12 guage .69 ball loads

L

Loki610

Regular
Rating - 100%
12   0   0
Location
Nobleford
Anyone ever played around with a .69 ball load for the 12 guage?

I'd love to try some but I'm finding load data to be sparse at best!

Just got a lee mold that's dropping balls of .689 and I cant wait to try them as my badger killers while bird hunting.

So far I have AA hulls, WAA12 wads (whites), I'm still trying to find some fiber and card wads of various sizes before I get going.
 
Win AA hull
WIN209 primer
WAA12 wad
30gr HS-6 or 23.5gr 800-X
.690 roundball

Have shot plenty of them, not terribly accurate but I've found them to penetrate a lot more than your average slug.
 
When I was a kid you could buy these "factory loaded" for deer hunting.

Before the days of sabot's, when even a rifled slug (called a Foster) was still an uncommon thing you could pick up "pumpkin balls" which was nothing more than a lead ball (used by smooth bore black powder shooters today) loaded in a shotgun hull.

If I looked hard enough I probably have half a dozen in one of my many ammo boxes.
 
I shoot them patched out of my sxs 12 ga front stuffer. 90 gr. of FF and a .010 patch. Also loaded some into shots hells, worked ok but drive key slugs work better and the mould is inexpensive.
 
digitalblue said:
Win AA hull
WIN209 primer
WAA12 wad
30gr HS-6 or 23.5gr 800-X
.690 roundball

Have shot plenty of them, not terribly accurate but I've found them to penetrate a lot more than your average slug.
Click to expand...

That's perfect, I even have a pound of HS-6 that's been kicking around for the last couple of years! Did you have to cut off the wad petals to fit through a choke?
 
I load these for my father's full choke.
.690 is full so I cut the pedals just belowthe hhalfway mark on the ball.
read about a center punch felt pad as a wad. It's supposed to center them better than a plastic wad.
I don't have my load data here but I was also using hs6 and managed to push them to 1800fps.
 
I tested a few variations of this load this weekend.
AA hulls
30 grains HS-6
AA12 wad, petals cut back to 1/4 inch

When a 1/4 inch 20 guage felt wad is added on top of the wad I was able to get a good crimp everytime.

Lee dipper 1.9CC almost full of cream of wheat added on top of the AA12 wad got me a perfect crimp and the best accuracy

Without additional felt or filler I was having trouble getting a good crimp and velocity and pressures were low (Unburned powder in barrel)

When shot at 50 yards I was getting 6 inch groups from a modified choke with the bare AA12. Balls were penetrating to the back of my target backstop and 1/5 exited.

The loads with filler wads and good crimps burned much cleaner, grouped about 5 inches and every one got full penetration on my backstop, one ball had enough power to smash a 1x4 off the fence behind.

My backstop is made from 150L chemical barrels with 1/4 inch HDPE walls, filled with moist mud/manure from the corrals. It will stop a .375 H&H loaded with 300 grain TSX but these just sail through. Group size and pattern is identical on the barrels both front and back.
 
How much does the ball weigh?
I did a Google, and got an answer of 493gr
.cheaperthandirt.com/product/7-90978L

Another forum said "right around 1 oz", which would be 7000gr / 16 = 437.5gr
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom