Alloy made a big difference with slugs today

[toallmy]

I can't swear to it until I repeat the test , but my groups went from 6 inch 100 yards and me being happy to a 12 inch 100 yard o my God what happened , with just the alloy being changed . Ok there may be more to it about 6-8 weeks ago I had a few slugs that I cast out of plumbers lead with a MP 525 12 gage wad mold that shot very nice with a simple claybuster wad in a WAA hull over herco powder . Then I took off the scope and swapped the rifled barrel for a smooth bore for a while . Today I put the slug barrel back on and loaded up 10 slugs that I cast out of 50/50 coww / plumbers with the same load , and it was horrible . I am going to double check the scope mounting but I have to cast up some soft slugs to test it again . I also noticed the wads today still had the petals attached wile the previous wads cut the petals off all the way around . Possibly the soft slugs bumped up in size when fired , anyway I came home with a broken heart I knew not to mess with something that was working . :(:sad:

[richhodg66]

My Lyman manual suggests that these must be cast of pure lead.

I have the mold, have not cast with it yet, however, I bought some the guy said were cast of wheel weights years ago and tried a similar load to what you tried in a Marlin 512 rifled gun and was very disappointed. At the 50 yards I shot it, it didn't group as well as my smoothbore 16 gauge with factory Foster slugs.

I'm going to cast some of these to try in a smoothbore (I no longer have a rifled 12 gauge), guess I'll try the soft approach first.

[Hogtamer]

In my testing I originally used hard lead, not so good. The next were soft, weighed about 522 and results were much better. Of course moving scope can create problems but the soft lead is the way to go.

[toallmy]

I got a little rambunctious so instead of emptying my pot full of 50/50 and refilling it with soft I cast them out of the same mix I do most of my casting with . It was a bad idea , but they are recyclable . The good news is my pot is almost empty so changing alloy won't be a problem .