buckshot problem

[West Creek]

Well - with all this talk about buckshot - figured I'd give it a try. Bought the 1/6 & 1/10 oz sling shot mold from Doit and cast up 10 lbs of each. Well the balls are running .375 in the 1/6 oz balls and they are hard to get into a 12 ga hull.

Is there any hope or scrap the mold and get another? Any advice out there? Did I get a bum mold?

West Creek

[GabbyM]

If you're using plastic wads you can cut the shot cup petals off to give extra room.

[Pepe Ray]

.375 balls are a little on the "HUGE" side for buck shot.
Why didn't you comment on the smaller balls? (1/10 oz.) They would be more in keeping w/standard BuckShot.
Pepe Ray

[Bob Krack]

Well - with all this talk about buckshot - figured I'd give it a try. Bought the 1/6 & 1/10 oz sling shot mold from Doit and cast up 10 lbs of each. Well the balls are running .375 in the 1/6 oz balls and they are hard to get into a 12 ga hull.
Is there any hope or scrap the mold and get another? Any advice out there? Did I get a bum mold?
West Creek

West Creek,

I find it hard to imagine any way .375 balls could efficiently fit into a 12ga hull. The 1/10 oz (around .300) usually fit in fairly uniform layers of three each in a 12ga hull.

I will do some measuring later today and see if I can shed any more light on the subject for you.

I certainly do not think the symptoms you describe will be changed with another mould (unless you use a different size).

Vic

[West Creek]

Shoot - I dont know why I didnt mention the 1/10 oz balls - they'll probably work just fine. In fact have a bunch of those tumbled and ready to go. Havent tried stuffing them in a casing yet on count of I tore up the only dummy I had made up with the 1/6 oz balls.

Yep them big balls are a bit on the large size. they would be classified as 0000 buckshot I recon. But they aint all that much bigger than 000 and folks use 00 in 12ga shot shell. I cant see 00 gitten stuffed in a 12ga much different than 000 or will 00 go into a shot shell side by side?

Anyway a buddy of mine was wanting to try say OO buck. From all the talk on the doit molds and my buddies talkin I got it in my head folks were using the larger balls as well as the smaller ones.

So - I recon them bigger balls would be used for somethin along the lines of double or triple ball loads in say .410??

I spose the next thing you guys are gonna tell me is that Lyman has all this info in their shotgun manual - huh. I tried to git one but the local gander mt dont have any and a couple of reloading suppliers were out of stock on it.

I'll give them 1/10 oz balls a go and see what happens - they was running .315 and 400 gr fer 10. The 1/6 oz balls run right at 435 gr fer 10 but based on the imperfections I spose any load can sway 20-30 grain pretty easy.

I've got some buckshot loads from Hodgen - AA Hulls - White wads and Win 209 primers. Any advise before I go stuffing them 1/10 balls before I find a Lyman Manual??

[Bob Krack]

Shoot - I dont know why I didnt mention the 1/10 oz balls - they'll probably work just fine. In fact have a bunch of those tumbled and ready to go. Havent tried stuffing them in a casing yet on count of I tore up the only dummy I had made up with the 1/6 oz balls.

Yep them big balls are a bit on the large size. they would be classified as 0000 buckshot I recon. But they aint all that much bigger than 000 and folks use 00 in 12ga shot shell. I cant see 00 gitten stuffed in a 12ga much different than 000 or will 00 go into a shot shell side by side?

Anyway a buddy of mine was wanting to try say OO buck. From all the talk on the doit molds and my buddies talkin I got it in my head folks were using the larger balls as well as the smaller ones.

So - I recon them bigger balls would be used for somethin along the lines of double or triple ball loads in say .410??

I spose the next thing you guys are gonna tell me is that Lyman has all this info in their shotgun manual - huh. I tried to git one but the local gander mt dont have any and a couple of reloading suppliers were out of stock on it.

I'll give them 1/10 oz balls a go and see what happens - they was running .315 and 400 gr fer 10. The 1/6 oz balls run right at 435 gr fer 10 but based on the imperfections I spose any load can sway 20-30 grain pretty easy.

I've got some buckshot loads from Hodgen - AA Hulls - White wads and Win 209 primers. Any advise before I go stuffing them 1/10 balls before I find a Lyman Manual??

West Creek,

The 12 ga AA shell will not hold two .375 balls side by side within the diameter of the hull. The maximum inside diameter I have been able to find in my various 12ga hulls is .740.

As far as the 1/10th oz shot goes, I have been using 15.6 to 17.7 grains of Red Dot powder behind 396 grains of .312 shot - that's nine per case. That's 3 layers of three balls. Fits good.

I have used the same charge behind 440 grains of .312 shot - that's 10 per case, three layers of three and one ball centered on the top layer. Hard to keep the tenth ball centered when crimping.

I extrapolated from Lee's 12ga 1oz load and stayed on the low side. One of my goals was a lighter kicking load to help the kids (and the old man) fire more rounds at an outing. Mine are maybe 75% of the kick of a standard factory load and have absolutely NO signs of excessive pressure, not even as much pressure sign as factory loads.

I suspect that any published 1oz load published would be safe as long as you were certain to stay on the low side. I have no knowledge of haw to develop higher pressure loads on a shotgun as compared to on metallic cartridges, although I DO occasionally see somewhat flattened primers on some factory Federal field loads. Just be careful and stay on the low end 'til you can find good published data.

The .375 ball MIGHT be useable in a .410 but I suspect you will have to remove the petals or use felt/flat wads. I do not have a .410 shell to make the measurements with so I'm not certain.

Be careful, your mileage may vary.

Vic