Blood Trail
07-16-2017, 10:21 AM
A while back, for craps and giggles, I loaded a couple 3.5" Dixie Tri-ball loads and got pretty decent groups of 6-8" at 30 yards. I meant to go back and revisited it, but I got swamped.
Anyway, I decided to load up a couple more using 34 grs of Steel (using what the late James Gates posted here a while back). The only thing I changed was I added an overshot card to ensure for a proper crimp with 3.5" hulls.
I should of started at 20 yards, but the range was packed, so I started at 50 yards.
It took about 5 shots to even hit the 72"x60" cardboard target. I had stapled a deer target to it. The balls shot all around the deer like it had a force field protecting it.
I was able to gather some of the wads and a few balls. The wads are all types of deformed and melted. The bases where blown.
I had a 20 ga nitro card in the bases and all wads and balls where mica coated with BPI #47 buffer added.
One of the issues to why these performed so poorly was the alloy of my balls. I got my first batch mixed in with my second batch which I alloyed with Linotype. I'll analyze those at work so I can tell which is which.
I used a CYC choke out of a Mossberg 835. Not sure if the barrel being over-bored made an issue as the last time I shot these, I was using a 935 with a MOD choke.
I'm pretty stumped as to why or how these wads got so tore up. Here's a couple pics of the recovered wads and balls.
What do y'all think?
https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20170716/024113fb3d71ca2e8188001ed2d78546.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20170716/7900cf3444259b57096da40f89317c20.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20170716/e23534ae875aa73d9c7f96e4e1626c6f.jpg
Noticed the ball on the far right barely had any setback dents in it.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Anyway, I decided to load up a couple more using 34 grs of Steel (using what the late James Gates posted here a while back). The only thing I changed was I added an overshot card to ensure for a proper crimp with 3.5" hulls.
I should of started at 20 yards, but the range was packed, so I started at 50 yards.
It took about 5 shots to even hit the 72"x60" cardboard target. I had stapled a deer target to it. The balls shot all around the deer like it had a force field protecting it.
I was able to gather some of the wads and a few balls. The wads are all types of deformed and melted. The bases where blown.
I had a 20 ga nitro card in the bases and all wads and balls where mica coated with BPI #47 buffer added.
One of the issues to why these performed so poorly was the alloy of my balls. I got my first batch mixed in with my second batch which I alloyed with Linotype. I'll analyze those at work so I can tell which is which.
I used a CYC choke out of a Mossberg 835. Not sure if the barrel being over-bored made an issue as the last time I shot these, I was using a 935 with a MOD choke.
I'm pretty stumped as to why or how these wads got so tore up. Here's a couple pics of the recovered wads and balls.
What do y'all think?
https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20170716/024113fb3d71ca2e8188001ed2d78546.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20170716/7900cf3444259b57096da40f89317c20.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20170716/e23534ae875aa73d9c7f96e4e1626c6f.jpg
Noticed the ball on the far right barely had any setback dents in it.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk