20 gauge round ball / rifled choke surprise.

[Petander]

I see you have the Christmas color balls. (red & green). Is it much effort to powder coat them?

.

Hi Tek is easy, I just swirl a 5-8 lbs batch in a container wirh the Hi Tek solution for ~15 seconds and pour them on a mesh ,put them on top of warm oven and leave them to dry. I let them dry at least 30 minutes, doing other things while they dry. Sometimes longer,it doesn'matter if I go to town and bake them later. I bake them in the oven for nine minutes. Let cool,swirl again,let dry,bake again. Done.

Drying is the only step that takes time but I'm not watching them while they are drying.

Clean handling and much,much less time and effort for gun cleaning comes as a reward. I even coat my buckshot.

[Petander]

My friend tried these Econony Slugs today with his 870.

No accuracy with any of the normal chokes. They do penetrate 6" logs just fine.

.

Looks like the rifled choke did the trick for 870- I do not understand how my fixed full choke combination gun likes these,though. Maybe because it's an overpriced Merkel? Next time I'll position the sprues all the same way to see if the flyers go away.

[725]

Petander. -- Now I have to expand my addiction. Hope you're happy. It wasn't bad enough before, but now I have to get into powder coating !! I have had some success with a 12 ga. round ball load, but your thread on the 20 ga. round ball has me now adding that to the list. I'll be working with a Hastings light weight fully rifled barrel and hope to attain success on par with your efforts. I do have a RB mold for my .60 rifle and it casts .592. Need to do some judicious measuring to see if that will fit the 20. It will be tight, I just don't know how tight. From my experimenting with the 12, I have developed the idea a tight fit lends itself to accuracy and consistency. Still assembling components right now.

[Petander]

Coating is addictive.

I have had ok results in 12 gauge with most of the fullbore slugs right away. Smooth barrel,not rifled,cylinder. My ok is fist size groups @ 35 meters.

I will try a fullbore slug in 20 as well but not yet,I've done enough testing for a while,now it's time to shoot. My understanding is somewhere around .620 for a fullbore 20?

All in all this whole "Economy Slug" -thing is turning out more accurate than I was hoping for.

[725]

Petander. -- Without dragging up old stuff about my 12 ga load, maybe you could hit the archive here at castboolts and research "12 ga success with roundball". (or something close to that). It's what I intend to do with the 20 ga round ball loading. It explains my thoughts about tight loading and roundball. I just ordered some felt wads to use as I could not find any cork wads made in 28 ga. to load under the 20 ga. ball.

[longbow]

For full bore round ball and rifled choke tube I'd think you would want a ball up to 0.005" larger than groove diameter.

I and others have had very good results with 0.735" RB's in 12 ga. While 0.006" larger than nominal smoothbore diameter even WW balls swage down easily due to small contact area.

0.735" RB's I shot from a rifled Remington 870 with 0.727" groove diameter shot very well and recovered balls were nicely engraved with a "belt" around the equator.

For your 20 ga. rifled choke tube I'd think you'd want balls to be a similar amount over groove diameter.

And on a little different note, your rifled choke tube success stimulated me to order a rifled choke tube for my 12 ga.

Petander you are and enabler!

Longbow

[Petander]

Rifled choke really made my 870 shoot these balls.

I tried one more thing: loaded the balls sprue up. This is pretty good grouping for an "Economy Slug" in my book. Here is a 35 meter ten shot group AND a 75 meter five shot group. I marked the five holes with those white wads. I can cover the 75 m group with my palm.

35 m I was aiming at the target center,75 m at the head. Bags and red dot.

.

.

Cheers, The Enabler.

[W.R.Buchanan]

Petander you are an enabler!

Longbow

That is now known as an "Influencer."

Randy

[longbow]

Whatever! He is going to cost me money! I've been sitting on the sidelines too long! It's time to break new ground or at least follow in Petander's footsteps. I'm not proud!

A rifled choke tube is on its way to me as I type!

Longbow

[Petander]

I've read so much about rifled chokes... and by luck a local shop had a Carlson's for 20 gauge 870. Some things have to be tried.

We don't have "shotgun only" hunting restrictions over here,very few people hunt with slugs. This is the first rifled choke I've ever seen. I'm simply interested in making slugs shoot out of a smoothbore, deer is shotgun slug legal after all.

Longbow,the rifled choke likes to tighten up during shooting. Use good anti-seize,it makes a big difference. I can only imagine what a hard fullbore slug might do.

I checked some trapshot patterns in the snow with the rifled choke. Looks like a normal cylinder pattern, no donut hole. Need to check tungsten loads next.

[725]

75 meters ! Wow. Well done. Keep doin' what you're doin'.

[Petander]

Thank you,725. Cork under the ball was a good change.

I'm trying to eliminate my own errors so I'm seating the corks with a press. Quite a bit of pressure indeed,the cork seats pretty snug in the (slightly tapered) factory trapshot cup. I then push the balls with finger pressure as deep as they go in the cups. Again a nice,snug fit with the coated 575 Lee balls. Sprue up tightened the groups again.

[303Guy]

Whatever! He is going to cost me money! I've been sitting on the sidelines too long! It's time to break new ground or at least follow in Petander's footsteps. I'm not proud!

A rifled choke tube is on its way to me as I type!

Longbow

Don't underestimate high strength loctite in place of silver solder. The downside of loctite is it can be difficult to remove - it takes a lot of heat top break down the loctite, probably as much heat as silver solder but the heat only gets applied to the sleeve so the barrel itself remains cooler. The trick is to pull it off while hot which is when the loctite is softened, rather than broken down. The bluing remains untouched.

I once removed a suppressor thread sleeve by turning it off in the lathe, leaving just a thin visible layer of loctite which cleaned off without damaging the barrel finish.

So reading this thread, I am considering doing the rifled choke or barrel attachment on my 410 shotgun. I got it with the intentions of shooting slugs from it. Never got that far but one day soon ... (now that I am officially retired).

[725]

Eager other your results with some cork under there.

[bikerbeans]

Interesting that the rifled tube didn't make a donut hole in the pattern. I have shot bird shot through a fully rifled barrel and it made a hugh donut hole at 15 yards. Maybe not much spin is imparted to the wad when it hits the rifled tube at near max velocity?

BB

[Petander]

Interesting that the rifled tube didn't make a donut hole in the pattern. I have shot bird shot through a fully rifled barrel and it made a hugh donut hole at 15 yards. Maybe not much spin is imparted to the wad when it hits the rifled tube at near max velocity?

BB

I'm wondering the same. Will check with some other ammo & paper for sure.

[longbow]

I'm thinking more like in fully rifled barrel there is time for the shot to get spinning with the wad where with rifled choke tube the wad hits the rifling and even if it picks up full spin the shot probably mostly skids in the shotcup picking up little spin. Could be even the wad skids since it is soft with fluid payload.

You know what they say... "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!"

Petander is on a roll here... success after success! Got to like that!

Longbow

[725]

Petander. -- Which cork are you using? I use a 20 ga cork in my 12 ga, and plan to use a 28 ga, 1/2 " fiber wad (couldn't find any 28 ga cork) in my 20 ga. They kinda fit as is. I don't have to press any thing. Following your efforts closely .

[Petander]

You know what they say... "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!"

Petander is on a roll here... success after success! Got to like that!

Longbow

Thanks Longbow - it took me five molds to get 20 gauge accuracy. Lee is great for testing,I have another Lee 575 ball mold in the mail already.

And my major "trial and error" ingredient,the Rio factory trap round,this is pure luck.

725, I just noticed my corks are 20 gauge!!! That's why the fit is press snug. No label in the bags,they are 10 mm high. They are from SIARM,Italy, packing invoice says "100 Cork LB6 20 gauge 10mm". Cost is 90 cents/100...

I press them tight,probably crushing the wad a bit. Then the 575 ball sits pretty much halfway in the cup,no deeper. For some reason this works with my 870/Carlson's rifled choke.

My shell cutting (by hand) is the biggest variable but my machine roll crimp compensates for that a bit.

[Petander]

This is not exactly hopeless in my Raffaello with cyl choke.

I got a Rib Rider mount for my 870 but it didn't fit, my rib being too thick. So I put it on a Raffaello and tried these balls, 35 meters here. Not sorted balls,not loaded "sprue up" either. Just a quick check.

The one to the left looks like it was keyholing,please educate me.