wads after round balls

[mike_kaleigh]

i was shooting some of my first round ball loads i ever made. i was wondering what your wads look like after they are fired. mine are completely blown to bits. i know one of the problems is my powder choice, red dot is way to fast. so to night i am going to make some with unique. i tried to get some blue dot but no luck. i had two nitro cards under the ball but no buffer.

one good thing, even though the wad was destroyed the accuracy was still ok at 50.

thanks

[littlejack]

Hey to ya Mike:
I have been out these past few weeks working on round ball loads for my shotgun. I have a rifled barrel on my 870 Rem.
I haven't had any of the wads "blown to bits" as you said.
My first loads were with a .690 ball in a WAA12 white wad (full length). The only thing that happened there, was there was a couple of the wads with one petal gone. I believe this was the result of the ball being just a little too big in diameter.
The rest of the balls that I have tried were the .678 diameter. So far, I haven't lost any petals. I am using the same WAA12 white wad with two .045 card wads under the ball to bring the ball up to the proper height. I am experimenting with the petals full length, and the petals cut to just above the equator of the ball, and no buffer. I load Herco powder.
We need more information.
What guage are you shooting? Is it a smooth or rifled bore? What size ball, and wad combination. How much powder?
What kind of accuracy have you gotten?
Reguards
Jack

[longbow]

Mike:

Did you put a nitro card wad under the ball? If not that is the likely answer. A nitro card wad or two and a scoop of COW under the ball makes a world of difference.

When I first loaded round balls, all I had was 0.690" which was too big for any shotcups I could find so I cut petals off to just under the equator of the ball then shot. Accuracy was not good and recovered wads were all distorted. Without support under the ball, they were wrapping around the curved surface and the gas seal was blowing.

By adding nitro card wads that supported the bottom of the shotcup and stopped wad destruction. I never did get accuracy with the 0.690" balls though but that is another story.

I also found that with some loads, gas seals blew at the edge and in some cases wads really suffered from what I think was high pressure. Even with no sticky extraction (which is an over pressure sign to be aware of) I think the faster powders may be too hard on some wads. I use mostly Blue Dot and IMR4756 which are both pretty slow powders.

Unique should be a better choice than Red Dot but as long as pressure with Red Dot is okay then wads shouldn't self destruct. You might try a lighter charge too.

Did you get sticky extraction? Did the metal head swage into the extractor groove? Take a look here:

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?67781-Lyman-525-amp-NEF-UltraSLug/page4

Post $65 ~ If the head of the hull looks like that you have too much pressure.

Give that a try and see what happens.

Longbow

[mike_kaleigh]

longbow, i had 2 nitro cards under the ball, in a aa red wad but no cow. i hull was aahs, and not the extraction was normal and it did not flow into the extractor. Do you have a good recommendation of unique with aahs and aa red wads. it looks like max for unique is 25.5 for aahs hulls and win primers, but that is 10,000 psi. so do you think 22.5 grains for 8800 psi and 1200 fps or do you think i need to go lower?

[mike_kaleigh]

also i tried to get blue dot but no luck

[longbow]

I will have to look through my manuals for load info. I do not trust my memory.

What size ball are you using? if the fit is too tight that may explain some wad damage.

I have had very poor results with Win AA Red wads. They seem to be thicker and softer than the other Win AA wads I have and they do fail easily. I find a lot of blown gas seals with Win AA Red so quit using them. I have had pretty good results using Win AA yellow and white, and Pacific Versalite. All are tougher plastic than Win AA Red.

I am a bit surprised that the wads would be in terrible shape if you had two nitro card wads under the ball though. Generally I have found that Win AA Reds need better support than other wads but with a nitro card wad or two in them it is usually just the gas seal I have had trouble with. makes me wonder about the pressure of your load.

What charge of Red Dot were you using?

I cannot recall the Unique charge exactly but I think it is 27 grs. for 0.690" ball but that is in a straight walled hull not a Win AA compression formed hull. Don't go loading that until i check though and let's find out what other components you are using before choosing a load.

The Win AA hull is a small volume hull with tapered sides and powder charges have to be reduced as they run higher pressures than straight walled hulls.

If you are using load recipes from a manual for equal weight shot or slug loads you should be fine but be sure you have the right primer and hull for the application. Your Win AA hulls can be used with appropriate powder charge and primer but make sure you are not using recipes for straight walled hulls.

Longbow