Lyman 525 slugs

[longbow]

A solid hard slug that is bore diameter meeting a choke tighter than I/C or maybe modified could likely cause some damage. However, if bearing area is small as with Brenneke style slugs or narrow driving bands with substantial grooves between even hard lead should squeeze down without any damage to the barrel... at least it works for Brenneke. Not sure about the Kynoch slugs for Paradox guns.

At what point does the stress from swaging that slug down cause yielding of the barrel? Partly it would depend on barrel wall thickness, material quality/grade/strength, slug hardness and bearing area. I suspect swaged chokes would be more susceptible to being opened up than a reamed choke as well.

Is is easy to calculate the hoop stress for swaging the slug down but how much does the impact play into this? Kinda like explosive forming, this happens in milliseconds.

I suspect that some destructive testing is the best way to find out.

Longbow

[megasupermagnum]

We got hit hard with a bunch of snow last night, so I decided to do some in-home testing today. I wanted to see, in theory, how big these slugs are hitting the forcing cone at. The theory being that the slugs are setting back when they are inside of the hull. It makes sense to me that the slugs are going to set back the most right peak acceleration, which I can only assume is just after peak pressure.

What I did was take two common shells. One a plastic Federal Top Gun. It is very comparable to most straight wall plastic hulls as far as thickness goes. The other hull is a PAPER Federal target hull. These are about the only paper hulls you can get anymore. They are quite thick sided. I then took two cut "sabot's" that I made from Federal 12S4 wads, along with two pure lead Lyman 525's with the bases filled with hot glue. I popped the primers out, so I had a hole to eject from, and I first inserted five hard nitro cards so the slugs were up in the middle part of the shells. I cut the crimps off, just to make things easier to see. The test was simple. I put each shell in my NEF Tracker II, took a large rod and a hammer, and did a pound cast with both. In theory, this would expand the skirt to approximate what the diameters would bump up to during firing, just before it got squeezed back down by the forcing cone.

The results came out pretty good. The heads of the slugs are a little deformed, but that doesn't matter. It is the skirt I am testing. Both were very snug in the chamber after 15 good hits with a hammer. I needed to use the rod to eject both. I then took the first picture, and you can clearly see the outlines of the slugs. The heads did expand somewhat, but I think that has more to do with the pounding, than what would actually happen during firing. More interesting was when I pulled the slugs from the shells. The skirt on the slug from the plastic hull expanded to about .715", and is about .007" out of round. The skirt on the slug from the paper hull expanded to about .706", and was around .004" out of round. It is unclear to me what caused them to be out of round, but it is very possible it is only because of my crude method of testing. What does matter though is that clearly the paper hull contains the slug from bumping up as far as a thinner plastic hull. It is also a difference of about .010". The thickness of the plastic hull is about .025", and the paper .030". Multiplied by two, that's a difference of .010", so that checks out. Measured inside the wads, the plastic measures about .765" OD at the skirt, and the paper .755" OD at the skirt. Those are getting forced into a .730" barrel, plus rifling. It's amazing the wads do as well as they do. In the wad, they also measure fairly round, so it might just be that the wads are causing the slugs to expand out of round, because the wads themselves are out of round. I already confirmed this many times in the past. Federal 12S4 wads are not precision sabot's.

So what does this all mean? Not a whole lot. I think it is most likely to assume these slugs I've been testing from plastic hulls are hitting the forcing cone at least .765" OD. That does show just how much these wads, and slugs are getting squeezed back down when going into the bore. It puts into perspective why I was seeing such different results with the pure lead alloy. I'm sure a wide range of alloy will expand to the same size, being as they are arrested by the hull, but pure lead sure seems to do a better job transitioning into the bore. The other thing to take away, is a thicker hull is possibly an advantage. I'm hoping for one more good slug range day before turkey hunting starts, so I'll be loading both plastic and paper hulls, and I'll be shooting for groups this time.

[longbow]

Interesting stuff msm!

I not that even with the pounding the skirts of you "pound cast" slugs aren't set back as much as the pic in your post #2 after firing. That 10,000 PSI kick in the butt has quite an effect!

I think you are right that the set back/bump up occurs early on and likely before the slug is in the bore. I have somewhat erroneously reported that my Lyman Foster slugs cast from pure lead obturate to bore diameter. I suspect they do but the barrel they were shot through has what Browning refers to as an I/C choke but I have measured it at 0.710" which is a tight I/C choke for 12 ga. What I can say for sure is that a 0.715" RB doesn't drop through that I/C choke which still makes it tight for I/C.

Regardless, in fact I should only be saying that the slug bumps up from as cast 0.705" to at least 0.710" but after recovering several from soft snow and seeing the way the skirt deformed unevenly and the various cocked noses I am pretty sure those slugs bump all the way up to bore diameter then get swaged back down as they go through the choke.

Having has very thick skirted ACWW wad slugs bump up enough to shear wad petals I think it is a forgone conclusion that the soft thin skirted Fosters do bump up to bore diameter but.... I should cast and shoot some from my cylinder bore barrel to prove it or not.

The Lyman Sabot slug has a thicker skirt but since you have proven those bump up as far as they are limited again, the thin Foster skirt must too.

It is possibly a good thing to have this bump up to fit feature to achieve good fit to bore but I'd expect it should work as well with a somewhat oversize slug that is forced down to bore diameter in the forcing cone. That way you shouldn't need soft lead... like Brenneke. Whether that would work well for a wad slug I am not sure though Brenneke like ribs would most likely cut up petals if they were on a wad slug.

I guess on that line, I made a mould I cut slightly oversize by mistake so cast slug come out at 0.691". This is my Moose Minie clone which is essentially a TC smooth skirt Foster mould. They fit into Claybuster Winchester clones for 7/8 oz. shot and just fit in my fat bored single shot but are too tight to push through the bore of my Mossberg Slugster... which I shot them out of. Accuracy was mediocre to poor at 25 yards and wad petals sheared. The load should not have been near max. but recoil says they were hot loads. I plan to size some down and drop the charge for some others at 0.691" to see how they perform. Not sure if these bump up but I suspect they do and maybe that is why the recoil was so unpleasant. Maybe they bumped up then had to size down at the bore so creating a pressure spike.

Anyway, I don't want to wander off topic too far, you are talking about Lyman Sabot slugs. It is an interesting topic and likely quite relevant to wad slug accuracy in that the bump up is important for bore fit. The Buckbuster people seem to have figured that out some years ago. That means powder charge and alloy will have a large effect on how much bump up occurs.

Interesting stuff for sure!

Longbow

[megasupermagnum]

I got to the range today. I wish I had better things to report, but conditions went from decent to really bad quickly. My first group I was very happy with, 5 shots measuring 3 3/4" at 100 yards. By the time I got back to the bench for the second group, it was snowing so hard, I could barely make out my bullseye. I proceeded to shoot, but things just kept getting worse and worse, and the wind picked up as well. For sure, the weather effected accuracy, but I was able to tell some differences. Once I got above my starting loads, wad petals were shearing off, and accuracy quickly went south before I got anywhere close to what I consider a safe maximum. This is due to my decision to use Bluedot powder today. Once again, we see that these slugs are setting back from velocity, not pressure. Bluedot appears to be pushing these slugs beyond what these thin plastic lead shot wads can handle. With lower loads, it did work really well though. The best of the day, the first group is listed below.

Federal 2 3/4" Top Gun (gen 3)
Federal 209A
36gr Bluedot
X12X + (3) 1/8" nitro cards + 12S4 cut sabot
Lyman 525 pure lead with hot glue
fold crimp

By the time I got to testing federal paper hulls, my scope was full of snow. Accuracy wasn't that good, but it wasn't that bad either, so worth a revisit. With the higher loadings of Bluedot that were shearing petals, accuracy quickly fell off to about 10-12" at 100 yards. I should mention that all my rifled barrel testing was with my H&R ultra slug hunter. I also brought my H&R Buck 162 smooth bore today to test. I did not have any lower loadings to try, so I had to use loads that I knew were innaccurate. I first shot 4 Brenneke classic slugs to check accuracy. The first shot, all I saw was a flash. That 5 pound zip gun hit me so hard I could barely hold on. That was it for me. I put it in the lead sled. I then shot 3 more, and all 4 in about 3" at 50 yards, so right on par with most smooth bores. I then fired 5 of the Lyman 525's that grouped about 6". Not bad at all considering it was doing about the same from a rifled barrel.

I also tested some claybuster wads. Despite the rib in them, they fit the slugs pretty well. I used the CB6100-12, and cut the tail part of the wad off, leaving only the cup. The 12S4 seems to hold up a little better, but I think the claybusters have a chance with a lower velocity load. Recovered wads showed loss of petals, although the petals themselves show perfect engraving, which tells me that the rib is no concern.

I am seeing more variation in the Top Gun hulls than I like. They work really well with shot, but when going for accuracy, I'd like to see more consistent crimp depths. I am going to be switching to genuine plastic Gold Medal's from now on. The paper gold medal hulls are really good, and crimp like a dream. I am going back to 800x, and I will back the powder way off this time. I'd really like to narrow down the window where the slug sets back, and the petals can also handle it. I am also going to try my next batch of slugs using Hogtamer's glue cutting technique. The way I've been doing it works, but I'm wondering if Hogtammer's method might be easier to get super consistent bases without bubbles.

[longbow]

I am with you on Hogtamer's glue fill/cut technique.

I am using a similar method with my attached wad slugs. I've made forms that I put the slugs in then fill with hot melt glue. The form is linger than the required attached tailwad so bubbles and shrinkage wind up in the extra length. Once cool and hard they are cut to length removing the imperfections.

Overfilling the HB cavity then cutting flush later per Hogtamer should produce a good and consistent fill.

Have you tried a harder alloy to see if that reduces petal shearing in higher velocity loads?

Longbow

[megasupermagnum]

Have you tried a harder alloy to see if that reduces petal shearing in higher velocity loads?

Longbow

Yeah, that's what the first post is.

[longbow]

Right you are! Sorry, I should have re-read. Too much info for my old wrinkled brain to absorb and retain.

I'll go back through it all.

I generally cast slugs from range scrap or ACWW because it is what I have the most of.

Both Lyman and Lee recommend soft lead for slugs but no info I've seen that indicates whether they have tested soft lead for accuracy, safety (choke squeeze down) or both.

Anyway, I will go back through all your posts here, lots of good info.

Longbow

[hickfu]

Long but interesting read...
I cast my Lyman slugs out of my normal alloy of around 11 bhn.

Yesterday I was out shooting my buckshot rounds looking for the best patterning but the first couple were not on target (new scope on the Mossberg) so I put in a slug load and fired it through a full choke. It hit quite high so I dialed the scope in and shot 3 more and they were pretty accurate at 50 yards with a smooth bore with full choke. Maybe 3" or so. Next range session will be with the rifled barrel and slug testing.

[megasupermagnum]

I was waiting to post, I was hoping to have the end-all answer by now. Unfortunately I do not. Here is what I've been trying for the past month or so.

I first started looking for a more perfect sabot. I shopped around and tried a few different ones. Just about all lead shot wads are either too thin, or contain large ribs that are not ideal for slugs. Eventually I called both Claybuster and Downrange. Claybuster didn't have a great answer. I tried their "slug wad" the sw250-12. I'll be darned if that is nothing but their cb1114-12 in another color. There doesn't appear to be any improvements at all, the petals are the same thickness, the plastic they are made of are the same as far as I can tell. As far as I'm concerned the sw250-12 is a straight up rip off that Claybuster sells for more than double the price. Eventually I had a talk with Downrange and they didn't have a lot of info on slug shooting. Being as every other DR wad I had was extremely thin petals I did not have high hopes. I was told the thickest petal wad they made was the Versalite clone. I bought a bag and to my surprise they really are thick. These petals are every bit as thick as a Federal. They are nice and consistent, more consistent than the Federal wads. The plastic they are made of seems more firm than other wads, similar to the other DR wads I have. The only two downsides I'm seeing are #1, the ID of the wads is a little tight. For my purposes it is a non-issue. #2 they do contain very small ribs in the petals, however, they are so small they do not seem to interfere with the slug at all. These might not be the ideal wad for those who are making short range plinking ammo, but for making a custom sabot, the Downrange DRV12 Versalite clone is the best of all the wads that I have tried.

I tried a few different powders in my Ultra Slug Hunter with no real difference between them. This gun is shooting amazingly. I should have kept with that. One thing I did confirm is that a pure lead slug is much more forgiving for load development. A hard slug has a quite narrow window of only a few grains of powder where it has bumped up enough to shoot, but not so much that it destroys the wad. A pure lead slug has a window of at least 200 fps, likely more. They are extremely forgiving. I also started doing the Hogtamer method of cutting the hot glue using a razor knife. This produces the most perfect base you possibly can. Every slug I tried in the last month was sorted for perfection. I visually inspected, then weight sorted. They were over filled with hot glue, then cut with a razor knife. To top it all off I lightly tumbled the slugs in mica dust just to take the tackiness from the glue. I want a clean separation of the slug from the wad, I don't want it sticking to the plastic or a nitro card.

Instead of continuing with success, I borrowed a Benelli Super Black Eagle with a rifled slug barrel. This wasn't just a normal Benelli slug barrel though, this one is a semi-custom thick barreled and ported. I don't recall the brand, however, it was expensive. I wanted to see what a custom barrel slug gun could do. I may have thought wrong, because this gun has been the most finicky thing I've ever shot. At first I thought I had a problem with the mount or scope. I ruled that out. The ammo this gun is best with has not been available in over a year, which is why I was allowed to borrow it. Instead I tried the sabot's that this gun shot good. Balliistic Products now sells the exact slug and wad, but at the time I bought these, they only had the trophy coppers. So I dumped the trophy copper slugs out which don't shoot that well, and inserted my own Lee 502-440RF bullets. I took them to the range and this gun shoots these every bit as good as the factory load. So the sights are fine.

It was at this point I had the Versalite wad, I tried that with no luck. I was looking at recovered sabot's and every single one looked melted on one or two petals. I figured something was going on with the gas seal. I backed off on the load, no dice. I backed WAY off on the load, no better at all. I tried different gas seals, nope. I tried different wadding between the gas seal and sabot, no go. I tired the wads intact, no. Eventually one day it dawned on me. This barrel is ported, the sabot's must be getting shredded or melted by the escaping gas in the porting area. This is further evidenced by the fact that the barrel is spotless on the chamber end. It is clean all the way until the ports. Immediately after the ports the muzzle end looks like a smooth bore. It is coated in plastic. I cleaned the barrel with a bore brush, really focusing on the ports. I can't get too aggressive since this isn't my barrel. I had some Ballistic Products green slugs, which are aluminum core, copper jacketed bullets. I shot a dozen of those through my next trip to the range. They did not shoot very good. I switched to Federal 3" hulls just to see if either the extra hull, or extra wadding would help. It did not help at all.

I then switched back to 2 3/4" hulls and tried every last idea I could think of. I tried two other types of sabot's. One a Federal 12S4, both as a sabot and a full wad. I tried a Winchester AA. I also tried the Versalite again, but as a sabot and a full wad. All of them I had heavily coated in mica dust hoping some lube might help. It did not help at all. As a last resort I took some of the Downrange WAA clone wads, which are thin petals, and I used a .003" mylar wrap around them. I would load my gas seal, wad, and then insert the mylar wrap. I then carefully inserted the sabot using slight spinning to help. Finally I could insert the slug and crimp. Surprisingly they actually load decent, and they came out the barrel fine, however the barrel porting still destroyed the mylar, and started to get the sabot. Accuracy was horrible.

At this point I'm ready to give up on this Benelli. It doesn't shoot these Lymans for squat. More specifically the wads/sabot's can not survive the cheese grater on the end. Full bore slugs like the green slug and full bore round ball are no better. The only thing this shoots good, and it does shoot them quite good, is a super thick sabot for a 50 caliber bullet. They are thick, and the plastic they are made of is more like a nylon. They are insanely tough. I know exactly what I would do if this were my own. I would be hack sawing this barrel off at 20", which is just before the porting.

Below is a picture of the sabot's that come out of the Benelli. The picture isn't very good, but you can see they are melting on one side, the other side looks perfect and crisp. Accuracy is only 7" to 10" at 100 yards, lot of keyholing. I'm going to continue shooting the USH in the near future, it is such a more consistent and forgiving slug gun. I'd really like to dial it in some more and shoot a 25 shot average. As of now I'm going to shoot the following load for the MN deer season. This is the best I've got so far, and it is very good. I've only shot a few groups, but they are in the 3 1/2" to 4" range at 100 yards which is as accurate as I have ever seen from this gun. I would really like to shoot a deer with my TC scout pistol first, so I may or may not even get to shoot this at a deer, but you never know. I'm going for more than one deer. Fair warning: this load is not in a load manual, this is my own wildcat. That isn't a typo, I'm using an 18ga NC in the cup. A 20ga would work, but the 18ga is the ideal size.

12ga 2 3/4" Federal Top Gun gen 3
Federal 209A
28gr 800x
X12X gas seal + 1/4" 12ga hard felt wad + 1/8" 12ga nitro card+ DR Versalite cup only + 18ga 1/8" nitro card in bottom of cup
Lyman 525 slug
fold crimp

[Hogtamer]

I found the trap commander wad cup is the precise thickness (they’re pretty thin) for my hastings barrel with soft lead slugs. Yes, the wads shear completely and cleanly but the bases I could use again if I were so inclined. This is with 36 gr Longshot. I don’t really understand how it could be any other way out of a rifled with these thin walled wads and I wonder if the thicker walled Fed wads that always seem to be intact but awfully twisted don’t detract from accuracy in some way. I shot mine exactly once last week to check zero, 1” right from center on 3” orange dot at 100 yds. I Know this raises some eyebrows and even surprises me sometimes., but I’ll check again on some pigs the week of 11/6. Killed 18 last year but most with buckshot.

[megasupermagnum]

It's worth testing Hogtamer. I have plenty of wads that are thin. I've only tried the Trap Commander in 16 gauge, I do not have any in 12 gauge. So far it has been really linear for me. The thicker the wad, the better the accuracy. I've got decent accuracy from the Downrange WAA clones, but far too often one of them wont make the trip, and that shot will go way outside the main group. Recovered wads show that the flier is always the one with the failed petals. Maybe in your case you are sending them so hard that they are essentially acting as full bore slugs at that point, with nothing but a little plastic for lube. I have not tried cranking the heat way up with Longshot or Bluedot yet. That seems like a good next step for the ultra slug hunter. I'm just going one variable at a time trying to really dial these in.

[phaessler]

Glad to see these threads sill run. Have done alot of work, alot of mateials and constantly learn from others. megasupermagnum and hogtamer are doing some spot on investigation. And longbow helped me out years ago, yup pressure was confirmed high, over 12k, but velocities were too.
Have been back at it warming up the UltraSlug for another quota hunt here.
My thoughts, or what I have found is pretty conclusive, the shotcup wads as sabots, well the clones arent up to par with the originals. The materials used are weaker, and thinner. I am using a real Winchester AA cup cut from a red wad. WAA12.
Still glue filling and trimming the slug, as far as lead, I try to hold the weight around 510gn, with as much frontal area as this has, expansion is a concern to me with killing power. Only tried with whitetails so I may be off on that theory.
Have removed the Obturator 12 gas seal and pressures have dropped off, Longbow will recall the bulging I was having in the Fiocchi hulls, its been replaced with a 1/4" felt wad. Evidently looking at it all, I had 4 sealing rings, 2 on the Obturator, 2 on the Flexseal. The standard cup wad loading as described in Lymans manual, well its seal is one which looks like plenty of pressure will bypass the wad.
Im still using 3" hulls to get the crimp open as far up the chanber as possible to eliminate a jump to the rifling and when usinr 2 3/4" hulls its obvious as a good assumption, wad petals, and groups show it.
I guess the worst thing is the sheer amount of wads, seals, and fillers I have amassed while trying the combinations, bags of 500, 250 and 50 are filling bins and drawers here.
Will be watching for more insight. Thank you for sharing your results.
Pete

[Kylongrifle]

Ive never ran into such a wide variety of results in reloading as I have with slugs over the years.. Some guns require tinkering to the point of OCD.. then I know several that just drop a bare slug into a AA hull with a WAA12 wad and get 3 1/2" hundred yard groups .. You never know what a slug gun is going to like.

[megasupermagnum]

I found some more puzzling results. On a previous day I went to shoot the load mentioned in post #29 and to my surprise I found it shot poorly in my ultra slug hunter. Accuracy was on par with what I got from the Beneli, which was as bad as I've seen from the USH and the lyman. About 8" at 100 yards. The reason was very obvious, every single shot was a keyhole. Not a single round hole. I studied the recovered sabot's and found no unusual marks, they looked perfect. I checked the barrel for anything like a bad spot, or a bad crown and found nothing. Finally it dawned on me that this is the first time I've shot the USH with a nitro card inside of the sabot. I really could not understand how that would be the cause, but I decided to load them without it. I tried them, and sure enough there is no tumbling at all, and accuracy is back to the 4"-5" range at 100 yards. Today I fired a single 5 shot group to verify sight in for this weekends hunt. The group was a nice 4 1/4" group.

It makes my head hurt trying to reason why the nitro card would cause tumbling. I'll just come out and say I have no idea, that's just the way it is. This revelation does make me wonder if I was wasting my time on the Benelli. Maybe it can shoot good if I take that nitro card out. I'm not sure if I will have time this week for another range trip or not. If I do I'll try the Benelli again. This is quite a puzzling breakthrough though. Maybe our common advice of putting a nitro card inside the wad for a firm base is bad advice.

The following is exactly how I loaded them today. Compare that to post #29. Such a small change shrank groups in half and went from 100% tumbling to 100% flying true.

12ga 2 3/4" Federal Top Gun gen 3
Federal 209A
28gr 800x
X12X gas seal + 1/4" 12ga hard felt wad + (2) 1/8" 12ga nitro card+ DR Versalite cup only
Lyman 525 slug
fold crimp

[smokeeter]

my guess is the nitro card is preventing the slug from obturating fully/correctly. I've had this issue with my smokeless muzzleloader when the bullets didn't obturate I always got keyholing

[longbow]

Is it possible that the extra height under the slug is pushing the nose too close to the tips of the petals? I recall Ranch Dog running into issues where it appeared that the wad petals were pushing back from the nose of the slug and accuracy was poor..

I am just wondering if the petals drag back a bit the nose may be past the ends of the petals in the bore or at least not supported well by the thinner tips of petals. With the slug sitting 1/8" lower this may not be happening.

Just a thought.

Longbow

[megasupermagnum]

@smokeeter, recovered wads in both cases are showing very good, full, and even obturation/setback. I'm quite confident this is not the issue. Plus I'm still using nitro cards, just that I'm putting them under the sabot, not in it.

@longbow, I'm confident that is not the issue. The nitro card was putting the nose even with the wad petals, so it had no chance to ever get over the top. Recovered wads show the nose of the slug is setting back significantly inside. The only damage I saw to the wad petal tips was when they hit something like the ground or a target. If anything I saw worse yesterday with no nitro card, which I think was the crimp contacting them since the slugs were now sitting 1/8" low inside, yet they shot good. These Versalite clone's are thicker at the tips than Winchester's at the base so that isn't an issue either.

Whatever issue the nitro card was causing, it can not be seen by the recovered sabot. At a later date I want to try recovering some slugs to see if they show anything.

[megasupermagnum]

Here is a sabot from yesterday. Note how the rifling indicates the slug has obturated fully. The rifling from the tail and nose just about touch it has expanded so much. Compare that to post #29, which was from the Benelli, but it shows identical set back, except everything is 1/8" higher due to the nitro card.

One last note, look how clean this sabot is. The one from post #29 is unlubed. This one is lightly lubed with mica dust. I saw the same thing with the Benelli too. I'm not sure if it cuts down on plastic fouling, but it does seem to indicate the lube does do something.

[longbow]

Aaaahhh... looking back at post #29 I didn't reralize that ring just over half way up the petal is the nose ring! It is much more obvious in your last post. Okay, forget that idea!

Those really do set back a bunch! In fact that set back is reminiscent of what Buck Buster slugs said happened with their slug.

Yes, it would be interesting to recover some slugs to see what the glue fill looks like after that set back. In fact I am surprised to see that much set back with glue fill. I have to wonder if the glue fill pops out when the wad leaves the slug. With that conical cavity I'd have to think it does but...?

Interesting stuff!

Longbow

[Cap'n Morgan]

Just guessing here, but could it be that the nitro card somehow causes the slug to slip in the sabot? Maybe the glue-filled cavity gives that extra grip during launch or something?

From what I've read, a large meplat can sometimes cause instability at longer ranges. That happened with my sleeve-slug with an extreme meplat; it would start keyholing past 50 yards (of course, this was from a smooth bore). You could try reducing the distance by half and see if the groups follow a linear dispersion.