fast pre-prepared shot loads

[roundball]

I shoot a 62 smoothbore, I made a mandrel that measures .595" I use heavy typing paper cut to wrap twice around the mandrel. Gluestick to close and at one end I put one card wad, the over powder type. Fold over the ends and glue shut.
Add shot I generally use 1 1/2 oz. # 4 or 6 shot. One more wad over the shot and fold the ends over and glue.
Here's the trick though, I use oatmeal as a buffer between powder and shot cup.
Absolute murder on squirrels.
This year I want to try dipping the tubes in beeswax and crisco to see if it will keep the fouling soft andallow a faster reload.

If I understand correctly:

You use the oatmeal as a firewall?

You drop the entire shot container into the bore as a sealed unit...but it opens reliably and gives consistent patterns?

What holds the shot container in place if an over shot card is not used up ahead of the shot container...why doesn't it slide out?

Thanks

 

[CrackStock]

I have carried these in small lengths of copper tubing or a cartridge box.

CS

 

[Deadeye]

I use typing paper or cheap post-it notes. Lay the dowel on the paper and place a cushion wad and a over powder card
on the end of dowel. leave about 3/8" to fold over and glue.
after rolling and glueing , remove dowel and put in shot and over shot card, fold over and glue. Size should be a snug slip fit in barrel. dump in powder, seat shot packet firmly on powder
I give it 2 or 3 whacks with my ramrod. It won't move or slip forward. I've shot hundreds and never had one that didn't open up. I get good patterns.
A powder horn and a pocket full of these and your good to go.

 

[roundball]

I use typing paper or cheap post-it notes. Lay the dowel on the paper and place a cushion wad and a over powder card
on the end of dowel. leave about 3/8" to fold over and glue.
after rolling and glueing , remove dowel and put in shot and over shot card, fold over and glue. Size should be a snug slip fit in barrel. dump in powder, seat shot packet firmly on powder
I give it 2 or 3 whacks with my ramrod. It won't move or slip forward. I've shot hundreds and never had one that didn't open up. I get good patterns.
A powder horn and a pocket full of these and your good to go.

This is exactly the end result that I wanted but more often than not I sent a 'slug' gthrough the target...and that wasn't even with the top end glued...just foled over then a .030 OS card seated on top.
If your's is a snug fit in the bore, and glued on top, what is it that gets the shot container opened up cleanly every time?

 

[flint62]

The whole tube goes down the bore in one piece. The tube is a fairly tight fit to the bore. I've never had it slip.
At 25 to 30 yards I get good fairly tight patterns. The patterns improved dramatically after I started using oatmeal between powder and shot. It's more a buffer than a firewall.
The only time I had a problem with these tubes was when I put an overpowder wad on top of the tube.
I came out like a slug and punched a large hole in the target board.

 

[Leatherbark]

How about using Aluminum foil for shot packets?..........Been thinking about trying it soon in my 20ga. fowler........Wrap it around a dowel and fill her up and twist the ends.....Even if one just uses it to carry the shot and not put the foil down the barrel.........Not PC,but neither is the steel in yer barrel...........

 

[roundball]

The only time I had a problem with these tubes was when I put an overpowder wad on top of the tube. I came out like a slug and punched a large hole in the target board.

Interesting...I have no idea why having an OS card glued inside a sealed shot container would allow the container to open fine, but a card sitting on top of the shot container would not allow it to open, but can't argue with success...I'll try that in my .62cal and see if I can duplicate those outstanding results...would much rather carry sealed premeasured shot containers if they'll perform every time...thanks

 

[flint62]

The only problem I have is that with the tight fit to the bore, after 2 shots I need to run a wet patch down the bore usually. So reloading is a little slow.
Thats why I'm going to try lubing the tube to see if I can keep the fouling soft enough.
I got the idea for the tubes from an article in Muzzleblasts a few years back. So far I've had good success.

 

[roundball]

".....Thats why I'm going to try lubing the tube to see if I can keep the fouling soft enough....."


I use an OP card, then three .62cal Oxyoke wonderwads prelubed with NL1000, and Goex...the NL1000 wonderwads minimizes the fouling and keeps what little there is very soft, each reload just pushes it down on top of the powder and it's expelled with the next shot, so you never have more than one shot's worth of fouling in the bore at any given time

 

[Deadeye]

Not really sure why it always opens up. Never even thought about it until I started reading on here that sometime they didn't open up. It may be the way that I seat it on top of the powder, very firmly, that may tear the paper. After 1/2 dozen or so I'll chew on a cleaning patch and wipe the bore as it will start to get hard to push them down. I use 24 ga. wads inside the paper wrap which makes a good fit in a .620 bore. I took this method from a article I read several yrs. ago about some guys in Alaska who made them this way for grouse hunting. Try it, I hope it will work for you.

 

[ffffg]

most will need to tear off top as slid into barrel. ram home and cover with overshot card to stop slug type preformance.. if you get 10 in a row on the PATTERN BOARD without problems then your good to go.. one or two on the pattern board doesnt tell much with shotgun..proper type balistic products plastic buffer for the shot your using within the shot column will give tighter patterns yet.. i load in the field, not in a big hurry anymore. just out for a nice day. as the weather gets colder, muzzel velocity slows, ballistics and components change, materials harden, and patterns spread faster due to denser air.. all loads need to be checked at each 10-20 degree interval down to temps that you hunt at with type of shot your using. my 70 degree load has no relationship whatsever to my 20 degree load, and this looks nothing like my 10 below zero load.. not even close.. buffer and wads and oatmeal will raise pressures.. for instance a 12 gauge blank load is simply 5-7 nitro cards.. probably deadly at close range.. so pattern those shotguns and keep good records as winter comes on, with each set of patterns recorded and developed for that type weather and that type shot.. bismuth has different impact/ballistic/ and pattern properties than steel, or lead etc..so to have optimum shotgun patterns is a whole bunch of work,i mean a whole bunch of fun. .. dave..

 

[flint62]

Are you reffering to those soft felt wads? I was going to try either dipping the tube into a lube like beeswax and crisco.
I have some of those thick cushion wads that I sliced into thirds and dipped in melted crisco, I thought that might work.
Squirrel season will be here soon, gotta get busy.

 

[roundball]

Are you reffering to those soft felt wads? I was going to try either dipping the tube into a lube like beeswax and crisco.
I have some of those thick cushion wads that I sliced into thirds and dipped in melted crisco, I thought that might work.
Squirrel season will be here soon, gotta get busy.

I've read about slicing 1/2" lubed cushion wads and understand it...also agree they should work fine.

I didn't happen to have any .62cal 'cushion wads' and bought a couple bags of Oxyoke wads when I was ordering some other stuff one time.

IMO, any wad(s) that provide a firewall, a cushion, and put lube into the bore, without being so heavy they drive forward and disrupt the pattern should be fine.

I wonder if lubing the paper container enough to make a difference would soften the paper and allow it to come apart while carrying it around...and/or affect the operation of the paper container itself...dunno

 

[CrackStock]

Roundball

I would think that you would want the paper to stay together until it exits the muzzle so as to protect the shot pellets from contact with the bore where they would be deformed and spun. Both of these would ruin your pattern. It is also nice to keep the bore from leading.

I tear the cartridge paper off even with the muzzle so that it stay together until it gets out of the bore when it acts like a big parachute that is not connected to the shot.

CS

 

[roundball]

Yes, I mentioned that I use paper shot cups...we were just discussing the pros & cons of a sealed shot cup with the OS card inside it vs. on top of it, and lubed wads under the cup vs. lubing the paper cup itself

 

[flint62]

That's my concern also, wether or not the lube on the tube will have any effect on the pattern. I think if the lube is kept on the stiff side it might work.
There's only one way to find out, I suppose.

 

[Rebel]

Yep, more of that pesky range time. ::

 

[Hoyt]

When I prepare my post-it shot cups for spring gobblers I roll two of the three Ox-Yoke lubed cushion wads up inside the bottom of Post-it paper and after they have been in there a while the whole Post-it shot cup gets saturated with the lube from cushion wads.
I use .20ga. cushion wads and they will just go in the shot cup and the shot cup will just slide down the barrel with it's on weight. Before next gobbler season I'm going to try putting a .28ga. felt cushion wad on top of the shot inside the shot cup and folding over about 3/8" to 1/4" shot cup on top of it and see how it works.
I haven't had the slug effect yet and I make my shot cups about 3/8" to 1/4" long and crimp or fold over the shot.
One reason for trying the cushion wad or even thin overshot card on inside top of shot cup is for handling reasons..without anything the shot wants to fall out if not real careful.

 

[taylorh]

Here's the poop! I made four prepared powder and shot loads a week ago. I only made four because thats how many I finished before my wife found me and put me to work elsewheres. I used a .500 dowel with some duct-tape on it to fatten it up to .535 ish. Then I single wrapped a 7-8 inch piece of butcher paper (it is waxed on the inside to keep my powder dry) and sealed the sides with rubber cement. Then I shoved .410 gauge plastic shot-cup into the center of it, poured 70+ grains of powder in one end and 1 oz of shot in the other end. Tied both ends up and wallaa!! I paced off 15 paces (45 feet) and took aim at four seperate sheets of newspapersr (24.5 x 22 inches square) with the four prepared cartridges. I loaded each by tearing off the powder end and letting the powder fall freely down the barrel, before shoving the whole thing down the shoot, leaving the over-shot knot in place. Here are the results...

1st shot
67 pellets + two larger holes (one upper left, the other lower right). No shot-cup recovered.

2nd shot
231 pellets + one smaller hole (1 inch), pattern is fairly tight and to the left. No shot-cup recovered but I did find the tied over-shot knot and paper neatly torn in a perfect circle the size of a dime.

3rd shot
254 pellets + one small hole with open shot cup in it. Pattern was well dispersed.

4th shot
138 pellets + two large holes, one with the open shot cup in it. Pattern was low, holes were high.

Well I know four shots don't make a scientific study, but I would say these results demonstrate inconsistant shot patterns. I think I'll try this again with some dry circle-fly wads instead of the shot cups. Also I think it demonstrates that undersized shot loads will open on their own (even if they are inconsistant) if they are undersized in the barrel. I had no problems with the shot falling out, and the packets went down easy without lubrication. It was also very fast to re-load using this method.
Keep trying!
Taylor in Texas :hmm:

 

[taylorh]

Just to cap things off, I have found that the BEST load for my gun (.56 renegade) is 70gr pyrodex, 28 gauge circle-fly overpowder card and wad, 1 ounce shot (70gr by volume), followed by a 24 gauge overshot card.
I have tried various types of shotcups (paper, plastic, etc) and have found that all of these loads leave some holes in the pattern. I also found that 28 gauge fiber wads rolled up in paper cartridges wont go down my .550 shoot! So the only way to make good paper cartridges would be to use smaller than 28 gauge wads and overpowder cards, but you would still have to tear open the top and bottom of the cartridges before stuffing them down the shoot and cap it off with an overshot card! The only thing that worked well was the plastic undersized shotcups, but they won't open consistantly when wraped in paper.
So my conclusion is to use seperate components (carried loose in my shirt pocket) with pre-measured powder in tied, double wide zig-zags (70 grains), and a shot flask rigged to drop one ounce of shot.
GOOD LUCK! :hatsoff: