Wax Slug Performance

Ganderite

Ganderite

CGN Ultra frequent flyer
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Location
Farm south of North Bay
No opportunity should be wasted...

My wife and I have been replacing the 40 year old acoustic ceiling tiles in the family room. I have a trailer on my ATV parked at the back door slowly accumulating 1200 square feet of used tiles.

The other day I was shooting a wax slug and got to wondering how long the wax bound the #8 shot as a sold mass before it broke down into a cloud of shot.

I propped 15 panels against a tree and fired a wax slug.
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Panel 14 looked like a single hole, but #15 was somewhat bigger.
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Conclusion: The wax binds well. I use hard sealing wax, not candles or crayons. Accuracy is adequate for plinking slugs to 25 yards.
 
I'm a bit puzzled as to why you'd use a hard sealing wax. I mean, the main point of using a wax slug (wax filling the voids between regular birdshot) is to have a projectile which behaves like a slug until hitting the target, then breaks up. The advantage of slug-like behaviour is obvious - it gets the shot to the target in one piece making for better accuracy and power delivery at somewhat longer ranges than birdshot. The break-up has two advantages: maximizing damage inside the target by dumping energy, and minimizing over-penetration which with a conventional lead slug could create far greater risk of harm to objects/persons downrange. These are considerations in the context of defensive shooting, should such an incident unfortunately arise.

But by using a sealing wax (if I'm understanding correctly, this is the hard wax used to seal letters/documents, so like a hard, brittle plastic when cooled?) you are overcoming the tendency of a softer wax to melt and come apart on impact. The result is a single projectile which is likely to behave in any solid target much like a solid lead slug does, as your experiment proves.

So the conclusion I draw is that you're taking the time to convert your birdshot shells to wax slugs of a sort to save money, as low recoil shells are about 1/3 the cost of 1oz lead slugs... is this about right? I guess if you don't count your labour as having value, sure. If I'm entirely missing the actual intended point of the exercise please enlighten me, I'm all ears!
 
I use the Ganderite method as well and my wax slugs hlod together when they hit the target at 25 yards.

It's fun and in a pinch can sub for a slug at close range. I also think they are safer than cut shells.
 
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