.410 slugs ? What do you use

Jeepguy

Jeepguy

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I just started shooting .410 and decided I want to reload my hulls with slugs . But it seems hard to find info on what mood or size to use/cast for this. Any info or help is greatly appreciated
 
It would depend what choke you're using. Not actually owning a genuine 410 I accidentally bought some slugs for my H&R Survivor and since I won't use these in the gun I decided to take one apart. The cute little rifled slug is about .38 so it's designed to be safe through any choke. Was rather surprised to find a fiber wad behind the slug followed by a bunch of filler which appears to be cornmeal,a cardboard cup then the powder. If you are shooting a cylinder bore then I'd see no problem using a 41 mag mold or use that mold and size down to a safe size for your particular shotgun.

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.41 is way to big(mike your muzzle) and way to heavy, I wrecked a gun years ago trying this!
I load a 3 ball 00 load for .410, I used to load slugs for it in the UK, don't know where they can be bought here. The factory slugs are 1/5 oz, which is pretty light. A .41 bullet is probably going to be 180 gr or more, not safe.
 
migrant hunter said:
.41 is way to big(mike your muzzle) and way to heavy, I wrecked a gun years ago trying this!
I load a 3 ball 00 load for .410, I used to load slugs for it in the UK, don't know where they can be bought here. The factory slugs are 1/5 oz, which is pretty light. A .41 bullet is probably going to be 180 gr or more, not safe.
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a 00 buck pellet is about 54gr in pure lead and not much less in other alloys a lighter .357" bullet screwed to a few wads mite work ok
 
migrant hunter said:
.41 is way to big(mike your muzzle) and way to heavy, I wrecked a gun years ago trying this!
I load a 3 ball 00 load for .410, ................ The factory slugs are 1/5 oz, which is pretty light. A .41 bullet is probably going to be 180 gr or more, not safe.
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I've done this just for the sake of farting around but the results aren't that wonderful. A 1/5 oz slug doesn't do very much, factory rolled or otherwise are not very accurate to any distance at all. For short range home protection type load, I've had some success with 3 '000' buckshot in a row, but again, not much range or penetration after 30 or 40 feet shooting into a telephone book.

It was fun to see what I could load up, but the results were more of a learning experience than practical results. I would be real careful with loading too much lead in fear of over-pressures, especially with a full choke. The max pellet load I think I've seen in a Winchester 3"hull is 13/16, but it exits a barrel very differently than does a slug.

Most of the .410 powder charges are used with a very fast burning pistol powder. If your going to max up the slug/pellet count, you might need to move to a more progressive or slower burning powder to keep you pressure down. Either way, unless you can pressure test your loads, I would keep them down for safety to yourself and your gun.
 
.410 slug is poor at best anyway. I have played with factory and handloaded slugs in a bunch of guns and it's never going to be a rifle, and has no real purpose in a shotgun. It's very underpowered for hunting and illegal for big game. I buy a few now and again to shoot milk jugs and such, but I can't think of a real use for it. I had a saiga AK shotgun in .410 for a while, shot hundreds of slugs out of it. Fun, but that was all. I had a no4 enfield with a scope in .410, bad as a shotgun and worse as a rifle.
I used to be able to buy .410 slugs with a plastic wad attatched, they were ok for fun. I did shoot a red fox once, in the wrecktim!
 
this is excellent. The gun in question has a cylinder bore and I ve been reading like mad to figure out what i can do . its more for fun than any real shooting purpose such as small game or personal protection. I did see a company in the U.S i think that sells a thing called the "thug slug" for about 20 bucks per 25 but thats still pretty darn close to factory prices once you load up 25 rounds. So iam thinking i may buy a .390 round bal mold and just load up 3 or 4 round balls for gits and shiggles. But iam going to keep searching and see what i can come up with.

Thanls for the info so far
 
I have a 00 buck mold for loading 12 gauge, so I just use that. If you wanted a heavy load for plinking or targets of opportunity while small game hunting, I think the 3x00 load would be more use than a slug anyway. About once a year I buy ammo in Canadian Tire with my CT money. I buy stuff that I can't load like rimfire and 12 gauge steel shells. That's the only time I buy .410 slug.
 
If you want to see exactly far you can push a .410, check out Iraqveteran8888 on youtube. He did a video series of torture testing an old single shot, with the intent of destructively testing it to see what it would take before blowing up. They did all sorts of stuff like field tip arrowheads, fishing sinkers(The Captain Arab), a few types of bolts and cap screws, and then handfulls of miscellaneous rifle ammo. I think they made it to .454 Casuul before that tired old warhorse finally stopped kicking. It was very surprising the variety of cartridges they could load and fire into it, even stuff that drastically exceeded the choke size.
Not safe by any means, but fun to watch.
 
A long time ago, I had a Webley and Scot bolt action .410. I tried loading .41 bullets in it, and I sheared off the bedding screw and cracked the stock. Be very careful firing stuff out of guns that they were'nt designed for.
 
Hmmm. I cast up a bunch of .401/.402 bullets for my neighbour for his .410. If memory serves correctly I think he said accuracy was poor. But it could be the gun, too. It was lousy when fired with factory slugs of any kind.
I never thought to ask him if his gun had any kind of choke. That could be the problem.
I keep meaning to load some slugs for my H&R .410/45lc, but the gun is at the farm, and I keep forgetting to grab it for measurements. Makes a nice snake gun for mom, so if mom's happy, everybody's happy...
BTW the gun is so-so with 45's. extractor keeps jumping over the little rim. Accuracy is good enough for milk jugs at 20 paces.
 
Lionel you won't have any kind of accuracy with 410 slugs in a 45 cal barrel. If you could make an elongated 45Colt case and load with a 452 or 454 slug then we'd be talking. Possibly fire form 303 like you would for regular 410??? Last time I had mine out I was able to shoot just over 1" 3 shot group at 25m with hand loads. I would love to try it as a close range deer gun one of these days.
 
While shooting at paper and other targets might be fun for sh*ts n giggles, a 1/5oz slug (90gr) that travels at more or less 1200 feet/sec isn't going to give any worth hunting results. In Alberta, this is deemed to be far too low in energy for big game hunting.

If you don't have the chronograph or can't do the velocity/energy calculations , fire a shot into a wet bundle of newspapers and compare it to a light bullets such as 30-30 or sks round. The question is not how Hard the .410 slug can hit, but how Light the .410 slug hits?

I shot a porcupine once with a .410 slug at 30 feet away. I think it was about the limit of what bullet can do.
 
Jeepguy said:
the more info that keeps coming in the better. On a side not anybody make a home made set of tools for loading these little hulls ?
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I use a Mec650jr. Hulls need still need to be resized and deprimed. Some of it you can do by hand, but I think the real trick is to get the crimp done properly. The press has a 2-stage crimp to make it clean and I haven't seen any hand tools for this. I made my own slugs one time by simply drilling a .400 hole in a 2 part block of steel to pour lead into. I enjoyed the process and experience, yet there was no wonderful results.
 
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