Thread: Installing Lyman 525 slugs into factory shotgun cartridges.

@Kiwi Sapper...above link post #21 answers questions relevant to your 2 1/2"

Thanks, yes I've been reading that Web site. Very good info. I think I'll find most answers there.

Originally Posted by Micky Duck

@Kiwi Sapper...above link post #21 answers questions relevant to your 2 1/2"

Um ............Thanks, but I don't think so. No way would I be firing slugs from my 1931 Churchill.

What I am saying is:

1. ~ Yes, you can use equivalent weight lead shot load data as a starting point for loading cast lead slugs. Substituting an equal weight solid slug for the lead shot will reduce peak chamber pressure not increase it.

2. ~ If you don’t have your own means of checking the pressure of your loads (pressure trace equipment is best but unsupported faulty chamber bulge comparison to a know pressure load will work as well) then you should direct your attention to stiffening up the wad column in order to “work up the load from the starting point” rather then increasing the powder charge or switching to a hotter primer.

The testing I have done so far indicates that unless someone puts together something really crazy that should keep them out of trouble and allow them to build loads with decent performance. Things that would fall under “something really crazy” would be doing something like trying to force a 0.740+ diameter solid flat sided slug with no relief grooves or bands cast from pure type metal or turned on a lathe from bronze or copper rod through a standard 0.727” to 0.732” diameter shotgun bore or using a wad-column that consists of a solid ironwood 3/4” dowel turned down to 0.73” diameter that has absolutely no give to it at all (even hard nitro cards have some give to them). I’m sure that there are plenty of other “crazy” options but I can’t list them all. (As soon as you finally idiot proof something they come out with a better idiot.)

I should note that the fastest powders I have worked with are Clays and Red Dot and usually I work with the slower burners like WSF, IMR-4756, Blue Dot, and Steel powder. I can say that my limited work with Clays and Red Dot did show that I could completely replace the cushion section of the wad with a stack of hard nitro cards using 7/8 to 1-1/8 ounce weight wad-slugs and it didn’t put me over the pressure of the original lead shot load that I used as a starting point. It would usually put me pretty close to matching it but not quite though.

I should clarify that I haven’t done any work with the super fast burning powders that are even faster burning then Clays and Red Dot and basically just powdered dynamite namely Bullseye and AA#2 which are pretty much the two fastest burning powders available. It’s on my to do list for spring just to confirm the theory at the extreme end of the spectrum and not that I think there would be much sense in loading slugs with those powders since Clays an Red Dot are already a little too fast burning for building slug loads for anything other then plinking loads or three gun competition type stuff.

Now it is true that I was stiffening wad columns before I had pressure trace equipment. I was using the unsupported faulty chamber pressure bulge technique and an old Hodgdon manual I have that was written right at the turning point where plastic one piece shot wads and plastic hulls were the “new fangled thing” and people were still using paper hulls and card wadding to build loads as well. The only powder listed in the shot load section of that old book that is still around is HS-6 and all the others are discontinued but it is good for comparison purposes since it lists loads using both plastic wads and the old card wads side by side with powder charge and pressure differences (the old LUP pressure method) and has loads for lead shot, buck-shot, slugs, and blanks all listed both in plastic hulls and paper hulls with loads using wad columns consisting of one piece plastic wads, card/cork/fiber wad columns, and card/cork/fiber wad columns with a plastic gas seal unit only directly over the powder. It is an excellent source for studying how changes to the wad column affect a load if one doesn’t have their own equipment for doing their own experimental research.
this is PART OF THREAD....