50cal or 54cal round ball out of a 12ga?

0faustus0

0faustus0

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50cal or 54cal round ball out of a 12ga?


Question to the explorers and trailblazers of shotgun reloading ….

I am trying to come up with a low recoil 12ga round ball load that I can shoot securely through a turkey choke in my 12ga Remington 870s.

Has anybody figured out how to shoot a 50cal or 54cal round ball “accurately” out of a 12ga? Is this even doable..?

If you have … do you have any insights to share?

And by “accurately” I mean around a 4 to 5 inch group at 50 meters or better.

Appreciate the help ….

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p.s.: Statements like “Never deviate from published recipes!” are not helpful here … we are talking here about blazing new trails ….
 
What you propose may not be so "new" - I have some BPI "Small Game Slugs" - so a round lead ball, with a funky looking wad, for loading into 28 gauge hulls - uses an overshot card and roll crimp. There are multiple pressure tested loads in a BPI manual here. I have never seen the exact same thing for 12 gauge, though, so you might be on to something - or maybe there is a reason that commercial factories do not sell them (cost to produce? / demand of buying public?)

Those round ball slugs - I was told they are better to have a few in your pocket when poking through berry bushes with your 28 gauge - and run into a bear in there - better than having a pointy stick (or a bird shot load), I am told. As I recall from measuring, those round balls were circa 0.490", even though the bore in a 28 gauge is nominally 0.550" - maybe those funky wads, as they collapse from firing pressure, keep the ball more or less centred within the bore? I do not think that I have ever read that those round ball slugs were a desired first choice to go out and kill some game - but better than nothing, to have on you, when "in a spot".
 
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Thanks Potashminer for chiming in.
You are talking about these wads that Ballistic Products sells …. right?

LGSall.jpg


Unfortunately, I am not aware that a wad like this exists for 12ga. That would be the solution.

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I have played with .690 round balls in a 12ga in the past. But a .690 round ball is a huge chunk of lead ….


LightBrushWad_690RoundBall.jpg



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The problem with what I am trying to do is that a 50cal or 54cal round ball is way undersized for 12ga. So the challenge is to find a wad combination that is sturdy enough to support the round ball …. and that can center the ball in the bore reliably for accuracy.

  • My bore diameter is something like .727
  • My turkey chokes are .640 or .665
  • The 50cal balls that I have here are .495
  • The 54cal balls are .530

Currently I am experimenting with a combination of a 20ga cup from a BW20 wad inside a trimmed LBC30 wad.

I guess we will see how that goes …..

54cal_Roundball_Load_1_lowres.jpg




54cal_Roundball_Load_Column_lowres.jpg
 
I’ve been testing ‘home made’ slug loads for the past 3 years. First experiments were with round balls as I also shoot black powder and have different sizes available. Tried all types of inserts such as yourself and never found anything remotely consistent at even 20 yards. Went to
PLAN B….ordered a pile of slugs from BPI namely the DGS and the Thug slugs both in 12 & 20g. The Thug 20g slug shot extremely well at 75 yards out of a H&R heavy barrel (rifled) …3 inch groups with Unique and 7625 powder @ 1250ft/sec.
Only problem was every 10 rounds there would be one or two flyers about 10” away from the group center. Bought BPI roll crumpets, sorted cases tried to craft together loads as I would centre fire rifle.
Always one or two flies in the ointment.
Seeing how I may encounter a 150 yard shot once in a while I need better and the Hornady SST and Remington factory sabot slugs are much better at unfortunately $30 per box. I haven’t given up yet because as I said I still have a PILE of slugs to play with.
As a side note Challenger slugs loads use the DGS slug and the photo of a 10 shot group on the back of their box looks pretty impressive.
 
I've had decent luck with .690 round ball.
- Silly question: Why not just put a different choke on? On most shotgun, it's 2 minutes project... and would probably yield better results than trying to chime a smaller diameter ball inside your wad.

Failing that, you could always 3d-print something to fit your bullet
RSS305m.jpg
 
…just wanted to add that all these homemade BPI slug loads were also tested out of two different Savage 220 guns.
Similar results to the H&R 20g.
 
Thanks for chiming in folks.

Just to clarify ....

1.) We are talking here about round balls in a smoothbore. Loads for a rifled barrel or a rifled choke tube are a whole different game.

2.) And why don't I just change the choke? I am looking for a one gun setup that is fine tuned for different types of ammo (birdshot, buckshot, and round balls) and without having to change anything except putting in different ammo. If a bear shows up in camp or on the trail ... I am not going to tell that bear "Ummm .... stop there ... give me 2 minutes ... I need to change chokes". And the choke I have settled on for my hunting is a super full or turkey choke.
 
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threecentsolution said:
Would a minie ball work in this situation or has it been tried.
Click to expand...

You can shoot nearly anything out of a smoothbore shotgun and that will fit without problems into the barrel and choke. And I mean nearly anything …. nails, rocks, bolts, nuts, glass pieces, etc. … and yes a minie ball as well …

The question is what sort of pattern or accuracy will you be getting with whatever you are shooting ….

The minie ball was designed to be loaded fast and easily in rifled muzzle loaders …. and when shot to expand into the grooves of the rifling of the barrel and achieve good accuracy as a result of spin stabilization.

You can shoot a minie ball out of a 12ga smoothbore … but you are not going to gain anything with respect to accuracy. There is no rifling for the minie ball to engage in ….

You could say that modern Foster slugs are a sort of minie ball …. because they are designed to expand to the bore/choke diameter …. but smoothbores do not have rifling … and therefore there is no spin stabilization ….

Foster slugs out of smoothbores are in general not as accurate as for example sabot slugs shoot out of rifled barrels.
 
threecentsolution said:
Would a minie ball work in this situation or has it been tried.
Click to expand...
yes the minie ball does work if used without a wad and directly on top of the powder.
otherwise it won't expand to seal the bore
and being a "shuttlecock" design it will improve the accuracy a bit
but the turkey choke is not going to like something like that

edit: and now I'm thinking of a paper patched minie ball. This could work if the paper-patching stays on after the forcing cone
 
0faustus0 said:
A bullet that was designed for spin stabilization (and not drag stabilization) ... what will happen to it during flight and when shot out of a smoothore?
Click to expand...
More than likely, tumble, keyhole and generally have a fun time.

Unless it's in some sort of self-stabilizing shape.
 
I got decent results at 30 yards by drilling out fiber wads and placing 50cal ml round balls inside the felt/cork wad. I used black powder and several nitro cards under the wad. Used in a Husqvarna 20b hammer gun with very tight full chokes. I haven't measured the choke but my Lee key drive 7/8oz slugs won't pass thru.
Each barrel got decent accuracy but the regulation was off
I only tested at 30 yards as I had an idea for a bear gun and didn't have a .690 round ball mould to play with
In converting a Husqvarna 51 sxs hammer gun to a muzzleloader I've had decent success with Lee key drive slugs patched in cotton cleaning patches. That gun still maintains the chamber's so the cotton patches seem to help center the slug thru the chamber and forcing cone. They hit head on on targets and at 40 yards I drilled a big coyote in the side of the head. I would bet you could wrap a round ball in a shot cup.
Another idea would be to center a 50 cal round ball in a shot cup like a claybuster grey 7/8 oz wad and corn meal pack it and glue it in place. The glue would let go on ignition but should hold together to the choke. Be similar in theory as winchester longbeard but with only 1 projectile
I haven't tried this yet as I swapped to hardened buck shot in my converted muzzleloader smoothbore
My objective was to get a quick second shot during the controlled deer hunt.
 
Ok, I think I figured it out .... after a whole bunch of testing over the last couple of week ends .... with different combinations of ball sizes and choke sizes .... and wad variations ... I finally managed to get an acceptable group out of my 870 12ga with a turkey choke .... :)




For whoever is interested I posted the details of this load over at Castboolits:


https:// castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?469938-12ga-smoothbore-round-ball-accuracy
 
That group makes me wonder what would happen if you loaded 3x 50 cal balls in one shell. Could use wads from steel shells. They're thick and long enough
What was your final load?
 
brybenn said:
That group makes me wonder what would happen if you loaded 3x 50 cal balls in one shell. Could use wads from steel shells. They're thick and long enough
What was your final load?
Click to expand...

Brybenn, I tried .50 cal round balls and I could not get them to group in a .665 choke (still too loose). So, 3 balls loaded in one round …. the pattern is probably all over the place.

There is a published load …. the Dixie Tri-Ball load and which uses three .600 round balls and the Precision Relooding Orange Wad TUPRWW123.

I played around with that load in the past …. Here is what I got out of a cylinder choke barrel ….

Tac14_50m_TriBall_load_lowres.jpg




And the load I ended up with for one .54cal ball is the following:

1. Cheddite 12ga 2 3/4” hull
2. Chedditte 209 primer
3. Powder: Clays
4. BPGS gas seal
5. FS12 gas seal
6. 20ga .125 Nitro Card
7. LBC30 wad (cut after 5 rings from the bottom) with 4 slits to the base
8. BW20 20ga cup with 2 slits
9. buffer (Mix #47 Buffer)
10. 54cal round ball
11. buffer (Mix #47 Buffer)
12. Tyvek UltraThin Overshot Card
13. Fold crimp


LBC30_Round_Ball_Load_54cal_lowres.jpg
 
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