how accurate is the lee drive key slugs

grizzly416

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want to start loading shotgun and slugs andwodering how accuratte are the and how they do in a smooth bore any suggestion on bullet weight 7/8 or 1 oz
 
I don't know about the Lee, but I have the Lyman 1 1/8 mold and at 50 yards from a 20" smooth bore slug barrel from my 870 I group into about a 3" diameter grouping with a 3x scope on the shotgun. You will have to find the right powder amount for your load. Turns out 24.5 to 25.5 grains of Herco is what does the trick for my load.
 
There are threads over on the cast bullets website that deal with casting shotgun slugs.

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/forumdisplay.php?f=36&order=desc

The biggest hindrance to accuracy is when the drive key on the bottom of the slug embeds into the shot cup and you can clearly tell by the flyer that it produces at the target. Lee claims that this will not happen but when I shoot the slugs at the 50 yard target and find the shot cup you can clearly see the indent in the cup. If you line the slugs key up with the seem of the shot cup then everything is ok and I can average about 3-4" at the 50 yard target with a cut off 19" unrifled barrel.
For an experiment I purposely loaded the drive key so the shot cup seem is at 90 deg. to it and sure enough I was finding the groups open up to 6-10" at 50 yards.

Some people just put a nitro card (I use very hard cardboard cut to size) under the slug in the bottom of the shot cup and no more problems.

Lots of reading over on cast bullets about Lee slugs and other manufactures slugs also.

On you tube there is a video of a guy making his own out of a 5/8" size hole in a piece of wood. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7g06a6RWC4A

I have tried this and used a 7/8" piece of mdf board and it casts about 520 grn slug and honestly it is just as accurate as the Lee mold for what it is worth.
 
I use 1oz and Blue dot powder get around 21/2" @ 50 with full power loads. Load same slug with 18 gr. SP 81 for IPSC shoots 4" @ 50.
 
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