Lee slugs in smoothbore

[Rp-]

I've been considering a Lee slug mold lately. Do the Lee slugs shoot well out of a smooth barrel or are they only good in rifles barrels?

As I understand these slugs you can load them in normal wads as well. Is that true?

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[Hogtamer]

I had best results with the 7/8 oz and cylinder bore.275825
This one was killed at about 65 yds and red dot on 870 police. Gotta have 20 hard card in base of wad.

[tankgunner59]

Hah! You had me looking for rifled slug molds! And my 870 has a rifled slug barrel. [smilie=1:

[tomme boy]

7/8oz shoots better in both smooth and rifled barrels. Get your stack height right and they are OK out to 50 yds with a smooth barrel. I have not tried them in my rifled barrel yet. Coming soon. If you can find the lyman they work really well in a rifled barrel.

[Hogtamer]

Tankgunner, look no further than the Lyman525 mold. The lee slugs in no way compare in accuracy. I get 3” groups at 100 yds with the same set up you’ve got, scoped of course.. The lee slugs are best out of smoothbore but there are always a flyer or two.

[EMC45]

I use the 1oz Lee Key Drive mold in AAs and Universal hulls with HS6 and Green Dot loads with CB1114 wads. At 25 yards standing I can make them touch. This is out of a 1974 Wingmaster with a 20in RS smooth bore barrel.

[longbow]

Rp-:

I am not speaking form loads of experience with Lee slugs here but I have both the 1 oz. and 7/8 oz. moulds.

First, the 1 oz. mould cast perfectly right from the get go. Accuracy from cylinder bore smoothbore at 50 yards was not as good as my round ball loads but not bad running about 6". I did not do a lot of shooting and playing with wads for better fit.

The 7/8 oz. mould had some burrs so slugs stuck on the core pin. I had to carefully deburr the slot of the core pin to get it to work. After that the 7/8 oz. also cast very well. The 1 oz. mould is slightly larger than the 7/8 oz. mould (or mine is anyway) so where some wads fit well for the 1 oz. slug, the fit is too loose with the 7/8 oz. slug. Fit matters!

You should look through SuperBlazingSabots thread for slug/wad fits and slug your bore or at least push a slug through using several different wads to achieve a "snug" push fit through the bore. Ajay describes this well in his thread and with great pics!

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?150140-VdoMemorie-Blazing-Sabot!

Ajay is mostly a 20 ga. shooter but he posted lots on 12 ga. Lee slug/wad fits to bore as well in that thread. It appears many pics are now gone unfortunately but still worth looking through the thread.

I will second what Hogtamer says about a card wad under the slug. I use 16 ga. nitro card wad but nothing wrong with 20 ga. either. This nitro card wad keeps the wad from being jammed into the hollow cavity under pressure. I have limited access to reloading supplies so have not tried many different wads and currently have Claybuster clones of Winchester wads and real Winchester wads. Both have thin bottoms in the cup that will deform into the hollow cavity of the slug if a nitro card wad is not added. Some wads may be okay without the nitro card wad.

If you have wads and fit is tight there is no harm in trying and if accuracy is good then you are good to go. If fit is loose, you can use a paper wrap or two to tighten fit up.

Look for wads after shooting to check condition. As a general comment, if the wad is in bad shape, usually accuracy is not good. Look for blown gas seals, sheared petals or wrinkled petals. Sheared petals indicates fit is to tight, wrinkled petals could indicate damage at crimp opening or too loose a fit, blown gas seal in my experience is too hot a load or not enough support under the slug.

I have not shot the Lyman sabot slug but as Hogtamer says, it can be very accurate from from rifled gun and some have had good success from smoothbores. However, moulds are expensive. The Lee slug moulds are much less expensive and a decent mould for the money with a decent performing slug. Which reminds me... you should also search for RanchDog's thread on success with Lee slugs. A little different approach and for rifled gun but he cut the shotcup off trap wads and put that onto hard card wad column to get very good results. Just another technique that could apply to smoothbore too.

Longbow.

[daengmei]

I found the pics at SuperBlazingSabots facebook.

[Bob in St. Louis]

Lots of experience and good words here folks, thank you!