Accuracy load with Lee .690 round ball

[lance4glas]

99% of shotshell hulls are steel with a brass plate over it - I found that a magnetic pick up tool from Home Depot does a faster job of gathering spent hulls off the ground than the HF pick-up tool.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Anvil-Te...5212/300998736

[lance4glas]

You might try using two nitro card wads under the ball or add a small scoop of COW on top of the nitro card wad then the ball. Both should provide better support for the RB and possibly help reduce blown gas seals.

What does ' COW ' stand for ?

Would that be " Cream of Wheat " cereal ?

[centershot]

You might try using two nitro card wads under the ball or add a small scoop of COW on top of the nitro card wad then the ball. Both should provide better support for the RB and possibly help reduce blown gas seals.

What does ' COW ' stand for ?

Would that be " Cream of Wheat " cereal ?

Yes!

[centershot]

Sorry about that typo. .662 round ball. Measures .727 on the outside of the wad with the ball in place.

Randy

As Randy has demonstrated, this load works well in most smoothbore barrels of standard inside diameter. If your barrel is back-bored, then not so good. In developing a load for my rifled M-500 nothing good happened until I added a heavy paper shim inside the wad cup, surrounding the O.D. of the ball. I was using a 0.662" round ball and a Federal 12S3 wad. With the paper wrap the O.D. of the "sabot" was 0.742", IIRC. At that point the wad could grip the ball sufficiently to impart enough spin from the rifling to produce a very accurate load. I have since gone to a 0.690" RB to eliminate the need for the paper wrap. The lesson here is that if you are using a rifled barrel, you'll likely need to squeeze the bejeezers out of the payload to get any accuracy out of it! The Federal 12S3 is one tough wad, it holds up well to the abuse!

[longbow]

Yes, COW = Cream 'O Wheat. I am sure other fillers/buffers would work just as well. Hogtamer uses grits (Southern boys!), cornmeal should work and shotgun buffer should work. I used COW because I had some on hand that I used for filler in .303 British. I had found that when loading round balls in trap wads that many types of trap wads do not have very strong bases in the shotcups and that the style of cushion leg affects how the gas seal and shotcups respond to being kicked in the butt by ~10,000 PSI. Many wads I recovered were badly distorted and many with blown gas seals. For some it was pretty obvious that using the ball in the shotcup with no other cushion or support was resulting in the shotcul base trying to wrap around the ball. So, I added a nitro card wad unbder the balls (16 ga. or 20 ga. for 12 ga. wads) and that helped then I thought adding a scoop of COW might provide more support. For me that worked well.

I should say that the wads I was using were mainly Winchester or Claybuster clones of Winchester and they have the 4 legged cushion and a very thin base in the shotcup. A wad with more substantial cushion or those with a center "post" like Federals may not need the extra support. At the time I was using the Winchester/Winchester clones and Pacific Verelite. The worst wads for failure were the Win AA Red wads. Those seem to be made of a softer material than my other Winchester and Claybuster wads.

Also, I had problems with the same types of wads blowing into hollow base slugs due to the weak construction. So I started filling all hollow base slugs. Again, maybe not necessary with a more substantial wad. Now I make a habit of adding a nitro card wad or two under filled slugs and with RB's using a scoop of COW under the ball... just enough to lift the ball a bit so the COW will form a seat seat filling in under the ball. Same applies to full bore round balls if loaded over a plastic wad with petals cut off. Full bore balls shoot well for me loaded over a hard card wad column too.

Longbow

[sundog]

Hogtamer uses grits (Southern boys!)

Sinful waste of good food...

[rickt300]

Think I will play with this after deer season. Gathering components will begin. Probably experiment with a different powder.

[longbow]

Sinful waste of good food...

Maybe in shotshells where it isn't "toasted" by hot gas but it sure does smell good when used as filler in metallic cartridges! Yum!

Longbow