extra heavy 410 load.

[Andrew Mason]

I have some 2-3/4 all metal hulls for the 410, and I have found that I can fit 5, 95 grain .41 caliber round balls

ends up being 475 grains of lead, I am still calculating exactly how many over powder cards I need for proper crimp.

I guess the final weight will be right around 500 grains.


I don't really know where to start with a powder charge

for a 7/8 oz, or 4 ball load I was planning on 15 grains of 2400,

but for the 5 ball load, its going to be around 1-1/8 oz.
iv never heard of a 410 load that heavy. not even sure if its possible,
but I do think it would be interesting to try.

thanks.
Andrew.

[tacklebury]

Federal does basically the same thing in 3" I don't think you will be able to drive it enough from a 2.75" Federals uses (5) single 0 buck balls (.36 cal) stacked in a 3" shell w/ wad.

[RPRNY]

I load 444 Marlin brass for 9/16 oz .410 loads. The great thing about the .410, at least with shot, is it needs nothing for a crimp. It is the least crimp sensitive of all the shotgun calibers. I use a thin cardboard overshot card held in place with a dab of Dulco cement (glue). Works a treat as long as the over powder wad 1/8" fiber wad and a cardboard overshot card provides a good gas seal. I then use a standard .410 shot cup with the base cut off. It is a loose fit inside the .429 cartridge.

Are you using Magtech brass? That is a .429/.430 inside diameter as I recall. You are talking about a LOT of lead with five .41 balls. What powder are you working with? What shotgun? I would be wary of even trying this in anything less than a pretty hardy piece. An old H&R single would be a good candidate. A fine old Spanish double might not.

I would not worry about overshot cards or a crimp. Whatever serves to hold the ball in place will do. You can stuff tissue paper in and it will work. I would worry about chamber pressures with that load. It might work best with BP but in smokeless I would think starting off at no more than half the charge for a 1/2oz load of shot and firing that remotely. Indeed, I would suggest starting at no more than 4 balls and working up from mouse fart loads.

[cpileri]

4 and 5 ball 00 buckshot loads in 410bore using start of 8gr of 2400 powder have been described. Some guys upped it to 15gr but not at all sure of pressures nor velocities.
Wait for Ajay or othe rmore experts to chime in. in fact, Ajay recently re-posted a 410 article.
C-
edit: here you go
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?158740-Here-s-a-treat-for-410-lovers!!&highlight=
in this article, 16gr 2400 was used for 3/4 Oz loads; thats not the ejecta weight you want but its still 6x00B balls.
C-

[cpileri]

Other informative articles:
http://www.shotgunworld.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?p=964309




C-

[cpileri]

and other 5x00B loads:
410 Gauge (Lyman Data) 3" Remington Plastic Shells, Plastic Basewad, Fold Crimp -
Shot Powder Type Manufacturer Charge Primer Wad Velocity
5 - #00 410 Alliant 13.5 CCI 209 Rem. SP410 three 410 ga .030" cards over buck 1315
Remarks: 12,100 psi
5 - #00 AAC-4100 Accurate 15.5 CCI 209 Rem. SP410 three 410 ga .030" cards over buck 1320
Remarks: 12,400 psi
5 - #00 H-110 Hodgdon 17.0 CCI 209 Rem. SP410 three 410 ga .030" cards over buck 1360

5x00B=~275gr... so here is some 330gr load data that might get you closer

.410 Bore Loads 3" Federal Plastic Shells
Shot Powder Type Manufacturer Charge Primer Wad Velocity
3/4 Ounce W-296 Winchester 15.5 W209 Win. WAA41 1,175
3/4 Ounce H-110 Hodgdon 16.0 W209 Rem. SP410 1,200



C-

[cpileri]

Also, according to this site:
http://www.fourten.org.uk/messagesslugs.html


No! .395 balls are too tight Try .375 ball, loaded over 12 gr. of 2400, and enough card wads for wad column height.....roll crimp....and try...you are at your own risk for trying any unpublished load, or exceeding this level of powder....every gun can be different, but this one has worked in many styles of 410s that I own.....write me back D. Scott.

[Andrew Mason]

the gun is a new savage model 42 .22lr/410 bore.
it is a cylinder bore choke, so the .41 caliber balls are the perfect diameter.

the cases I have are the brass plated steel Russian ones that have been converted to take standard 209 primers.

[cpileri]

Maybe someone will chime in w a heavy low pressure load fir the 405 Winchester to get started. That ctg usually runs much higher oressures, though- i found one w a 400gr jacketed bullet at 28kpsi. Still too high for a 410.

[RPRNY]

The Savage is pretty robust, so working up to some of these 2400 loads will likely be safe. Provided you know the inside diameter of the brass - I suspect .429 - then getting a good gas seal with fiber wad will be the key. I would also use the old milk jug wad over fiber - sharpen edges of one of the brass shells with a chamfer tool and use it to punch wads out of plastic milk jugs. Placed over the over powder wad it adds to the gas seal and gives a good base for pushing all that lead out.

Again, no worries about a crimp. No need to overwork your brass. A good overshot card and dab of glue, water glass etc, whatever will hold the balls in, will do fine.

[Andrew Mason]

well, I made up one of these earlier as a mock up.
the 5th ball in part way out of the case, so there is no overshot card, what I did was crimp the case over the widest part of the ball,
I still need to play with my number of over powder cards to get the balls on the inside in order to remove the rattle from the balls inside.

I do not know the ID of the brass, but I have been cutting out wads with 7/16'' hole punches, and they fit nice and snug.

[turbo1889]

I've never tried to load more then three of the 39.5-cal to 41-cal balls (use the bigger 41-cal balls for cylinder bore, no-choke or 45-Colt/410-shot combo guns only, and use the smaller balls for guns with a choke) because the weight just gets too high and even if you manage to figure out a load that is safe for such a heavy payload the velocity won't hardly to worth squat. Maybe with using zinc balls instead of lead balls you could use five balls that big and get a decent load with enough velocity to be worth it.

[Andrew Mason]

turbo, you are probably right,
its an incredibly heavy payload, and I might end up having to sacrifice so much velocity that it wont be worth it.

this fall, I do hope to use my 410 triple ball loads to take a coyote.
and hopefully, get a quad ball load and try those as well.

[Duckiller]

500 gr is more than 1 1/8 oz. in a .410 ???? Either you are going to load it very slow or you may do damage. If you want to shoot an 1 1/8 oz. load get a bigger gun. If you want to play with a .410 try shooting light loads faster with some sort of pattern.

[cpileri]

Your triple ball load would be 285gr, so there is data there. I imagine it would have to take some advice from Dixie SLugs and cast them hard so they wont deform and increase sidewall pressure. Then you can use load data for weight published.
C-

[JIMinPHX]

Several years ago, I fooled around with .410 buckshot loads. My problem was that the balls turned into pancakes when the round was fired. The balls grew to full bore diameter under pressure of acceleration, then lacerated the wad as they passed through the choke. When I recovered the fired shot, I could tell which had been the top, middle, bottom, etc. in the stack by how far each had deformed into an oval. Patterns were terrible. I think that my powder charge was 13 gr of 2400.

If you do a search, you can probably find my old posts. They may contain information that would be useful to you.

I suspect that what I needed was more padding under the shot. I had been using standard .410 wads, that are little more than a shot cup with a gas seal & no padding in-between. Using a harder alloy helped some. Shot buffer may also have helped, but I didn't get that far in my experiments.

[turbo1889]

As for load 0.390" to 0.413" diameter round balls in a triple ball load for 410-bore shotguns my best results have been with casting the balls of hard water quenched WW-alloy and putting a 1/8" thick nitro card between the balls in the stack to provide the cushion to keep from deforming the bottom two balls. Obviously, for choked guns I use balls on the smaller diameter end of that range and only use balls on the upper end of that diameter range in guns without any choke constriction.

Here is a diagram that explains things a lot better then I can do with words:

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3790/9278874803_1bcf297b43_z.jpg

[tacklebury]

Federal and Winchester now have 5 ball loads...

http://www.midwayusa.com/product/170759/winchester-super-x-ammunition-410-bore-3-000-buckshot-5-pellets-box-of-5
http://www.midwayusa.com/product/679225/federal-premium-personal-defense-ammunition-410-bore-3-000-buckshot-5-pellets-box-of-20

[turbo1889]

Yes, in the 3" longer length shell you can fit five pellets of OO or OOO buck-shot and the weight will not be too much. The reason for that is because OO buck is 0.33" nominal diameter and weighs between 50 and 54 grains per pellet and OOO buck-shot is 0.36" nominal diameter and weighs between 65 and 70 grains per pellet. So you can manage to get five of them into a shell and not be too heavy of a load or run out of stacking height do to the smaller diameter of the balls.

BUT, if you are using larger diameter balls of 0.390" to 0.413" diameter their larger diameter results in significant increases in the per-pellet weight. Which depending on the size of ball used within that range of acceptable sizes and the lead alloy which it is cast from can result in an 82 to 106 grain per pellet weight. Considering that it is very difficult to get a payload heavier then 3/4oz. (328gr.) moving fast enough to be an effective load out of a 410-bore shot-shell even assuming the use of a maximum 13.5-K pressure load in a 3" shell out of a 28+" length barrel long gun its difficult enough to get that much weight up to good velocity much less trying to push more.

So for multi-ball loads using big bore size (0.410" to 0.413") balls or nearly bore size balls that are just barely small enough to fit through a choke without problems (0.390" to 0.400") balls you really can't use more then three of them otherwise you end trying to push too much weight and also run out of stacking room in the hull to get proper wadding in as well to get the load to pattern well.

Now, if you do want to use smaller conventional buck-shot sized balls inside of a plastic shot-wad (to take up the extra space and keep things centered up because they are so much smaller diameter then the bore) then you can build some decent loads that way as well and because the balls weigh less and take up less stack height you can use more of them and get your count up to 5 balls in a 3" load. But you will have to drop down to that smaller ball size to pull it off, and to get the loads to pattern well at anything other then very close range there are some tricks to that as well. For a 3" shell length I can tell you how to build a load that keeps the balls nice and round and patterns well but its a mixed size load using on O pellet cast from at least type-metal hardness alloy, two OO pellets cast from at least water quenched WW hardness, and two OOO pellets cast from at least air cooled WW hardness and some shot buffer and some of the smaller size Lee dippers to measure it. This is how the load will end up looking, building the load up carefully making sure the pellets aren't touching each other and have a skiff of tightly packed shot buffer in-between them (you tamp down the buffer with a rod and hammer between loading each pellet):

http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5472/9287753639_98c8dcee1b.jpg

[JIMinPHX]

Federal and Winchester now have 5 ball loads...

http://www.midwayusa.com/product/170759/winchester-super-x-ammunition-410-bore-3-000-buckshot-5-pellets-box-of-5
http://www.midwayusa.com/product/679225/federal-premium-personal-defense-ammunition-410-bore-3-000-buckshot-5-pellets-box-of-20

Winchester has had 5 ball loads for years. I never took one apart to see what they had for wad padding. I always wondered about that.

[turbo1889]

I haven't dealt with the Federal offering but I've shot and cut open the Winchester 5@OOO loads and they don't use any padding at all, just five balls of relatively soft lead stacked on top of each other on top of an over-powder wad. The top ball stays round but the rest get squashed down in the barrel and the bottom 2 or 3 balls turn into squatty cylinder shaped chunks of lead. I have also used the S&B 5@OO loads and those pattern a little better and don't squash quite as bad because they balls they use are made from harder lead (but still not as hard as WW alloy) but the bottom pellet or two on those loads gets squashed down too because they still aren't hard enough and don't use sufficient padding.

The best commercial load of 410 buckshot I have ever seen were some old European paper shells I ran across with Latin looking markings on them that had four big balls in them that were 0.38" diameter and were copper coated with very thick coating that you had to whittle on for a while with a pen knife in order to expose the lead core. They were also buffered with what looked like very finely shredded cardboard that was packed in-between the balls. I do now know when or where they were made but those loads were good loads that patterned really tight and all the recovered balls were still all round shaped with minimal distortion.

[nanuk]

I have an article somewhere (NRA handloading book?) about a 410 load of 6 .375 balls... can't remember the specifics, but IIRC, they used a paper tube for a sabot.

I'll have to dig for that article.

[SSGOldfart]

I'm kinda wondering way one needs more than 3 or 5 balls? Maybe they need a 41 caliber

[Smithy]

OK Folks and now for something similar, but not necessarily completely different????? I also have been working up tooling for a HD type of mess around 410 load. I use 00 buck cast in a Lee gang mold and use them solely for the lead core they become. I then use a Corbin swaging die to make basically cylinders of lead with each running right around 52 grains each. The cylinder has a recessed base that allows me to use a cupped card wad under each of the three "cylinders" used in my load. These all tuck quite nicely into a Ballistic Products 410 plastic wad. The plastic cup is shortened to match the height of the three projectiles and topped with a nitro card wad. Over that I have a CH swaged 44 mag bullet made with a spent 40 S&W cartridge as the jacket material. After building the bullet it is then further reduced in diameter to .423 or just barely snug in the inside of a plastic 410 case. The rim of this bullet is still very much there and in one piece and it forms the location that I "crimp" the plastic hull into the rim groove. Sounds kinda complicated, but it really isn't, just time consuming. (what else does an old retired fart have to do, right?) The plastic hulls "case mouth" goes about .4" beyond the crimp area so the "bullet" is well supported by the plastic hull and the amount of plastic that goes into the rim of the bullet (the crimp) is enough to hang onto everything even though there is a bit of pressure required to get it all in there. NOT over crimped by any stretch since a similarly crimped bullet into just the tube of a 410 hull can be poked out with hand pressure and a pencil.

So, recapping? I have a 410 plastic hull with a BP 410 wad shortened to equal it's three cylinder bullets and their mini card wads, topped with a nitro card separating the plastic wad column and the forward most projectile a .423 diameter round nose jacketed bullet crimped through the plastic hull at the bullet's rim groove. Sheeshhhh..... Now I just don't know a powder nor a starting amount of the unknown powder.

The only powder I currently have is some Lil Gun that I was using for target loads, but I think that might be a bit faster burning than I'd want. Any advice on that one. P.S. Sorry to the OP if this is a thread steal (is it???) I just figured that where I'm going is close to the ballpark of this thread. Smithy.

[Biggfoot44]

All interesting .

I recently aquired a Mossberg 500E , and am intrigued with the buckshot possibilities .

Indeed finding information on the internet with testing from revolvers that is enlightening . The best penetration seems to come from the Federal 4 ball loading using plated buckshot . Indeed the W-W loads with soft buckshot shows major deformation , to the point of only about half the penetration of Federal's plated .

Don't have anything to share yet , but forsee plated shot and buffering as the way to proceede.

I could see going with only 4 balls , if able to get better patterns, and rounder balls on target

[Smithy]

Thanks Bigfoot44 for the update. Since my first post I've been dabbling with my multi swaged cylinders (after all I have the Corbin die, right?). I found a source for machined? washers. Or lets say, not the average variety store brand stamped type, but ones held to specific and consistent dimensions. Just shy of the bullet(swaged cylinder) diameter and with a very small through hole for the ID. What I'm going to try is using cast 000 buck pellets as my "core" ingredients (4 total) each separated with one of these thin washers. The round nature of the 000 buck and the center holes of the washers along with their brass construction should allow me to cast an elongated cylinder of a tumbling? four pellet load. I just don't know yet if it would separate during flight or if it'd make it to the target before coming apart to it's four constituent pellets? I'll update when I get further along. I see it possibly as a means to keep a really tight pattern especially for the closer ranges? Smithy.

[Apocalypse]

I am quite interested in this idea. The PDX ammo is similar and seems quite effective through my Raging Judge 6". Would be great to be able to replicate without the $2.50 (CAD) each cost.

[bikerbeans]

I am loading four 0.375" round balls in new 3" fio hulls. Still a work in prograss but getting close. I am shooting these from a 500e with fixed FC. The RBs are just under choke diameter.

Things i found to improve grouping.

Tumble round balls

Heat treat them, harder the better.

Use buffer.

Don't push them too fast, 1100 to 1200 fps.

I will post details once i find The Load.

BB

[BAGTIC]

What would that load be used for? At what range?

If for something as basic as a home defense load the problem could be solved by substituting cylinders for balls.

[Smithy]

What would that load be used for? At what range?

If for something as basic as a home defense load the problem could be solved by substituting cylinders for balls.

That's exactly what I've been doing with my Corbin .340 diameter swage die. That diameter allows the cylinders to fit snugly inside the plastic wad fingers of my BP wads I'm using. I'ts very tedious to swage four cylinders per load so my last post was that I'm trying to have a "frangible" set of four cylinders all swaged at the same time. One swage pull per load type of thing.

[Minerat]

I just loaded 4 - 0 buck in some WW 2.5 with ww410, 15.5gr Imr 4227, an over shot card and a star crimp as a lark. I was loading some 7-1/5 shot for my grandson to burn and saw the 0 buck I just cast from a recent GB and decided to give it a try. The 4 - 0 buck weighed 198 gr just shy of 1/2 oz.

[Tackleberry41]

The converted 9.3x74r cases can fit 5 .395 ball with room left over. Will probably depend on the velocity how much deformation there is. The few I messed with 4 .395 ball made a cloverleaf hole in the target.

[Markopolo]

OK Folks and now for something similar, but not necessarily completely different????? I also have been working up tooling for a HD type of mess around 410 load. I use 00 buck cast in a Lee gang mold and use them solely for the lead core they become. I then use a Corbin swaging die to make basically cylinders of lead with each running right around 52 grains each. The cylinder has a recessed base that allows me to use a cupped card wad under each of the three "cylinders" used in my load. These all tuck quite nicely into a Ballistic Products 410 plastic wad. The plastic cup is shortened to match the height of the three projectiles and topped with a nitro card wad. Over that I have a CH swaged 44 mag bullet made with a spent 40 S&W cartridge as the jacket material. After building the bullet it is then further reduced in diameter to .423 or just barely snug in the inside of a plastic 410 case. The rim of this bullet is still very much there and in one piece and it forms the location that I "crimp" the plastic hull into the rim groove. Sounds kinda complicated, but it really isn't, just time consuming. (what else does an old retired fart have to do, right?) The plastic hulls "case mouth" goes about .4" beyond the crimp area so the "bullet" is well supported by the plastic hull and the amount of plastic that goes into the rim of the bullet (the crimp) is enough to hang onto everything even though there is a bit of pressure required to get it all in there. NOT over crimped by any stretch since a similarly crimped bullet into just the tube of a 410 hull can be poked out with hand pressure and a pencil.

So, recapping? I have a 410 plastic hull with a BP 410 wad shortened to equal it's three cylinder bullets and their mini card wads, topped with a nitro card separating the plastic wad column and the forward most projectile a .423 diameter round nose jacketed bullet crimped through the plastic hull at the bullet's rim groove. Sheeshhhh..... Now I just don't know a powder nor a starting amount of the unknown powder.

The only powder I currently have is some Lil Gun that I was using for target loads, but I think that might be a bit faster burning than I'd want. Any advice on that one. P.S. Sorry to the OP if this is a thread steal (is it???) I just figured that where I'm going is close to the ballpark of this thread. Smithy.

Let’s see some pic’s of your method and finished product.. sounds very interesting....

Marko