DIY Brenneke slug help!

[floridaheat]

So I've decided to try my hand at Brenneke slugs for my musket and I'm having a brain fart on the "tail" section. What materials should be used? Its an odd ball size so I can't use existing shotgun/slug components. Here are the specs... casts at .910 1250grs. Should be moving about 700-800 fps. The pic is a crude mock up from when I was drilling the mold. Any help is appreciated.

http://i660.photobucket.com/albums/uu328/wiswarsniper/20160915_191813_zpsnjqozp63.jpg

[rancher1913]

if he does not chime in, pm uncle dino, he is a master at creating tails for slugs. to get some ideas just search brenneke slugs or look in the shotgun section.

[uncle dino]

Holy big bore!! What is length of slug? Do you have the ability to make a hollow base pin for your mold? D

[floridaheat]

Slug length is .870 and I can't add a hollow base pin. My methods and tool are rather.... Primitive

[uncle dino]

Ok. By any chance, have you fired any, as is. What are you using for wad material. Length is almost equal to diameter. Weight is about dead on for 6 bore. It may act like a round ball, as is..I may be way off base. But maybe ..

[floridaheat]

I've been using round ball with ticking for the time being. Accuracy is okay (ish) but I'd like a little more oomph too. Haven't shot any as is.

[uncle dino]

With limited tooling ..if you can find some hard card wads..make yourself a little drilling jig to drill a hole through the center of wads and into slug...attach with a screw.. I think you'll have to play with the length. But 3/4 inch should be sufficient. D

[floridaheat]

Sounds like a plan! And yes it is a 6 bore.

[uncle dino]

Well let's see a pic of the ole 6 bore..d

[floridaheat]

http://i660.photobucket.com/albums/uu328/wiswarsniper/DSC_0281_zpsipvfobdp.jpg

[1988-4551]

I'm curious about the gun. Smooth ore or rifled barrel?

[floridaheat]

Smooth bore

[curator]

The original Brenneke slugs had a 1/2" fiber wads screwed to the base of the slug. Of course, they were made with easily swagged-down wings that were radiating from the center of the slug. They were substantially more accurate than the "Foster" slugs of the day. At $1.00 a piece in 1968 they were somewhat pricey. I bought them anyway and loaded them in virgin Alcan paper shells without a crimp. The key to Brenneke accuracy was always the light-weight wad column attached to the base allowing the slug to fly point first. The fact that it stayed centered in any shotgun barrel and passed easily through the choke gave it excellent accuracy. Accurate enough that I drilled and tapped my single shot Savage M94 for a Williams peep-type rear sight. The 12 gauge slug accounted for several good-sized black bear and white tail deer in up-state New York back in the late 60s and early 70s.

[longbow]

I've tried hard card wads and also nitro card wads drilled and attached to a slug Brenneke style for my 12 ga. cartridge gun with smokeless powder and accuracy was less than spectacular. Recovered slugs showed card wad distortion and separation even with nitro card wads which are pretty tough.

BP may be a little easier on wads but still, the layers were separating on the slugs I recovered.

Having said that Tommygirl posted a drawing of her drill jig for card wads to attach to slugs ans from what I recall she got pretty decent accuracy so it is worth a try. The same jig can be used to drill felt or plastic or even leather disks. Leather is another material I think would work well but getting hundreds of leather disks punched and drilled would be work and fairly expensive. I've thought about it but not tried it.

As curator says, the old Brennekes used a fairly hard fiber or hard felt wad that would likely do better than cardboard wads. I have been wanting to try some hard felt wads but just haven't got to it yet. In fact with BP a hard felt wad soaked with lube might work well.

With all the things that were tried in smoothbore muzzleloaders I always thought it odd that Brennekes weren't developed until well after rifled guns were in common use. The the drag stabilized nose heavy/light tail idea was well known and obviously in use with arrows and crossbow bolts so it would seem like an obvious idea to try in smoothbore muzzleloaders but I have not seen any old time slugs like that. Maybe the assembly of parts manually would not be worth the effort.

The Nessler ball was an early smoothbore slug using the shuttlecock principle like a Foster slug (so no bits to assemble) and they got some pretty spectacular claims of accuracy and range from smoothbores but they were displaced by Minies in rifled guns so didn't have a long life.

I have read posts about using Foster style slugs in smoothbore muskets but not Brenneke style slugs. I will be interested to see how this goes and what components you use. Please post results.

Longbow

[Ballistics in Scotland]

You will find a lot of good information in the Casting for Shotguns board. Besides Longbow and Uncle Dino, Cap'n Morgan has done some extremely promising work on plastic moulded sabots and Brenneke-style wads.

If you can get someone to bore a piece of steel rod or tube to the right diameter on a lathe, and make two simple punches, you can press that slug to any shape of nose or base you want, including the Foster hollow base. Just assemble it and squeeze in a large vice, or hit it with a hammer, or make a sort of stirrup-shaped frame to go over a hydraulic car jack.

In France there was a vogue, long ago, for casting the head of a nail into a round ball, with the point protruding to form a tail. It greatly improved performance with a smoothbore in hitting a large target at long range, such as a body of troops - although you might have had to do some fast talking to preserve your health if circumstances required you to surrender. It didn't, however, make the same improvement in the ability to hit the vital spot of an animal at closer range. I think this means it developed a cyclic wobble, which is the danger if any sort of light appendage to a slug is carried to excess.