shooting on a shoestring
07-10-2009, 08:07 PM
I had come to the end with some 1950's military .38 shells. I've been shooting them since the 1970s, and Dad had a decade on them before I started. They had become to short and thick-walled so that even my shortest boolits would still bulge the cases to the point I couldn't chamber them.
Making snake shot cases was the obvious use. I used card wads made by using a de-primed case driven through a piece of cardboard from the back of a tablet of paper with a 3-pound hammer over a 2x4. I used compressed air to blow through the primer pocket and blow out the cut wads. 2.5 grains of Bullseye with an over-powder wad pushed down tight (I used a valve stem of a Chevy exhaust valve) filled to the top with #8 shot (101 grains), topped with an over-shot wad seated in my seating die to just below flush and roll crimped.
I fired 37 of them today. What fun! At 6 feet the shot penetrates one side of a plastic pop bottle. The pattern is pretty good, about 4 inches and dense enough to get a half-dozen or so pellets on a snake at that distance. At 3 feet, the pattern is about 2 inches and leaves one ragged hole in traget paper.
Odd though, I fired 15 from my 4&5/8" Blackhawk - no leading at all. Fired 22 from my 2&1/4" SP101 - heavy leading.
It was a hoot to throw the plastic bottle and pop it before it hit the ground. I think the bottle may have travled farther after impact than the birdshot did.
Making snake shot cases was the obvious use. I used card wads made by using a de-primed case driven through a piece of cardboard from the back of a tablet of paper with a 3-pound hammer over a 2x4. I used compressed air to blow through the primer pocket and blow out the cut wads. 2.5 grains of Bullseye with an over-powder wad pushed down tight (I used a valve stem of a Chevy exhaust valve) filled to the top with #8 shot (101 grains), topped with an over-shot wad seated in my seating die to just below flush and roll crimped.
I fired 37 of them today. What fun! At 6 feet the shot penetrates one side of a plastic pop bottle. The pattern is pretty good, about 4 inches and dense enough to get a half-dozen or so pellets on a snake at that distance. At 3 feet, the pattern is about 2 inches and leaves one ragged hole in traget paper.
Odd though, I fired 15 from my 4&5/8" Blackhawk - no leading at all. Fired 22 from my 2&1/4" SP101 - heavy leading.
It was a hoot to throw the plastic bottle and pop it before it hit the ground. I think the bottle may have travled farther after impact than the birdshot did.