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Thread: Buckshot inside a shot cup vs not

  1. #1
    Boolit Man
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    Buckshot inside a shot cup vs not

    I have a few loads I collected from manuals and powder companies for buckshot.
    Some loads call for a gas seal and felt/fiber wads, and others call for plastic shot wads.
    All I have are the wads, I currently do not have any gas seals and felts/fibers, so I have never tried these loads.

    I have two loads that call for wads. One calls for a WAA12, and another calls for a WAA12F114. Using these wads, I have to take and push the pellets into place to make them set at a flat 3 pellets stack, because of the pedals of the wads. I cut the pedals off one of the wads, seated it in a empty hull at the same depth it would be with a normal powder charge and tested the pellets. They drop in place and stack without having to be pushed into place. I have not loaded or shot any like this.

    I can see with the pedals, there is a layer between the pellets and the barrel, possibly protecting the pellets from the bore, and the bore from the pellets. Without the pedals, the pellets will just rub on the bore.
    Now would either one of these make a hill of beans difference from one another? I suppose I could load some any try, but before I do, I was just curious if anyone has already done it?
    I just wonder if there would be any noticeable difference in the patterns between pedals vs no pedals? These are just normal birdshot wads.

  2. #2
    Boolit Buddy
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    For me leaving the petals on a plastic wad or cutting them off is a matter of your pellet fit and the shell functioning in your gun. In other words if your pellets are packed too tight is the shell deformed (lumpy profile) to the point of feeding/chambering issues in your gun.
    I've not been able to make much sense of buckshot "patterns" compared to my birdshot patterns. Easy enough to see for yourself with several sheets of cardboard at the distance you want. You don't have to follow birdshot protocol.
    Just because change doesn't make a difference doesn't mean that change is bad.

  3. #3
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    Well seeing as you have both types loaded you might as well see what your barrel likes the best. That is always the real test anyway. My barrel and yours are two different cousins. Shot barrels have all sorts of peculiarities like forcing cone, tube diameter and choke plus smoothness and lengths that affect everything with internal ballistics.
    Plus you get the fun of whamming them down range.
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  4. #4
    Boolit Master

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    The plastic wad will protect the pellets from scrubbing on the barrel. The pellet will be less deformed and will, generally, pattern better. Buckshot size plays a large part in this. Trying to load 00 (0.330") buckshot into a plastic wad usually bulges the hull. If you switch to #1 buckshot (0.310") it will load quite nicely. Believe it or not, the ammo companies "adjust" the size of their (so-called) 00 buckshot to suit the components being used so that the hulls don't bulge and impair feeding. Some factory 00 buckshot is as small as 0.315" in diameter. There are a number of excellent threads on buckshot loads here, pour some coffee and do a search.
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  5. #5
    Boolit Master
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    In a Win AA hull I find the Lee .319 round ball fits perfectly (3x3) in a WAA12 wad.
    COME AND TAKE IT
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  6. #6
    Boolit Master


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    Two shot to the stack works well. 8 balls instead of 9 will pattern better with less recoil and slightly more speed.

    Get the Buckshot manual from Ballistic Products it is worth it.

  7. #7
    Boolit Master

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    Geezer is right, it’s not pellets in the load but pellets in the target. On page 35 of the linked pdf is a load with 800x I have used with good results. 32 gr is smoking hot so I would use 29-30 so as not to blow the wad. Buffer in the bottom of wad helps with that. Killed a bunch of hogs with that load. Full choke works best with 2 stack pellet loads.
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  8. #8
    Boolit Master gpidaho's Avatar
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    I'm far from any sort of expert with buckshot but when I load without wad petals I powder coat my home cast buckshot to protect the bore and it's my thought that it makes the pellets pass through a choke a little slicker.. Gp

  9. #9
    Boolit Buddy
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    One of the best things you can do is get some pattern paper and set it at your intended shooting distance, and see how well the various loads shoot for you.

    If you are intent on shooting buckshot loads, try different wads, petals vs. no petals, buckshot sizes and buffer.

    Different shotguns, barrels and chokes will also play a big part in the development of your best buckshot loads.

    Your most useful information though, will be how well your loads pattern.

  10. #10
    Boolit Man
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    Quote Originally Posted by missionary5155 View Post
    Well seeing as you have both types loaded you might as well see what your barrel likes the best. That is always the real test anyway. My barrel and yours are two different cousins. Shot barrels have all sorts of peculiarities like forcing cone, tube diameter and choke plus smoothness and lengths that affect everything with internal ballistics.
    Plus you get the fun of whamming them down range.
    I do not actually have any of them loaded up. I simply have the loads written down or printed out for reference.

  11. #11
    Boolit Man
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    Quote Originally Posted by ASSASSIN View Post
    One of the best things you can do is get some pattern paper and set it at your intended shooting distance, and see how well the various loads shoot for you.

    If you are intent on shooting buckshot loads, try different wads, petals vs. no petals, buckshot sizes and buffer.

    Different shotguns, barrels and chokes will also play a big part in the development of your best buckshot loads.

    Your most useful information though, will be how well your loads pattern.
    I have a roll of "contractors paper" I got from lowes for a very reasonable price. It is a a little under 3 feet wide and I forget how long. I will cut off a 3 foot length of it and it makes a perfect size for testing patterns. I have been using this to test out my loads I have been trying (both slugs and buckshot).
    So far all the buckshot I have loaded have been inside shot cups.

  12. #12
    Boolit Man
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    Quote Originally Posted by centershot View Post
    The plastic wad will protect the pellets from scrubbing on the barrel. The pellet will be less deformed and will, generally, pattern better. Buckshot size plays a large part in this. Trying to load 00 (0.330") buckshot into a plastic wad usually bulges the hull. If you switch to #1 buckshot (0.310") it will load quite nicely. Believe it or not, the ammo companies "adjust" the size of their (so-called) 00 buckshot to suit the components being used so that the hulls don't bulge and impair feeding. Some factory 00 buckshot is as small as 0.315" in diameter. There are a number of excellent threads on buckshot loads here, pour some coffee and do a search.
    The rubbing on the barrel is one of my concerns. I have shot this gun with some factory loaded full bore slugs and got a good bit of leading in the barrel that took some time to scrub out.
    The buckshot I have loads I have tried so far do bulge the hull just a tiny bit. But just enough to feel. I can still insert them in the chamber by hand with no resistance. So it does not appear to be a issue so far.
    I am using win AA-HS 2-3/4 hulls.

  13. #13
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    I keep harping on the Vang Comp System for shooting buckshot. I have two M500's with Vang Comped barrels. Both shoot factory 00 buck into 7" at 25 yards. Federal Low Recoil Buckshot has 9 pellets loaded into a shot cup style wad.

    These barrels also shoot slugs and birdshot well and at 15 yards #8 birdshot is about 7", and the pattern density is scary!

    To avoid leading your barrel you need to have a shot cup that is in between the shot and the barrel.

    Federal also has Buckshot Loads using their Proprietary Flight Control Wads which pattern very tight with any barrel. Only problem is they don't sell those wads and the ammo is scarce to say the least.

    It would be cool if BPI could get one of the Italian or Russian Wad Makers to make something close to Flight Control wads. Then we could load our own.

    Buying factory ammo here in CA is Problematic. If it is on the shelf it is pretty expensive, if it isn't, and you want to order it in, It has to ship to an FFL and you have to pay for that.

    Better to load your own.

    Flight Control wads are basically cylinders with two flaps that come out after launch and slowly open the wad up. Seems like something similar could be made.
    Last edited by W.R.Buchanan; 12-05-2021 at 02:57 PM.
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  14. #14
    Boolit Man
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    Well I decided to test this out for myself today. Curiosity got the best of me.

    I loaded two rounds of the load with the WAA12 wad with the pedals, and two without the pedals. I did the same for the load that used the WAA12F114.
    The load that uses the WAA12 I got directly from hodgdon. I stacked the pellets and cripmed. It felt a little stiffer to crimp than normal. I then notice that because of the shorter shot cup, the pellet stack was high, and the center of the crimp bulged up in the middle, above the top level of the hull. If loaded in a tube, the center of the crimp would be resting on the primer of the next round. Good thing I only loaded two. The same load and wad, with the pedals cut off, the pellet stack seemed a little lower and they crimped a little better, but was still just slightly bulged in the center, about even with the top of the hull.
    The load using the WAA12F114 with the longer shot cup, loaded and crimped perfectly. With the pedals cut off, I could clearly see the pellet stack was going to be too low, so I placed a 12ga 1/8 thick felt disc under the pellets. I then got a perfect crimp.

    I shot two rounds of each load at a roughly 3x3 piece of thick paper at 25 yards, standing unsupported. Gun used was a mossberg with a 20 inch barrel with screw in chokes and I had a cylinder bore choke tube installed. I also chronoed them, just out of curiosity.

    With the load using the WAA12 wads, patterns were not great. I had pretty much wrote this load off as soon as I loaded them because of not being able to get a proper crimp. I did notice roughly a 50 fps loss of velocity with the load without pedals.

    The load that used the WAA12F114 I had slightly better results.
    With the pedals, the pattern was roughly 18 inches (measured between the two furthest pellets). All were pretty uniformly dispersed in this pattern. Yea not the most tight pattern, but not the worst I have seen.
    Without the pedals, I again lost roughly 50 fps of velocity. The pattern was slightly smaller, but also larger, let me explain. 16 of the pellets were within a 14 inch pattern, BUT there were two fliers way off from the main pattern (I assume one flier per shot). If you count in those fliers, then it opens up the measurement to around 21 inches.

    Now when I got back inside and ran a bore snake down the barrel, I noticed way more resistance than normal. A peek down the barrel showed a huge amount of lead buildup. Holy cow! It looked terrible.
    I pull the barrel and run the hornady tornado brush through it a few times and get tons of lead shavings coming out of it. I look down it and still did not get it all. I pass the brush down the barrel, stop and check it, then go again till my arm starts getting tired. I ended up having to resort to placing a bronze bore brush on a cleaning rod and chucking it up in a power drill to get the lead broke up and cleaned out. Holy crap! I only shot 4 rounds with no pedals but geeze. I know the barrel was clean with no lead in it before as I always keep by barrels clean and visually check them after every firing and cleaning.
    No more loading and shooting unless they are in a shot cup.
    I know the bore on this gun is not the most highly polished out there. I actually ordered a brush research flex hone friday to use on it and another shotgun I have. But I still do not see myself shooting any more of my loads without the pedals.

  15. #15
    Boolit Grand Master


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    Wow, if 2 shots leads so bad you can see it, you have a major problem. You will never get slugs to shoot reasonably from that. I'd call Mossberg. Even rough barrels, you should not be able to see lead except for maybe the slightest bit. You certainly should never be able to brush strips out of your bore.

    I regularly load with shot well above the cup. I shoot my share of loads that don't have a cup at all. No, I do not get any perceivable leading. I'm sure if you looked with a bore scope, you would see some, but the bores look mirror finish, and the brush turns up nothing when cleaning. There is an alternative, and that is the mylar wrap. I have heard they raise pressure somewhat, but as you found, plastic wads raise pressure anyway. The reason you would want to use them is if you get into different size buckshots. 000 for example will not fit in any wad I know of. Instead it fits great if you use a mylar wrap. You are mainly focused on fouling, but the reason I use wraps is because buckshot, especially buffered buckshot tears up hulls. A good hull like a Federal plastic base will take the abuse. The cheap Federal top gun hulls I like, don't handle as much.

  16. #16
    Boolit Man
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    Quote Originally Posted by megasupermagnum View Post
    Wow, if 2 shots leads so bad you can see it, you have a major problem. You will never get slugs to shoot reasonably from that. I'd call Mossberg. Even rough barrels, you should not be able to see lead except for maybe the slightest bit. You certainly should never be able to brush strips out of your bore.

    I regularly load with shot well above the cup. I shoot my share of loads that don't have a cup at all. No, I do not get any perceivable leading. I'm sure if you looked with a bore scope, you would see some, but the bores look mirror finish, and the brush turns up nothing when cleaning. There is an alternative, and that is the mylar wrap. I have heard they raise pressure somewhat, but as you found, plastic wads raise pressure anyway. The reason you would want to use them is if you get into different size buckshots. 000 for example will not fit in any wad I know of. Instead it fits great if you use a mylar wrap. You are mainly focused on fouling, but the reason I use wraps is because buckshot, especially buffered buckshot tears up hulls. A good hull like a Federal plastic base will take the abuse. The cheap Federal top gun hulls I like, don't handle as much.
    I have the flex hones coming to polish the bore myself, so it is not worth sending it back to them. Plus the barrel has already been modified from factory configuration, so they would most likely not touch it (had it threaded for choke tubes and the forcing cone lengthened).

    Now I have loaded 000 buck inside a shot cup. I used the same WAA12F114 wad I used above. I used a load from my lyman manual made for 1-1/4 oz shot and I loaded 8, 000 pellets in it. 1-14/ oz is 546 grains. 8 hornady 000 buck pellets weighed 511 grains. I I stacked them in layers of two. I used a rem sts hull and longshot powder. Every now and then I would get a crimp that was not perfect, but most of them looked ok. You can feel the pellets bulge the hull a little, but not enough to cause any chambering issues. They still chamber with no problem. They shoot fine too. I have around 100-150 loaded right now.

  17. #17
    Boolit Grand Master


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    You may have a looser chamber too, which is not necessarily. a bad thing. If I load 000 buckshot, which from my mold comes out at .356", into a Winchester AA wad and a thin hull like a Fiocchi, or Federal top gun, then I could chamber them, but it needs a push. In a Remington hull, not a chance I could chamber them in my choice shotguns. One peculiar thing you will find with buckshot is that tighter is not necessarily better. You want your buckshot in stacks, but a nice loose fit between pellets is a good thing.

  18. #18
    Boolit Buddy
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    Quote Originally Posted by JeepsAndGuns View Post
    I have a roll of "contractors paper" I got from lowes for a very reasonable price. It is a a little under 3 feet wide and I forget how long. I will cut off a 3 foot length of it and it makes a perfect size for testing patterns. I have been using this to test out my loads I have been trying (both slugs and buckshot).
    So far all the buckshot I have loaded have been inside shot cups.
    I use that same type of paper myself, and have used several rolls of it when patterning many of the various steel shot loads that I load and shoot.

    You "may" get considerably tighter patterns by going to a separate gas seal/nitro card/wool felt and mylar wrap/buffer type load. I load this way when loading "0" (single ought buck) buck shot, and from an old Remington 1100 with a 30" fixed full choke, will put 18 pellets in a 15" circle at 50 yards! I own well over 30 different 12 ga. shotguns, and no other gun I own will even come close to patterning buckshot like what this gun will. This old gun has accounted for many many deer over the years.

    Going over 30+ years of notes, I had gone through over 15 pounds of single ought buckshot in this old Remington 1100 before I found a load it liked, and once I did, it has been a great joy to hunt with, and light enough that it can easily be carried all day.

    Just keep working at your loads, and sooner or later you will come up with a load that will do exactly what you want it to.

  19. #19
    Boolit Buddy
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    Quote Originally Posted by centershot View Post
    The plastic wad will protect the pellets from scrubbing on the barrel. The pellet will be less deformed and will, generally, pattern better. Buckshot size plays a large part in this. Trying to load 00 (0.330") buckshot into a plastic wad usually bulges the hull. If you switch to #1 buckshot (0.310") it will load quite nicely. Believe it or not, the ammo companies "adjust" the size of their (so-called) 00 buckshot to suit the components being used so that the hulls don't bulge and impair feeding. Some factory 00 buckshot is as small as 0.315" in diameter. There are a number of excellent threads on buckshot loads here, pour some coffee and do a search.

    Rio does this with their 20 gauge size 0 buckshot load. If you try getting 8-9 pellets of regular 0 buck (0.30") in a 20 gauge hull, it just doesn't fit. If you pull apart one of their rounds, you will find that they are using a 0.29" pellet instead. It doesn't make that much difference in the terminal performance, I am sure. But it is a lot easier to stack them in a hull. Finding a mold for the 0.29" buckshot took months, but they load into the 20 gauge hulls just as well as the Rio brand ones do.

    -Mb

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Abbreviations used in Reloading

BP Bronze Point IMR Improved Military Rifle PTD Pointed
BR Bench Rest M Magnum RN Round Nose
BT Boat Tail PL Power-Lokt SP Soft Point
C Compressed Charge PR Primer SPCL Soft Point "Core-Lokt"
HP Hollow Point PSPCL Pointed Soft Point "Core Lokt" C.O.L. Cartridge Overall Length
PSP Pointed Soft Point Spz Spitzer Point SBT Spitzer Boat Tail
LRN Lead Round Nose LWC Lead Wad Cutter LSWC Lead Semi Wad Cutter
GC Gas Check