Which round cast round ball diameters have you had the best luck with?

[huntersdog]

For casting for the 12ga shotgun, what cast round ball diameters have you had the best luck with hunting, and best accuracy? Do some of you folks cut the fins off the top of the wads for more accuracy or does it make the load less accurate? Or am I better off with just using a slug mold.

[Greg5278]

I'd go with a .735" Fullbore or a .662 or .678 in a Proper Wad. The .690 Balls shear off the Petals too often.
Most Trap Wads have too much Variation in the Petal Thickness. A Sheared Petal often means a Flier when Shooting.
Full bore slugs and Balls are the easiest to get to shoot well. It's not an exact Science, Load Development will be needed to tailor to the Gun/Bore Diameter.
Greg

[jmort]

^^^ You will not get any better advice than this

[cpileri]

I use .678's in a wadcup. here is p picture of wad fit w those:
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?190170-Shooting-round-balls-Range-report&p=2109160&highlight=#post2109160
C-

[MBTcustom]

I use a Lyman .735 RB which actually drops .738 with COWW.
I air cool them then tumble lube them in 45-45-10.
I use a Remington primer, SR4759 powder, Federal 12s4 wads with the petals snipped off, 1.6cc cream of wheat, and all this packed in an old style WW hull.
At 50 yards I can hit golf balls on demand (which is rather like shooting a Chevy at a fishing boat) LOL!
At 100 yards the group opens to about 12" with the occasional flier (call it one or two out of every ten?
At 130 yards the groups are more like 18"-24".

All this this from a 20" barrel with a rear sight fashioned from epoxy putty and the bead front sight.
One thing I would mention is that barrel heat was worth paying close attention to. After five shots, the groups would open up and it was necessary to wipe the barrel down with water before continuing. As long as the barrel was kept cool, the accuracy was pretty impressive (considering the sights I was using, and the fact that it was a smoothbore).

Another thing I will mention is that I seldom recovered any of the balls unless I threw about fifty of them in the same spot. Then I could find one of I dug for it (about 18" later). Friend of mine have won bets shooting through 12" trees, and the occasional telephone pole using my loads. Very little stops a big round ball cooking along at over 1000FPS. It probably doesn't expand much, but who cares? Like they say: "a 30 caliber may expand, but a 3/4" round ball can't get any smaller".

That's why I say a semi-automatic shotgun full of loads like these has to be one of the most formidable close range hog guns for the money. I've shot 7 in a row fast as I can pull the trigger and kept them inside 5" at 30 yards. That's definitely "enough gun".

[rhouser]

How much SR4759 are you using? Interesting powder choice. I shoot alot of it in rifle cartridges. Thanks in advance. rch

[BAGTIC]

I use .735 in my rifled 12 gauge and .615 in my 20 gauge smoothbore. Both work fine.

[Moiecol]

I went with 20ga. round ball which comes out at .595 The only problem is it rolls through my rifled slug barrel. No hulls were available for that size. So I used a .010 lubed cotton patch, so I still need to test some other powder loads.
( didn't make enough )
27.5 gn. - 5" group
29.0 gn. - 2" group
Both at 50 yds.

[longbow]

As already mentioned, good sizes are 0.662". 0.678" and 0.735". All are available as standard round ball moulds from Lyman and others.

Each has its benefits:

- 0.662" weighs exactly 1 oz. in pure lead so there are about a million slug recipes that can be used. It is slightly undersize for most standard wads but can be patched up to snug fit which allows some tailoring of fit and load. It is also a good fit in some steel shot wads so can be loaded that way. In fact those might work in rifled gun as well.
- 0.678" is a good fit in many standard shotcups so handy and easy to load. It weighs just a bit over 1 oz. so again, there are lots of slug and birdshot recipes that can be used. I have to think that a 0.678" ball in the right wad would work well in a rifled gun but I only shoot smoothbores so speculation on my part.
- 0.735" being bore size (actually slightly over) weighs about 1 3/8 oz. so packs some weight. It seems easy to get good accuracy with it but slug specific load data is not as readily available as for lighter slugs. It shoots very well from both smoothbore and rifled guns (I borrowed a rifled gun to try it in and got very good groups.

Whichever way you go, you want a snug sliding fit to bore for smoothbores. Finding the right wad for a rifled gun might be a bit of a challenge for the 0.662" and 0.678" balls but of course the 0.735" ball is a perfect fit so make up a hard card wad column or clip the petals off a shotcup and load 'em up. I had best results using a plastic gas seal then hard card wad column with my 0.735" balls.

I also find that a scoop of Cream 'O Wheat under the ball, for all sizes, whether in shotcup or not, helps accuracy.

I have not hunted with any of these balls but would not hesitate to use them for hunting.

Accuracy for my good smoothbore loads runs 3" to 4" at 50 yards... better than any home cast and loaded slug I have tried so far. Groups do start to open up by 75 yards or so and fliers become more common so 50 to maybe 60 yards should be a range limit for hunting. At least I wouldn't feel comfortable shooting at an animal any further away than that. There's still lots of oomph left but not good enough accuracy for my liking. A rifled gun should do much better at longer ranges at least to 100 yards.

A commonly used round ball is 0.690" but as Greg said, they tend to shear petals off. I have had no success using 0.690" balls naked or in any shotcups I have tried.

I have loaded all round balls over mostly SR4756 and Blue Dot. My preference so far is Blue Dot.

Longbow

[Moonie]

I use the tri-ball load using .600 balls from WDWW alloy.