Lee .69 roundball in 12 guage

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Jessegreenwood

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Hey all,
I have a lee .69 round ball mold. I tried searching, and didn’t find a recipie kn this forum at least.
One common thing is people saying it is too big to fit in a wad like waa12, and .68 would be better.

Well I have waa12f114 and measure the peddles as .02, which should work perfect, but when I put a ball in the wad it measures .74, so not a perfect fit.

Well I found one thing that may be a solution; I pulled apart a Winchester target shell, and the peddles on that wad are .015. Based on what I have seen, this should be perfect. I still need to do a shave it down the barrel test, but my thoughts are I could open 1 1/8(the ball is 482 grains) target loads, dump the shot, push in a ball, and close it back up. Same could work if I just cut the star out of the crimp.

Another idea I have, 4 wraps of paper should give .032, and work out almost perfect 8.5” so the width of common paper. I may try that with fiber wads and pyrodex, or with tightwad(I want to experiment with a quiet load, but that is a different project)

Anyway, dificult to get loading supplies for 12 guage here, so looking at all the alternatives I can think of, I would love to hear the results of others experiments in this area.

Thank you for your wisdom.
 
Make darn sure that the ball/sabot/wrap/whatever combination will clear any choke.

The old "pumpkin ball" loads had a donut wad immediately below the ball (on top of the overpowder and filler wads) which kept it sort of centered. The ball itself was small enough to pass through a full choke.
Lead Foster type slugs, being hollow, could swage down easily to clear through the choke.
 
I've sent a truck of them downrange, on a cylinder bore 12G.
- Depending on your alloy mix, they ought to weight around the 490gr-500gr (or a little under 1 1/8 oz)
- I was using Winchester AA hulls, and variety plastic petal wads (Needed to clean the closet).
- Powder was SP81 (Surplus powder from Higginson, fast lot of Universal Clays)
- Track of the Wolf is a good source for over shot card/wads (to get the correct height for a nice crimp.
- Typical lead slug travel at about +1500fps... I stopped at about 1400fps


Work you way up, when in doubt, don't...
 
I tried .690 round balls a couple of times. However, out of my guns with Improved Cylinder choke .... accuracy was not stellar.

If you want accuracy, then you will have to find a way to center that .690 ball within the bore. As tiriaq mentioned, this has traditionally been done with a sort of donut wad .... or a donut gas seal.

Also, I realized that most standard wads for 1oz or 1 1/8oz loads are not solid or strong enough by themselves and for a round ball.
They will have a tendency to wrap around the ball ..... and then get mangled during acceleration. Some people put one or two 20ga nitro cards inside the shotcup and underneath the round ball and to give that wad more rigidity.

With respect to components ....

me as well, I got some of my cards and fiber wads from Track of the Wolf. They ship to Canada.

Otherwise, Sporteque has the nitro cards and fiber wads from Ballistic Products in stock.

Myself I used the cup from a Gualandi Light Brush Wad to try to center the ball in the bore. But that cup needs several nitro cards as support. Here is a picture of 2 mangled cups that lacked that support. Sporteque has that wad in stock .... I just checked.

Hope this helps ....

Link
LightBrushWad_690RoundBall.jpg


Link
buck_and_ball.jpg
 
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