Jug chokes and round balls

[Daryl]

Has anyone tried the Steel-shot wads in a 12", 16 or 20 bore, with inner smaller cushion wad at long ranges - 30, 40, 50, 60 yards. I know they shoot like a rifle at 25 yards, but then, so did the Wesley Richards coloured shot columns with wire cages.  These were effectively developed according to colour, to open at 40 yards, 70 yards, 90 yards - that sort of thing.  Seems to me, the very tight, rifle-like shooting of the steel wads at close range, being similar, should slowly allow the shot to spread as the wad column itself slows at longer ranges.  Perhaps thinning at the top end, different inner wad compostion inside and in over shot wads, hardness of shot or cutting a few more more slits could 'tune' the column for longer ranges.  This might be an every better 'fix' for cylinders or shallow 'jug' chokes. There is a  LOT more work that could be done in shot-load development in muzzleloading smoothbores.

[northmn]

As soom as weather permits, likely sometime between July 4th and July 15 the way the weathers been goin lately, I plan on working up steel loads with a steel shotgun wad.  One contributer that tried them mentioned that they tended to slug instead of opening up.  The ones I have looked at now are the Ballistic Product LBC wads as they provide for grooves to put in lubrication like Crisco to prevent burning.  Steel needs some work as the substitutes are pretty spendy.

DP

[FL-Flintlock]

DP, if you look at the "higher center density" claims, it's true to a point being that the center density is improved but not by putting any more pellets into that portion of the pattern - the pellet count remains the same, they are just grouped tighter.  By adjusting the wad column and changing to a higher-pressure but slower burning powder and replacing the flimsy AA plastic wads with the thicker & stiffer Federal wad, the center pattern density is greatly improved by putting a much higher pellet count into play, IIRC around 30%. 


Daryl,

Yep, I have tried the plastic steel-shot wads.  Biggest problems are loading and melting.  I had to make a funnel to get them started into the muzzle and if you don't use at least a 0.125" nitro-card between the plastic wad and powder, you're soaking the bore in MEK or Tetra to get the melted plastic out.  Cutting the gas-cup off the bottom of the wad does help ease loading.  Adding cushion is not an issue with steel shot as far as pellet damage is concerned but adjusting the amount of cushioning does have some to lots of affect on the resultant patterns.  No cushion will normally produce decent patterns, adding a 0.250" or 0.375" standard fiber wad will normally tighten the patterns a bit from a cylinder bore - cushion is added between the nitro and plastic wads.  If you buy the longer plastic wads such as those for the heavy loads in 3" and 3.5" cartridges, trim the petals back to end just shy of the shot column - this gives you stiffer petals that will stay closed longer - gluing a 0.375" fiber wad to the bottom of the plastic wad increases the total wad mass and helps keep the wad with the shot for a longer distance after it leaves the muzzle.

If you're not into paying upwards of $0.45 each for plastic wads or wish to avoid the annoyance of working with non-traditional items, making your own shot sleeves from rolled paper works just as good if not better.  I like mine to finish out around 0.030" - 0.035" thick glue the ending flap down and glue the formed cup right onto a 0.500" fiber wad - I use my cyanoacrylate gel glue.  If the cups don't follow the shot long enough, glue another wad on the bottom of the first to add more mass - you will have to adjust the length of the shot sleeve if you're getting egg or flat patterns so it separates at the right time and evenly, if the recovered cups are blown apart, use stronger paper or solidify them with an eggwhite & water mix (after gluing them to the wad) as would normally be used for paper-patching conical bullets.

No matter if you're running plastic or paper cups, thick ones will not allow Jug or Tula chokes to work properly, you'll still be relying upon the cup & load to produce the desired pattern.  I strongly suggest you not run steel shot through any bore without a shot cup of some type protecting the bore from the shot.  Lead shot doesn't require a cup but you need something to help keep the outer layer of pellets from picking up rotational spin, fine ground pure corn meal has worked best for me in both ML & cartridge but don't forget to take the buffer & wad mass into account when calculating charges & pressures, they are all part of the payload weight.  Something I've said before about steel and got considerable flak on some forums because of it - don't load by weight, load by shot column length.  In other words, if you're getting good patterns with 1.125oz of lead shot, measure the length that charge takes-up in the shot-cup and measure the steel shot to the same linear length.  Measuring 1.125oz of steel shot as the same weight of the same size lead shot will give you considerably more pellets - in my experience, steel shot patterns and performs best when run at higher velocity than lead shot.  The higher you can get the velocity, the more effective range you get.  Limiting yourself to running the same weight of steel shot as opposed to running the same number of pellets limits the amount of velocity you can put on the load without exceeding safety limits.  This applies ONLY to black powder ML loads - do not stray from the smokeless loading data for cartridges!

I will also suggest you avoid using anything containing Teflon/PTFE or anything "moly".  Black powder burns hotter than smokeless and once you get the bore crapped-up with either substance and it burns on, you'll have the devil of time trying to get it back out again - this is even a problem with smokeless loads, I ran ten lead shot loads with moly-coated wads through one of my 12ga suppository guns...I won't ever do that again! 

If you want to run a shot-cup through a jug/Tula choke, use a single wrap of thin paper (cash register receipt tape is cheap to buy, easy to work with and performs well). 

Don't shy away from changing powder granulations that go against the commonly held theories.  1F will sometime produce the best performance in 20ga and smaller bores just as 3F may give the best performance in the 10ga.  Don't think that any two guns will shoot exactly the same either - I had a 12ga SxS percussion, both cylinder bore and each barrel needed a completely different load in order to throw the same patterns and no, there was nothing mechanically different with either barrel.

PS: to DP - I'll issue no comments on the current weather conditions here and my complaints on the "cold" temperatures.

[northmn]

Personally I wonder about backboring, but it made Stan Baker a fair living.  It is a moot point for ML as one cannot back bore a ML, the botre is the bore and there is no chamber.  For steel I tried various materials and found them to break through.  One trick that worked for in a 16 gauge was to cut the cup off of a 12 wad then cut a section out of the steel wad so that it fit in the 16 bore.  It gave me better loads than factory.  I think that that would work for a 12 by full length slitting one side of a cup to prevent slugging.  The paper sounds great for lead.  Pretty quick I get to go out and move more of that beautiful white ##### people wanted for Christmas.

DP

DP

[Daryl]

Guys - I was talking about lead shot in steel-shot cups to give long range patterns in cylinder bores. The note about putting a card wad between the powder and plastic wad has been covered enough times in the past, I merely neglected to mention it. Sometimes one needs to learn from making the mistakes, themselves.  It can't be all easy/peasy - sometimes.  I learned about 1 (or more) card wad between plastic and black powder the hard way, as appears you did too, FL-Flinter.

 We found separate loads that worked well (80%) in each of Taylor's Manton but not in both barrels, same load.  We wanted a single load for both barrels to make loading easier. We eventually (same day) found a single load that would pattern just over 70% from each barrel, at 26 yards. This iwas good enough for us, considering a 70% pattern was considered 'normal' for a cylinder at 25 yards.  it was interesting that his gun demanded 3 drams of powder, whereas dropping the powder charge to 2 1/2 or 2 3/4 drams produced donut patterns - exactly opposite what I thought should happen.  Sometimes, testing is the only way to find out what is happening - well, more often than sometimes,  about everytime for me.

 DP- bright sunshine - no snow today - yipeeee!

[roundball]

"...it was interesting that his gun demanded 3 drams of powder, whereas dropping the powder charge to 2 1/2 or 2 3/4 drams produced donut patterns - exactly opposite what I thought should happen..."
 

Glad to see you post that...when I was doing some small game pattern experiments back in the spring with a .54cal cylinder bore, I got things to a point where I had a great, even pattern at 30yds using 70grns Goex 3F.

For the heck of it, I wanted to see how much more the pattern would tighten up if I dropped the powder charge to 60grns and was shocked to find it was a blow out in the middle...a doughnut hole...3 shots in a row...same exact results each shot.

Went back to 70grns and the pattern evened right out again...would not have believed it if I hadn't seen it...still don't understand it...but I know it happened.

[FL-Flintlock]

Daryl,

No snow here today either but it's been nasty cold, barely made 73°F today! 

Yes, lead shot will work in a steel shot wad but not as good as it does in the paper sleeves.  The bottom of the steel wads is hard and offers no cushion, I've tried adding cushion under the plastic wad but it doesn't help enough to matter.  If you put a cushion wad inside the cup, the shot charge is up too high in the cup and the petals open too quickly resulting in negligible benefit to the pattern.  I tried the thicker wall Federal wads with lead shot, slight pattern improvement but again, not enough benefit for me to mess with them.

Doughnut patterns are normally caused by the wad pushing through the shot column - on rare occasion, problems with the bore and very rarely the crown will also cause doughnuts (another lesson learned the hard way).  This is why I try to reinforce the fact that velocity is a critical component of shotgun loads - while a ±80 fps difference in a rifle load will rarely be noticed let alone cause a problem, just ±25 fps in a shotgun load can make or break the pattern quality.  The reason you get doughnut patterns with lower velocity loads is because the shot isn't going fast enough when it clears the bore and the muzzle blast and/or wad will disrupt the pattern.  Unless it's getting glued to a shot-cup, I split my 0.500" fiber cushion wads into at least three pieces, the less mass of each piece, the less chance that it will have enough momentum to disrupt the pattern.  Also, I never use a nitro card that's more than 0.125" thick - using two or three 0.070" nitro cards works just as good as a single 0.125" or 0.250"

If you want to cut back on velocity without getting the doughnut pattern, change your wads.  This is the one time going to a plastic wad will help the patterns, any of the thin & light plastic wads cut the cushion section & gas cup off, keep only the shot cup.  Use one or two 0.070" nitro cards then two to four sheets of quilted or other puffy toilet paper, mash them up to increase the puff and run it down the bore then seat the shotcup & shot firmly on the TP and cap it off with an 0.025" OS card.  The TP doesn't add much mass and is a good cushion material - when the load clears the muzzle, the light plastic petals open quickly and slow the plastic down in a hurry and the combination TP & thin nitro card will usually disrupt the muzzle blast enough to keep it from buggering up the pattern.  Again, if you don't want to mess with plastic wads (personally I don't like using them at all including in cartridges) a single wrap of the cheap thin index card stock not glued into a cylinder, just wrapped into the bore - what I do is start the OP nitro wad about 1.5" into the muzzle then put the TP in then another 0.070" nitro wad and push the stack down about 0.250" further than the length of your shot column.  Roll the pre-cut strip of card stock and push it down till it's sitting on the nitro wad - size the strip of card material about 0.050" shorter than the shot column length and enough length so it overlaps itself about 0.020" on the circumference.  Pour the shot in, put the OS wad on and seat the whole assembly as a complete unit.  Alternate method is to use thin paper to make a cartridge containing all the wads, TP, shot and OS wad - tear the bottom off the cartridge, start it into the bore until only the top tail is sticking out then tear that off and finish seating.  Trick to making paper cartridges easier to deal with is by using the slightly under-size wads even if you have to use a little thicker paper to make sure you get a good seal - IE in the 12ga you can use 13ga wads or 17ga wads for the 16ga, if you can't get the undersize wads, 7lb thermal fax paper is usually thin and strong which makes good cartridges without adding too-much thickness to cause loading issues, put the shiny/glossy side out but you've got to cut the twisted ends off with a knife because it'll surely rip down the side if you try tearing it.  I tried regular Cut-Rite brand wax paper too, wrap around a mandrel the same diameter as the wads and seal with an old cloths iron on the lowest heat setting, this stuff works but it's delicate, the better choice is the heavier stuff made for commercial bakeries.  Only drawback to using wax paper is that you'll get burned wax fouling in the bore after about 20 shots but you can avoid the difficult clean-up by wiping between shots.

In the flinters and underhammers, I make the paper cartridges containing powder and all, shove the whole thing in and seat then just run a pick through the flash hole/nipple to poke a hole in the paper - Wiping between shots between shots becomes an important safety step because there is always the chance of having a piece of smoldering paper left in the bore!

Mark

[roundball]

"...The reason you get doughnut patterns with lower velocity loads is because the shot isn't going fast enough when it clears the bore and the muzzle blast and/or wad will disrupt the pattern..."
 

Isn't that the reason that OP wads, cushion wads, etc disrupt ANY shot column...that they're moving forward faster than the preceeding shot column is moving?

That would suggest in my particular example, that it my pattern is an even one with 70grns of powder, and 60grns makes a doughnut hole, any powder charge 60grns or less will cause the doughnut hole pattern.

Conversely, if I went back and experimented with that 70grn load by upping it to 80grns powder and got a doughnut hole, then "basically", the only powder charge that would work for that load would be the 70grn charge.

[FL-Flintlock]

RB,

In short, Yep.  That's why I said, you have to change the wads to cure the doughnut pattern.  When the velocity of the shot is just right, it'll run forward of the wad.  More or less powder than the "happy load", the wad(s) and/or muzzle blast will knock the center out of the pattern.  By going to multiple lighter wads, they won't pick-up enough velocity and don't have enough momentum from mass to plow through the shot after they clear the muzzle, also the wadding can help disrupt the direction of the muzzle blast itself so it doesn't ring the pattern.

That's another reason the crown is important, while it's not a common cause of pattern issue, it sure can be.  The more relief you have in the crown, the less likely it'll cause pattern issues.  Some makers figured this out many moons ago but the most common ones you'll see are Stevens, look at any of their smoothies and the crown looks like someone put them in with a Rigid pipe reamer.  Sounds funny but it works because it allows more room for the muzzle blast to blow past the sides of the wad instead of against it.  The quicker the muzzle blast dissipates, the less affect it has on the pattern.  If you've seen any modern trap/skeet guns, you'll notice that most of them have ported muzzles.  The vent holes came about to relieve the pressure considerably before the shot charge cleared the muzzle - only later were the gas vents aligned directionally to take advantage of the side effect that helps tame recoil and muzzle jump.  If you want a larger example, check out the muzzle brakes used on big-bore military guns that fire sabot rounds, the most important function of the brake is to vent a large portion of the muzzle blast out to the sides so it doesn't interfere with sabot separation.

[northmn]

As to doubles.  Don Zutz mentioned that in even modern shotguns finding a load that worked in both barrels was difficult.  Essentially his comment was that if a load worked good for a full it may not be ideal for a modified.  I also agreed with him that doubles are choked too closely.  Ie Mod and Full when they should be IC and Full.  For those that jug choke in BP doubles this could be an issue.  Zutz actuall recommended two loads.  For a double BP gun that could be a pain.  To be frank, when using my BP guns with shot, I do not use a shot protector.  My problem with my current flintlock is not getting a tight pattern but opening the thing up as Ruffed Grouse and pheasants over dogs are my primary quarry with a BP shotgun as well as possibly decoying ducks. If I need more for pheasants theres copper plated shot.  I had excellent luck with an old Navy Arms double, no choke, and 1 1/4 oz of lead 4's on decoying ducks when legal.  Really miss that and am going to try steel. 

DP

[roundball]

I guess we're really pulling this thread off topic and I wanted to ask a question about copper plated shot, so I'll start a new thread

[Daryl]

OK- lets start another one.