Starting The Learning Curve With Reloading The Lyman 525 Sabot Slug!

[Dthunter]

Hi fellow Casters!

As the Thread header says, I am starting the adventure of loading and shooting the Lyman 525grain Sabot Slug.

The present firearm platform I am working with is a Remington 870, Express, smooth bore, open sighted slug Barrel.

I am hoping to achieve 2-3" groups at 50 yards, and under 4" at 75 yards. I know the stock factory sights are somewhat a limiting factor at this point.

My plan is to maximize this smooth bore barrel First, and then try a fully rifled one and see what I can get it to do.

According to my understanding, one of the goals while shooting with these slugs, is to ensure that the wad and slug do not get damaged/and or, attached to each other during the firing sequence.

The slug should not collapse on the skirt, or the wad should not wedge/extrude into the slug hollow base. This in turn would allow for an efficient/non influencing release at the muzzle.


My slug alloy is 15lbs. wheel weight lead + 3lbs. pure lead, dropped to cool naturally.

This alloy "should" be hard enough to prevent skirt collapse at normal velocities/pressure. What say you casters?

The first load I tried is as follows:

Winchester AA hulls, Winchester 209 primers, 22.5 Grains of Unique, Federal 12S3 Wads, and One Lyman 525grain style slug (actual weight With my alloy is 513 grains average). The case is fold crimped.
I trimmed the wad petals flush with the top of the slug, to aid in a clean crimp.

As I shot these rounds, I noticed the wad was coming apart pretty bad! Each cup petal was in two pieces, and the wad base had evidence of the bottom of the slug skirt cutting/splitting a circumferential portion out of the cup base
(maybe 20-30 degrees of the base circumference). The slugs grouped around 3-1/2 to 4", for 5 rounds. And two of the slug holes seemed just slightly out of round, like the slug wasn't completely stable.
I guess it may stand to reason since this is a smooth bore and not rifling stabilized.


I tried the same component combination , but roll crimped the Winchester AA hulls to see if this style of crimp would help the accuracy issue any. The Winchester AA hulls roll crimped surprisingly nice!
The accuracy was around 5-1/2" at 50 yards. I found a few wads that had all the petals sheared off and the wad bases with the same circumferential split as the fold crimped loads.

Are your results similar to these?
Can you Give me some ideas to try?
Am I on the right track yet?

I have loaded up test rounds with combos using Herco, and Blue Dot as well. I will have to wait a few weeks till I can test those out.

I have made a few test loads where I filled the slug base with a hard glue, and sanded the base square and flush, so that the wad shouldn't try to wedge into the slug base cavity. I have to wait to shoot those as well.

Thanks for your time guys!

[jmort]

it is good to see another thread with some test results. I have never shot the Lyman 525, but I don't doubt that some day I will. I will follow this thread. Thanks

[Hogtamer]

must have a hard card (20 ga) in the wad base to prevent that. Filling the base with hot glue seems to help too. Perhaps leadhead 500 will chime in as he has achieved impressive results.

[CastingFool]

Trying to reload slugs was what got me into reloading. At the time, I could get 2-3/4" groups at 50 yds, with my smoothbore 870 IC barrel with rifle sights. using either factory Remington or Winchester slugs all day long, as long as I did my part. Never achieved that kind of accuracy with the Lyman foster slugs I cast, so the project got dropped, but I still continued to reload shotshells, then rifle ammo and eventually pistoi . 870s as good and versatile as they are, have two issues going against them in the accuracy dept. One is that the barrel is removable, second, the shotgun trigger. I have read where some guys have pinned the barrel, and installed a better trigger. I have priced those triggers and they are quite expensive imo. I do have the same Lyman 525 gr mold, just waiting for better weather to start reviving the slug reloading project.

[longbow]

CastingFool:

I have little doubt you will do much better with the Lyman sabot slug over the Lyman Foster slug.

I started out with a 0.690" ball mould as my first shotgun slug mould but never managed to get any sort of accuracy with it due mostly to the fact that the ball is too big for any wads I could find and too small to shoot naked. At that time I never thought of donut wads which may have worked.

Then I bought a Lyman Foster slug mould with great hopes of accuracy as described by Lyman in their handbook. Well, I tried a number of load recipes out of the Lyman book with no success and only marginally better accuracy than I got with a naked 0.690" round ball.

What clued me in was that when I recovered slugs from a snow bank every Lyman slug had cocked differently in the bore and yes they slug up from as cast diameter of 0.705" to bore diameter of 0.729" diameter but in an uncontrolled fashion as far as I can tell.

I have even tried pennies turned down directly under the slug to give it a solid base as I was advised to do and no success. I would not grade any decent designed slug by results from the Lyman Foster slug. I have bettered it by far with slugs form home made moulds and round ball loads.

I suspect you will have much better results with the Lyman Sabot slug.

Longbow

[Hogtamer]

As for thhe trigger, I got this advice and worked great! I cut about a half round off the spring. Love this forum!
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?251824-Can-I-lighten-trigger-pull-on-870-Express

[Dthunter]

Hello Fellow Shotgun Slug Shooters! I finally have had a chance to do some test load shooting! Yayyyyyy!

All Targets were shot at 50 Yards from a Hart Benchrest front pedestal to make each shot as repeatable as possible.
Firearm used is a Rem 870, Express with a smooth bored, factory open sighted slug barrel.

Here are some pictures of the loads I tried today:

This Load is as follows:

Winchester Double AA Hulls

Winchester 209 Primer

21.0 Grains of Unique

Fedreral 12S3 Wad (The wads tended to shear the petals as it left the bore, but never damaged the base of the wad cup, to indicate any misalignment or gas blowby issues.)

Home Cast Lyman 525 Sabot slug (No filler in Slug's base cavity) Actual weight is around 513 Grains. Alloy used is the one previously listed in the first Post of this thread.

All Wads were trimmed to make sure a proper fold crimp was formed.

This and the following load had very manageable recoil!


http://i1287.photobucket.com/albums/a629/darcytyndall1/Mobile%20Uploads/image_zpsxmwc6dov.jpg (http://s1287.photobucket.com/user/darcytyndall1/media/Mobile%20Uploads/image_zpsxmwc6dov.jpg.html)
As you can see, this load shows potential. With one flier, the overall grouping is still very tolerable! Four slugs grouped nice and tight, as hoped!



This second group was shot with only one component changed. The Slug base was filled with Hot melt glue and filed square and flush with the slug base.
Again, this group was shot at 50 yards.
Interestingly enough, this load resulted in 4 of 5 wads that were recovered, had retained all their cup petals. The fifth wad had 3 of 4 petals sheared off.

http://i1287.photobucket.com/albums/a629/darcytyndall1/Mobile%20Uploads/image_zpscjcmxc40.jpg (http://s1287.photobucket.com/user/darcytyndall1/media/Mobile%20Uploads/image_zpscjcmxc40.jpg.html)

These first two loads shot very similar, even though the slug bases on the second test load were filled with hot glue. My thoughts are that the velocity and pressures are not very high on this load. At this pressure level, the slug probably was not experiencing any collapsing issues with the slug skirt, or damaged wad bases, hence no "realized" advantage with filling the slug bases with hot glue.
If the load was loaded with incrementally larger powder charges, eventually we would see a point where the hot glue filled slug would start to surpass the performance of the bare based slug. This will be a direction I will pursue in future tests.



Third load:

Winchester Double AA Hulls
Winchester 209 Primer
25.0 Grains of Herco Powder
Winchester WAA12F114 Wad Trimmed to forward end of slug front bearing surface
Lyman 525 style Cast Sabot Slug
Fold Crimped

http://i1287.photobucket.com/albums/a629/darcytyndall1/Mobile%20Uploads/image_zpsocejragp.jpg (http://s1287.photobucket.com/user/darcytyndall1/media/Mobile%20Uploads/image_zpsocejragp.jpg.html)

As indicated by the visible tape measure in each picture, that will give you an indication of true group size.

The first two groups seemed to cluster 4 shots together and throw one out of the group mean. The last group was fired in a slower, longer time period. I will continue to use a slower shooting cadence from this point forward.

I tried another load with Blue dot. This load was considerably more powerful! Very heavy recoil, and terrible grouping! 7-8" horizontally. The recovered wad bases were significantly damaged at the cup base. The bottom of the slug skirt cut into the bottom of shot cup for the majority of the circumference.
Noticeably angled/misformed shot wad columns indicated gas leakage, and over pressure failure of the Wad column. No wonder the slugs strung left and right!

Hope you enjoyed the test results, and I hope to get some more done before I go back to work.[smilie=s:

[cpileri]

Good to see this type of posting again!
C-

p.s. not that i dont enjoy them all, just saying

[leadhead 500]

The best advice I can give you from my experience is to fold crimp only with the Lyman 525. If you use a roll crimp the wad petals get tore up from opening up the roll crimp and accuracy will not be good at all. Make sure you stick with filling the base with hot glue and sanding it flush, as for the powder go with a slower powder such as Blue Dot, Long shot, etc the slower powder will not tear up your wad column as bad due to lower preasures. The hardest part of slug loading is to find a load that keeps your wads in good shape, if you tear up the wads you have failed! I had a 870 express magnum with a smooth bore slug barrel and loaded some great loads using the Lyman 525 slug.

[leadhead 500]

As for using a slower powder Hogtamer turned me onto Steel powder and I worked up this load using the Lyman 525 with a Winchester AA12 wad and here is a 5 shot group at 75 yards out of a Savage 210, wads stay in 1 piece and accuracy is good

[Dthunter]

The best advice I can give you from my experience is to fold crimp only with the Lyman 525. If you use a roll crimp the wad petals get tore up from opening up the roll crimp and accuracy will not be good at all. Make sure you stick with filling the base with hot glue and sanding it flush, as for the powder go with a slower powder such as Blue Dot, Long shot, etc the slower powder will not tear up your wad column as bad due to lower preasures. The hardest part of slug loading is to find a load that keeps your wads in good shape, if you tear up the wads you have failed! I had a 870 express magnum with a smooth bore slug barrel and loaded some great loads using the Lyman 525 slug.


My first load with Blue Dot powder was a dismal failure. The pressure developed was way too high for the wad to survive the ignition pressures. Every wad was completly destroyed. I will need to drop the powder charge a few grains to reduce pressures a bit.

[Dthunter]

As for using a slower powder Hogtamer turned me onto Steel powder and I worked up this load using the Lyman 525 with a Winchester AA12 wad and here is a 5 shot group at 75 yards out of a Savage 210, wads stay in 1 piece and accuracy is good

Thats a good grouping! The rifling makes a difference for sure! Steel powder hasnt been available here for more than a year.

my load testing will be advancing to 75 yards soon, now that I have some decent shooting loads worked out. If the groups hold together, I will push it to 100 yards.

[leadhead 500]

The best accuracy I found with Blue Dot with the AA12 wads was 44gr. Does your gun have a 3 inch chamber?

[longbow]

What charge of Blue Dot are you using?

Blue Dot was my go to powder for slugs when I could get it. I got very good round ball accuracy to at least 50 yards and some HB slugs did quite well too.

Since it seems that you are experiencing skirt set back and expansion cutting petals you might try heat treating the slugs. I did a lot of hollow base slug shooting a few years back and found that every HB slug I shot (or more correctly recovered but I recovered lots) except the Dixie Tusker (thick skirt and heat treated) had a collapsed, flared or otherwise distorted skirt. The Dixie Tusker was the only slug that did not show any skirt distortion so I decided to try heat treating and that took some marginal slugs and made them accurate. Recovered heat treated slugs showed no skirt distortion.

I can't speak personally about the Lyman sabot slug because I have not loaded or shot any... yet, but I have recovered some others shot and they showed skirt distortion.

Try heat treating and see if that helps. Heat treating and adding a 16 or 20 ga. nitro card wad under the slug should help.

Longbow

[Dthunter]

What charge of Blue Dot are you using?

Blue Dot was my go to powder for slugs when I could get it. I got very good round ball accuracy to at least 50 yards and some HB slugs did quite well too.

Since it seems that you are experiencing skirt set back and expansion cutting petals you might try heat treating the slugs. I did a lot of hollow base slug shooting a few years back and found that every HB slug I shot (or more correctly recovered but I recovered lots) except the Dixie Tusker (thick skirt and heat treated) had a collapsed, flared or otherwise distorted skirt. The Dixie Tusker was the only slug that did not show any skirt distortion so I decided to try heat treating and that took some marginal slugs and made them accurate. Recovered heat treated slugs showed no skirt distortion.

I can't speak personally about the Lyman sabot slug because I have not loaded or shot any... yet, but I have recovered some others shot and they showed skirt distortion.

Try heat treating and see if that helps. Heat treating and adding a 16 or 20 ga. nitro card wad under the slug should help.

Longbow

My charge was 44.0 grains of Blue Dot. The recoil was stupid hard!
my chamber is 3". Blue dot is clearly not the powder that shoots well at this point. But I will try a couple different charges, a little lower.

[longbow]

Well, you could back down the powder charge a few grains.

When I seriously started my smoothbore slug accuracy quest (still in progress by the way) I went through a variety of slugs and powders (well, a few powders... selection here is scarce) and wound up going to 0.735" round ball for which I could find no load data at 580 grs. Then lo and behold I found the Precision Rifle site and they had pressure test load data for Blue Dot "in any straight walled hull" for their 610 gr. PileDriver full bore slug.

The pressure tested load data started at 36 grs. and went to 44 IIRC which seems pretty high for that weight but pressure and 12,500 PSI (which also seems high to me). Anyway, I figured my 0.735" round ball at 580 grs. was a good candidate for that data so started at 36 grs. thinking I would creep up on 42 or maybe even 44 grs. Well, 36 grs. was pretty stout and 38 grs. in a light single shot was about all the fun I wanted so I stopped there. Wads looked good and accuracy was good. I used the same load data for a 525 gr. home designed and made slug as well and as long as I used a nitro card wad under the slug all was good and wads looked pretty darn good... and accuracy was good.

For me the Blue Dot worked better than faster powders.

I am still thinking you should heat treat some of those slugs and try that, and either fill the cavity or use a nitro card wad under the slug. Compare wads to what you have now. if they are still bad, drop to 40 grs. and give that a go.

Another question, what hulls and primers were you using with 44 gr. charge? If Winchester AA hulls you might be pushing pressure. Is it loading manual data you are using? (okay, two questions).

Longbow

[Critter]

I shoot the lyman sabot slug in a smooth bore barrel with a rifled screw in tube. I have found blue dot and either a Winchester WAA 12R wad or its claybuster clone to work well in Winchester AA hulls. I tried various alloy combinations. Pure lead with just a touch of tin has always shot by far the best in my gun. I also tried base wads and the hot glue trick with no measurable improvement. I live in south east Georgia but deer hunt in Ohio. I zeroed the gun in Georgia at 85 degrees. Groups ranged between 2.25" to 2.75" at 50 yards. I verified zero in Ohio and groups ranged from .750" to 1.37" at 50 yard with a temperature of 30 degrees. The following year I again shot in hot weather and duplicated the roughly 2.5" group sizes. I payed close attention in Georgia to the wads and found all were severely damaged with petals missing. When I verified a month later in Ohio, temperature was nearly 50 degrees and group size was 2.5" at 50 yards and the wads were trashed. I checked it again a few days later when the temperature had dropped to 28 degrees and group size was reduced to an average of about 1". This was when I began to suspect a temperature influence. I inspected the wads and found only one with a single severely ripped petal, all of the rest were fully intact. I also shot at 75 and 100 yards. Groups at 100 yards in the cold air ran between 2.75" to just under 4". At 115 yards the groups widened dramatically and some slugs were traveling fully sideways. I believe this is due to them going subsonic and loosing stability. I have duplicated these results for about 5 years with the only exception being that I no longer test them in Georgia. From what I have seen, the accuracy dramatically improves at about 33 degrees and is maintained to around 7 degrees which is the coldest temperature I was exposed to while visiting.
I took a loose wad and placed it into the freezer for 20 minutes. It was slightly but noticeably stiffer. I have tried these shells in several other slug guns which were fully rifled and found they more or less duplicate results. One fellow had a marlin bolt gun that made a ragged hole at 75 yards regardless of temperature. Another had a fully rifled 870 that could barely break 4" at 50 yards @ 25 degrees even thought it shoot jacketed sabots much better then that at 100 yards. Every gun is a law unto itself, but there is defiantly a temperature trend in mine and several others I tested. It is repeatable at every session..
A little tip: Trigger pull in the 870 can be reduced by replacing the standard sear spring with a target sear spring. It is a remington factory part and is sold by most of the parts supply places such as Brownells for just under $8. It took the 8 lb trigger pull on my 870 express down to 4lb.

[Hogtamer]

Critter, where in Ga. do you live?

[hatcreek]

133244These were shot at 50 yards bench rest 870 rifle barrel, my load was 42.8grs of blue dot, BPI helix cushion wad, 525 lyman slug in a federal GM hull with a ferderal 209a primer. The first 2 shots hit inside the square, the others I was flinching due to the recoil, notice the wads i recovered on top of the target they are pretty mangled up, I'm a huge fan of blue dot and pick it up where ever I can find it. HC