Plastic and felt wads forced into home-made Foster slugs cavity: what do I do?!

[Y-man]

Hi, I have been self-fabricating and shooting a Foster-type slug for about a year now...with varied successes: but reasonable accuracy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWLYKJG1-W0


Last week, for the first time, I recovered one of my fired slugs: I set up a plastic (Soft plastic) bucket filled with damp sand, at about 30 yards, and fired into it. I was able to recover the round: and was not totally surprised to see that the plastic wad had been forced quite firmly into the cavity, and one side of the skirt had been squished. The slug did not tumble (they usually do not tumble...) but I suspect that accuracy might be compromised.

What can I do, within my limited resources, to correct this?

1. Should I fill up the cavity with candle wax? Or use Hot Glue?
2. Should I cut off a bit of plastic rod and push that into the cavity to stop the wad from being forced in? (this rod could be glued in, and stabilize the slug in flight, or could be free-flying and fall out of the slug as it emerges from the muzzle.)

What do you guys think? What should I do?

Last question: I have no way of measuring it: but do you think my slugs are expanding at firing to fill up the bore and present a good bore seal?

[SuperBlazingSabots]

Good morning Y-man I was not able to see your video but here's what I would do is to use a thick hard nitro card below the slug. If you have room in your wad column then .250 thick card or at least .170 dark nitro card below the slug.
Hope it helps.
Ajay
www.PreciousVideoMemories.Com

[Kskybroom]

Hi
Need more info Need to know whats in your load??

[yondering]

Are you using a rifled barrel or smoothbore?

[Y-man]

Sorry I did not provide all the info to explain my questions:

1. I'm firing the slugs from a smooth-bore Mossberg 500A shotgun.
2. I am basically emptying out regular shot-shells, casting the lead into slugs and inserting into regular BB or AA 2.75" (Or 3") shells. I am not building loads per se... See my Slug fabrication here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWLYKJG1-W0

(You could always copy the link and paste in a browser.)

Where I am based (Nigeria): we do not have access to buy any of the materials (Such as the Nitro wads.) you guys take for granted: I have to improvise ALWAYS.

I just need some advice on what to do to stop the wads being forced into the cavities of the slugs.

Hope this makes it clearer?
Thanks.

[yondering]

Your plastic rod idea should work pretty well. Hot glue will prevent the wad being forced into the slug, but is flexible enough that it will cause the skirt of the slug to swell up more on firing. This may or may not be a problem, examining the fired wads will tell you a lot. You may find the wad petals are cut off when using hot glue in the base. A hard epoxy might work better, or just use your plastic rod.

[diehard]

Why wouldn't punched out carboard wads inserted under the slug work?

For that matter you can glue several squares of cardboard together and compress until dried, then punch out 20 guage-sized "hard-card" wads to put under your slug, stacking them until you get the column the right height. This is what I do to keep my Lee slugs from sticking to my plastic shot wads. Any kind of compressed paper "cardboard" will work, even thin corregated box cardboard.

You can make a servicable wad punch from a 6"-8"piece of 5/8" pipe, tapering the outside to about 60 degrees, and sharpening the outside edge until it cuts effectively. Use a hammer to pound the punch into the cardboard, and a screwdriver to push the card wads out through the pipe. Easy.

Would a layer of "hard card" solve your problem?

[longbow]

So far in about all of my slug testing with hollow base slugs skirt swelling (uneven) and belling at the base have been a problem unless the slug starts out bore size so cannot swell.

Oven heat treating helps and if you are using shot you should be able to heat treat the slugs.

As yondering mentioned, hot melt glue filling the skirt will help and if not available, filling with cornmeal or other hard ground cereal (use tape over the open base to retain the cereal), wax, or even hard tree resin or pitch melted and poured in should work.

Really hard cardboard disks under the slug may help but they do have to be hard. Typical corrugated cardboard won't work (in my experience).

I think you would be better off using round balls inside the shotcup. A round ball that will just fit into the shotcup or that is patched up to size in a shotcup will be from about 1 ounce to 1 1/8 oz. so perfect for using the shot load.

I know you have limited tooling but a simple round ball mould can be made of aluminum using hand ground tools as in post #37 here:

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=49919&page=2

A round ball will give quite good accuracy to 50 yards or so even if not perfectly round and no wads stuck in the base.

Just some thoughts.

Longbow

[Y-man]

Thanks a great deal Longbow: maybe this is the direction I should be going next. It is WONDERFUL about the coincidence! I had always thought about using the aluminium cooling block from a computer CPU for fabricating a mold. I actually have collected a few and kept: thinking of HOW to use them:: but Hansol's method is perfect.

I mentioned the aluminium thingy in a reply on this blog:

http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2009/08/24/turning-birdshot-into-slugs-for-self-defense/


Thanks guys. Keep the advice coming!

[Blammer]

I would use candle wax in the hollow base, will fill the void prevent the wad from sticking and it will let go easily.

[DLCTEX]

Taking a clue from an article I read about some new Federal hollow base slugs that used a plastic ball in the base, I loaded some and found improved accuracy. I ran out of plastic balls and substituted a lead round ball (ww) and accuracy was same. The ball printed a few inches away at 25 yds. Just an experiment I was playing with that I haven't pursued farther. They were loaded using AA wads. The weight of the ball calls for reduced charges, of course.

[longbow]

Y-man:

Another thought. I am currently working on Brenneke style slugs with attached basewad due to problems with hollow base skirt failures and problems.

By machining the mould to the right size cast slugs can be made to just slightly under bore size and with a screw hole in them then cardboard or other disks screwed to the slug. Your mould would work fine for this by making a thin tapered "needle" to replace your bolt hollow base pin.

The short fat slug with attached basewad is going to be nose heavy for sure. The problem is finding the right material for basewads. Dense felt should work if you can get it. Something like polyethylene disks punched out stacked, drilled and screwed on should work too.

Just another thought that might get you better results but without making a new mould.

Longbow

[Spudgunr]

Y-man: Do you have access to superglue/crazy glue/cyanoacrylate? If so, maybe put some of it on your felt wads (put them on wax paper) and let them harden. That MAY turn the felt wad into something hard enough to work as a hard nitro card.

Also, I don't know how woodworking supplies are in your area, but look up "plug cutter" online. You use it with a drill and it is meant to cut out cylinders from wood. You could stack up some thin (1/8", 3mm) hardboard of some sort and cut it from that. I saw a 5/8" thick one which would fit inside of a 12 gauge wad, though if you don't put the slugs IN the wad then you'll want one closer to 11/16 (if you can find one in 17 or 18mm that would work, but the 18mm might be a little too large and need to be sanded down some).

Something like this (yes, this person doesn't ship outside of the US, but somebody will):

http://cgi.ebay.com/Irwin-5-8-Quick-Change-Plug-Cutter-Unmarked-Loose-USA_W0QQitemZ6024480210QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_Defau ltDomain_0?hash=item1671645d2

[Dixie Slugs]

Wads blowing into a soft lead hollow base slugs, homemade or factory is nothing new! We tested many factory soft lead Foster type slugs....most recovered slugs had wads blown into the base!
The best we have found is the fill the slugs base with buffer and then push the slugs up and into the hull until it bottoms on the wads. This allows the slug's base to expand without having the wads to blow into the base. This does not cause the slug, as it leaves the barrel to be out of round....James

[Harmon_Greer]

fill the hollow base with wooden dowel, or super glue. the dowel doenst have to fit super tight, just be the right length.