Slayer.

Is this Foster slug likely to shoot better than the RB? I also don't have a roll crimper, is this a difficult thing to learn how to do?

All Foster type rifled slugs were of a reduced diameter from the 1930s to about 1980. Winchester was the first manufacturer to increase rifled slug diameter. The 12 gauge Winchester Super X Rifled Slug was increased from .680" to .730" diameter at the base. Remington was the last to increase Foster slug ammo to nominal bore size.

The original Lyman foster slug mold, then followed the example of reduced diameter slugs set by factory ammunition of the time.

The Deer Slayer first appeared in Ithaca's catalog in 1959 with a 26" smoothbore barrel, and a carbine barrel of 20", straight bored to .700" or just over the then SAAMI spec. for rifled slug diameter. Your smoothbore Deer Slayer may have such a reduced bore diameter for better accuracy with such reduced diameter slugs.

[richhodg66]

Both my Deer Slayers are smoothbore, the 16 is older than the 12 (pre-855,000 vs the 12 post 855,000). The 16 has the 26", the 12 is short.

I have been loathe to get into it and likely won't, but I read where powder coating increases the diameter of a projectile, has anyone done this?

I kind of like the paper patching idea, I would be more likely to try that.

[Shawlerbrook]

Before we could use rifles here in Central NYS, the slug gun was the whitetail tool. My Belgium made Browning Sweet Sixteen with smoothbore rifle sighted slug barrel used to routinely put them in 3-4” at 100 yards. My problem with the slugs was if you hit solid bone on a big NE whitetail, you didn’t get good penetration.

[longbow]

That would be the other issue with the Lyman Foster design... the nose and skirt are very thin so when cast from soft lead they "mush" on impact.

Longbow

[GBertolet]

I have found that the skirts on the Lyman slugs were too thin, and would collapse upon the stress of firing. Maybe a harder alloy might help.

Ditto on the Ithaca barrels. I have several for my 37, and the smoothbore barrel for it I have, is pretty tight at the muzzle. It could be made to work with the undersized Lyman mold, under the right conditions.

I got frustrated with my mold, and chucked it in my lathe, and with a boring bar opened mine up to .730. I couldn't quite get it to the nose profile, so the slug looks like it has a belt around it. Never did much more with it since. Due to the issue of the skirts collapsing for me, my discovery of how wonderful the .735 roundball performs, and getting a great deal on a NEF slughunter, to shoot the RB's in, I gave up on the Lyman Forster slug.

P.S. Ajay has a great idea, of hollowing out the HB plug, to leave a center pedestal, to give more base support. It ought to be a stress reliever for the skirt upon firing.

[gpidaho]

Both my Deer Slayers are smoothbore, the 16 is older than the 12 (pre-855,000 vs the 12 post 855,000). The 16 has the 26", the 12 is short.

I have been loathe to get into it and likely won't, but I read where powder coating increases the diameter of a projectile, has anyone done this?

I kind of like the paper patching idea, I would be more likely to try that.

Rich: I powder coat all full bore slugs and round balls I shoot and even buckshot. NO leading in either rifled or smooth bore barrels. That said it only adds two to three thousandths to the diameter and that's just not enough added girth to make a difference in the Foster. Gp

[GBertolet]

I had done paper patching also. I used self adhesive mailing labels. I made a template to cut the patches to the exact size. They did eliminate the leading, but did not solve the other issues I had.

[richhodg66]

Rich: I powder coat all full bore slugs and round balls I shoot and even buckshot. NO leading in either rifled or smooth bore barrels. That said it only adds two to three thousandths to the diameter and that's just not enough added girth to make a difference in the Foster. Gp

Paper patching it is then, good, didn't want to get into the nail polish thing anyway.

[richhodg66]

I had done paper patching also. I used self adhesive mailing labels. I made a template to cut the patches to the exact size. They did eliminate the leading, but did not solve the other issues I had.

Did you recover any slugs? Seems like you'd want the patch to come off. I doubt leading will be an issue, easy enough to tumble lube just like anything else.