12 bore from heck/ magtech brass, .730pb ball, smokeless, marlin bolt

[725]

Hey longbow. I hit the way back machine (page 7 in the search for "12 ga. round ball success"), other wise known as the advanced search on this site, and found my 12-7-2016 thread on constructing the shell. I referred to a 33 grain load of blue dot, but have since dropped it back to 32 grains. The ball was soft but not pure lead. The petal on the clay buster wad showed rather deep marks from the pinch between the ball & the barrel, but at the lower loads, did not tear or separate. Driven too fast, I had petals that did, in fact, tear. It's been awhile, but I think I zeroed at 50 yards and point blank runs way beyond that. I held direct on a 90 yard deer and POI was exactly (as good as I can hold) where the cross hairs were. I know the the desire to run loads hotter to get better performance, but really, I can't ask for a better result from what most would consider a mild load. Makes me want to repeat the commercial, "Try it ~ you'l like it!"

PS: .702 as cast from an old Jeffery Tanner mold.

[longbow]

Thanks for that! I had forgotten when or what you had posted. I suppose a search would have turned it up if I dug enough but you have saved me the trouble and reposted some good info for others as well. I will go back and reread as well now that I know where it is.

Not sure if the OP is interested in using shotcups or just full bore balls but good info you have posted anyway.

Probably a good point that you don't need to load hot to get good performance too although Radarsonwheels says he isn't planning on hotrodding anyway. Still a good point to emphasize.

I will be watching and taking notes as I do like big 'ol round balls and those brass hulls look great!

Longbow

[Radarsonwheels]

Yes no hotrod recoil induced separation of arm from torso for me, plus while the marlin 512 has a beefy wrist to it’s stock and a decently thick barrel for a rifled scattergun it’s apparent that it was made with a nod to the low pressures associated with shotgun shells.

The bolt feels like a traditional bolt action but the single locking lug is the bolt handle itself, which is a well machined piece seperate from the body of the bolt but still not confidence inspiring like a falling block or even mauser style action. For my needs it’ll do nicely and while I believe the balloon head magtech brass will fail before the bolt blows into my face I’m super not interested in approaching either failure point.

As for shooting sub cal with the plastic wad, piston, cup, sabot etc- part of this build was definitely about the look and feel of a bolt action stopping rifle. It’s gotta be a 73 cal unless I can find a rifled 10 gauge bolt action (read: something bigger in my budget ) Almost everyone who’s seen it has asked if I was planning an elephant hunt! Of course there are gun people and gun people- not that many folks know that a handmade double rifle in 4 bore is much closer to the real deal or that it was only necessary because black powder velocity required either more lead per shot or more trips on horseback to shoot an elephant in the face before it would die. Not the most romantic notion really- I prefer the idea of a stopping rifle as the last ditch to stop a big animal coming to kill you.

In any case while there is definitely accuracy and terminal effectiveness in sub caliber slug loads I have cast hundreds of Lee 7/8 and 1oz slugs and tried all kinds of stuff and never even came close to approaching the accuracy of factory slugs which are expensive but not when you consider that they’re not at all fun to shoot all day.

It’s really kinda dumb and I’m the first to admit it, but almost all of my shooting is ultimately for fun or else I’d only own a 22, a scoped rem 700 in ‘06, a pump 12g, a 357 wheelgun, and a tupperware carry piece. Luckily I like fun so I have 1911s and big bore revolvers and historical stuff of all flavors.

I just wanted a huge piece of brass with a bullet that sticks out of the top. Really that was the goal so it’s already a win, but if anybody has a spitzer mold for sale that drops .730-.735 let me know!

In the meantime I’ll report back when I have blue dot data.

[longbow]

Does this tickle your fancy?



That is the cavity of Greg Sappington's 1043 gr. full bore slug mould.

Or this:

https://www.castbulletengineering.co...665-12ga-pdx-s

That one is a light weight at only 780 grs. It is my favourite boolit! If I had a rifled gun I'd own one. One day!

Longbow

[Radarsonwheels]

Those both look so cool! I am a little scared of 1043gn recoil though- the current 586 grain round ball is comfortable to shoot and the little dome of lead that shows above the crimp is enough to hint at menace, even if it isn’t on both ends. I do love the grease groove and crimp groove though! If I had one custom made I think the base might have similar features.

If I were to go with a custom mold I think I would go with a design I’ve used successfully in other calibers. The draw of the keith bullet is strong, and I have HP mihec versions that work amazing, but the Lyman devistator is hard to beat when it comes to pure menace combined with fabulous accuracy. I’d imagine the huge HP would help with keeping overall weight down some.

The 780 CBE is a bargain at $160, and I can’t believe I hadn’t searched for paradox molds. I guess I thought it was like an H&H only thing in rich guy’s collections barring some also rare modern examples and wouldn’t be common. Those driving bands look husky enough to survive some rifling at 22lr speeds! They’d be neat powdercoated too.

Are you roll crimping them into plastic? I’d imagine that I would crimp brass over the top band.

In related news I called Ballistic Products today and their “Green Slug” lightweight hollowpoint 730 copper jacketed aluminum slugs are back in stock. They’re almost 1 1/4” long, .729”, and about 7/8oz. Those should be the ticket for 100 and 200 yard accuracy plus a wicked .73 cal HP rifle cartridge look. They’re wicked expensive though and even though I’m happy to discuss them here with like minded tinkerers, the reason I’m on this forum is casting & reloading for high performance self reliant high volume shooting- not buying prohibitively expensive J-word bullets

I have a busy enough spring with shooting projects, and a backlog of cast boolits to load for neglected wheelguns. So no new molds right away but that one is a humdinger!

[Radarsonwheels]

Also there’s a hollow base Svarog russian paradox slug. Ebag for $140ish so comparable

[longbow]

Greg uses IMR4227 under that monster slug. He posted his load data on Shotgunworld many years ago. He says that the recoil is not bad at all if velocity is kept around 1000/1100 FPS.

He did a lot of work with heavy slugs in full bore and wad slugs along with his proprietary sabot slug. He sent me some of his load data.

Personally I have little to no interest in slugs that heavy but the Paradox bullets I do like! One day!

The Russian Paradox slugs are not really "Paradox" slugs like the H&H/Kynock Paradox slugs. They are HB, lighter weight and require proprietary wads. I'd think they'd be accurate from rifled gun without the wad but I do not recall seeing post from anyone who has tried that.

I'd be more inclinced to go with the "solid" Russian slugs that have screwq on brush wads myself but that is just me. Again, those should work well from rifled gun without the attached wad but...? They apparently do work very well from rifled gun with the attached wad. Do a search for Blood Trail's posts on his Russian slugs. Lots of good load data there too.

I like to roll crimp with slugs but sometimes fold crimp.

I would be reluctant to crimp brass hulls because it will be hard on the brass and will likely make for short hull life with expensive hulls. A smallish roll crimp of the top edge may not be too hard on them. I have seen "star" crimped brass hulls with a long taper to the crimp but I cannot find any pics now. The best I found was this:

https://forums.sassnet.com/uploads/m...e568343971.jpg

It looks like the crimp folds have a radius to them rather than a sharp fold as a modern star crimp starter would give. Even at that I'd think brass would fail after a very few rounds.

It seems most people glue over shot card wads in place with brass hulls. I'd think with slugs a small roll crimp over the front driving band like with a typical metallic cartridge for rifle or handgun would work but the nose of the slug would extend a long ways past the case mouth. For single shot or double barreled gun not an issue. And of course I am forgetting that even a full bore slug will be a "rattle fit" in the brass hull so crimping and centering the slug may be an issue regardless. Possibly a wrap of Teflon would snug it up but still squish down to fit the bore? Not sure to be honest.

Maybe not a lot of help!

Longbow

[Radarsonwheels]

Makes sense that slow magnum pistol type powders under the big’uns gets the job done. I don’t need that much horsepower. Crisp circles cut from targets would be neat but doesn’t overwhelm my attraction to a silly huge scaled up rifle cartridge that a long ogive gives me. There’s that Keith thing again- the improved swc but HP for weight savings. It’s like my brain is taking notes to deplete my wallet at a later date with a custom mold.

Cool to know and not surprising given our present company that both versions of that basic paradox profile have been flogged including the hollow base non-paradox version. I’ve read a lot of Blood Trail’s excellent posts here, mostly to the chagrin of my wife while we were “watching netflix together”

I mentioned in an earlier post that I sprung for RCBS’s cowboy dies. I found the shell holder SUPER useful for priming on the press instead of with a dowel and hammer or using my drill press as an arbor press. The decapper/inside resizer is pretty useless because it is located by puny C-clips that slip if you don’t hold your mouth just right. At least you can’t break the die, but I get the pin started in the flash hole then tap it with a small hammer. The outside resizer is completely unnecessary since all my ammo is shot in the same bolt gun.

The inside resizer does do something to my fairly heavily crimped brass, but not enough to easily insert new wads. I actually compress the roundball into my 4 fiber wads pretty hard and the crimp keeps it there. This is done with a brass plumbing fitting that resembles an acorn nut- so seating and crimping in one operation, then the ball probably pops back up a little under moderate pressure. If you press firmly you can wiggle the ball a little to re-center the sprue if necessary.

I am planning to figure out the balance between annealing and doing the minimum expanding to reload. I think I might make a ram for the press to send wads home without the current hand pushing with a nut driver. I’m sure when the novelty wears off I’ll have long brass life and just take her out once in a while like I do with my trapdoor which also requires as dropped .462” slugs that I hand lube with nasa due to low volume shooting.

Magtech cases are not cheap or disposable but if I have to buy more I’ll live. They’re not 3.5” lathe turned $10 each.

Oh- and I cleaned the rifle today. Pushed a tight rem-oiled paper towel through followed by a couple trips through with one of those braided fabric with dual brass brush bore snake things and she’s mirror bright and ready again.

Oh and I changed my avatar pic from the dreaded lead scrubbing chore boy cartoon to a pic of me shooting spicy h110 fireballs out of a 357 desert eagle- that’s what I look like in like 8bit

Radar