12GA FH Slug Tester --

[hubel458]

Here is picture of 24ga FH in the Mossberg bolt gun. On a
Mossy 390 frame, .585" heavy barrel, same as 24ga size.
Chamber is set up 3" with shotgun style forcing cone,
so it can use 2.5" plastic cases and 2.5" Magtech brass
cases with slugs or shot and for 3" cases we use 577NE
3" brass. Really make a hairy 24ga using the 440gr to
540 gr Minie bullets at 21-2400. If you take 540 Minie bullet
mould and leave out base pin you'd have a 650gr that
would do. All these bullets and slugs as well as jacketed and
turned 577/585 bullets work in 24ga as well as my 585HE.
And the smaller Minies work in our 12ga sabots. I keep
saying 58cal is where it is at, and there are more bullet and
slug choices in the .585 size, easy to find, than any other
caliber over 458. And Minies are like 40 cents each and
cheaper if you cast your own.




Here is picture .585" barrels from McGowen, with other barrels.
Most of the McGowens profiled and some straight blanks.
Others we have are the slow twist and smooth blanks...
In back some of the cases and die sets.



Here is picture of an Enfield and a BBK in Hogue recoil
reducing stocks. These stocks are the rubber coated ones with
the easy to grip, nice pistol grip.Has McGowen 26 inch barrels,
1 to 20 twist, barrels are heavy profile and taper
to .980 inch at the muzzle. Setting up 4 more on Enfields
through the winter. Ed

[jmort]

When I think of .58 caliber, I'm thinking .575" which is what I have been working on with your sabots. Should I be using a larger diameter, i.e. .585
Thanks
John

[bikerbeans]

Very nice Ed! You are making my little 24ga H&R very jealous.

BB

[hubel458]

For the 12ga sabots use the 58cal Minies that are .574" to .577" unless
you have way oversize barrel.

And for my 585HE and 24ga that use
the .585" barrels use the ones that are .585" to .587"..Ed

[338RemUltraMag]

Ed,

I have a mold almost finished that will produce this bullet and as a solid it weighs in at 922 gr giving you a heads up incase you wanna try em in your 12 Ga FH

[hubel458]

Thankyou- I don't have anymore of 12ga FH cases
we made from BMG brass, which works best with
heavy slugs, and most test work is now with
sabots in the plastic and RMC cases,
and my 585.Ed

[hubel458]

Some guys in 12ga like to use the Magtech brass cases
but the cases being brass the sides are thinner than
plastic, and that makes loose fit in 12ga chambers.
And case expand a lot and are harder to resize,
But I found that .750 hollowbase 10ga slug fits
those cases and still chambers ok. Not a sloppy fit.

So If you have a 12ga smooth barrel with full length
backbore job, of .850" bore or bigger you could use
the Magtech brass and ,850" size 10ga hollowbase slugs.
Now these .850" slugs won't go in a 12ga plastic case
and chamber in regular 12ga chamber.

Brett in MN used the a BPI AQ slugs in his full length
backbored 12ga and got fair accuracy as he said the wads
under slugs expanded a lot for a decent fit.
The 10ga slug shown in the 2.5 inch Magtech is 800 gr,
and .850" diameter. These cases will take magnum
pressure so you can get good speed, for what this short
case can hold.

It is too bad they don't make 3" and 3.5" versions.
These 2.5" cases are easier to find and much less than
others, so if needing brass ones you can rig up guns
to work with them. To build a new barreled gun in actual
12ga size, IE .729" bore, you'd make chamber to
minimum specs so cases don't over expand.
In the picture are 2 10ga slugs on right, like in the case,
and 2 12ga jacketed slugs and one 12ga lead slug left.ED






Here is the ytube URL again for our guy
shooting 585HE in his NEF----By mid summer we plan on a
pickup truck load of more 585HE cases coming in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HypaUdwQGAc

[firefly1957]

- I have been following this thread for a long time i have an old Mauser bolt action 12 gauge bolt action would it work for this or is it to much diameter for the action?
. The gun belonged to my grandfather and once was a goose gun with a 40" barrel but he had a mishap and it now sports a 25" cylinder bore. I always wondered if it would make a good slug gun if a rifled barrel was installed but remember reading somewhere they tend to break extractors.

[hubel458]

I did one for slugs, but not any good for heavy slug or
magnum shot loads as is. When made into a shotgun
they drilled holes into bottom of the back left side
for some extra stuff and they are cracked and weakened there
and along with thumb cutout they are not safe for heavy loads.
Can be welded up and metal reinforcing added at cutout and heat treated
but maybe not worth it.Ed

[firefly1957]

Thank you for that Ed i have read a couple things like that about the Mauser shotguns i have never fired it and it may stay that way for me i also had concerns over weather the stock would withstand the recoil.

[longbow]

Ed:

That hollow base slug looks to have very thin skirt walls. Do you have any problems with skirt distortion/collapse? That has been my problem with most all hollow base designs I have tried unless I oven heat treat. I have tried some very thick skirts but still find they collapse/distort if ACWW or softer.

Longbow

[hubel458]

I filled hollow with hot glue in ten ga testing on couple loads.
These are soft cast ones, so if I found a backbored gun and tested in
backbored barrel, I'd fill the hollow.

Also I heard of filling them with dense blue styrofoam pieces,
cut round so they just jam in tight and cut off flush.
I am going to try that later. Should be better and easier
than glue.

If you don't fill hollow with something then you have to pile up hard
cards under them like Federal does in 10ga and that leaves no
room for our slow power loads. Fed loads I checked had 6 cards
piled up in the case...Wasted space to me.Ed

[bikerbeans]

What about the HB slug directly on top the slow burning powder, like a minie ball in an MZ? Let the combustion gas expand the HB skirt?


BB

[hubel458]

That might work, but it also due to latent muzzle pressure
may deform that soft skirt off center when slugs leaves barrel.
Then accuracy goes away. It would be best for accuracy
if it was cast with harder alloys, to try it..

I don't cast so I have to fill the hollow bases of what
I have to test.Ed

[bikerbeans]

Ed,

I have some heat treated 12ga HB slugs I can try launching w/o a gas seal or wads. This is assuming winter ever ends. Maybe porting the barrel would help with softer alloy HB slugs?

BB

[longbow]

Okay, that's more or less what I figured. I haven't found a hollow base design yet that doesn't suffer from skirt distortion... including Gualandi DGS slugs. Well, not quite true, the Dixie Tusker didn't distort at all but it has an extremely thick skirt and is very hard, heat treated alloy.

I generally fill all my hollow base slugs. Hmmm, I might have mentioned that in the first post ~ they distort unless oven heat treated or filled and some still distort even after filling.

Along with Ed's comment on the skirt deforming off center, I have recovered Lyman Foster slugs shot into deep soft snow and found that not only did they slug up from 0.705" to exactly bore diameter but most slugged up off center or with the nose tilted. These were so undersize they had the opportunity to tilt as they jumped through the forcing cone. Those were loaded exactly to the Lyman recipe using Win AA red wads (IIRC) with petals cut off. I have found hard card wad columns to be much more effective under most hollow base slugs than cushion legs.

Ed is talking about, as the slug leaves the muzzle, which is a bit different but my point is that an undersize hollow base slug may well not slug up evenly and then the skirt blowing or distorting at the muzzle is a whole other issue to deal with.

A bore size slug with hollow base like a Minie might not do badly in a rifled gun but I suspect you would still need a plastic gas seal over the powder because smokeless does not ignite like BP, it requires certain minimum pressure to burn well and the leakage until the slug swells up would most likely cause some problems there.

I can say that I have loaded slugs over Blue Dot using nitro card over powder wads and no plastic gas seal where the recipe called for a plastic gas seal and performance was notably poorer than same load with the plastic gas seal. Not a sharp bang when fired and lots of unburned powder left in the bore. Faster powders might do better. BP would probably work that way.

Longbow

[Hogtamer]

this may be a dumb question, but why not make all hollow base slug designs with a "key drive" like the lee that prevents distortion?

[jmort]

The "key drive" was designed to keep slug from compressing into the wad to potentially eliminate need for nitro card in wad. A cross/+ design would do both better but might overly complicate pin.

[bikerbeans]

Longbow,

If I can't get the load to ignite correctly w/o a gas seal and wad column, I think I will try just using a gas seal with a small hole in the center underneath the HB bore size slug. The idea being the gas seal will not be pushed into the HB cavity if the hole is big enough to equalize the pressure on both sides of the gas seal.

BB

[hubel458]

Yes in most loads there is definate gain in speed and cleaner
burning with good plastic seals compared to cards.
Plastic seals are the best money spent for the good results we get.

The idea of a hole in seal to equalize pressures may work.

The dense blue foam idea in the hollow base I got from a
factory load I saw advertized that used a round plastic ball,
and from that guy in the EU that was cutting his cushion wads from
regular white foam and they were working ok.Ed