Paper Shot Cups?

[musketman]

Your flintlock smoothbore will do anything a shotgun can do except sling a three shot burst of lead in the direction of the muzzle...

 

[roundball]

I made up a dowl and started making some cups. They are comming out right at .592, is this ok or to loose? Not sure if I should wrap more tape on the dowl or not.

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The best answer I can give you is that I concluded some amount of free space is required around / between the shot cup and the bore, to allow room for the paper sides to expand in order to burst at 'set-back' time...for me, leaving about .020" space around the shot cup as it slides into the bore worked...maybe more or less would also work, dunno...I didn't run weeks and weeks of exhaustive tests...I stopped as soon as I got a combination that worked consistently.

By all means, please use my info as a starting point, and share back with us other findings that you might come up with...I'm not any sort of authority on paper shot cups in smoothbores...just took ideas I've seen discussed in the past, tweaked them some more, documented my results, etc

 

[rabjr]

Ok my bore mics at .612 so these at .592 should be about right then. I'm getting wayyy ahead of myself but for the lack of anythin else to do atm, I'll make a bunch up and they'll be ready to use when I am lol.

#6 shot is normally used in smoothys for turkeys?

 

[roundball]

#6 shot is normally used in smoothys for turkeys?

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Beats me...that's what I'm using...I think 7.5's are too light, and the pellet count falls off with #5's or 4's...so I settled on #6's.
I also ran an unscientific penetration test as recommended by DaveK, which was to use a "tuna can"...it's made out of fairly thick, substantial metal...thicker & heavier than a soup can...and the #6's blew right through both sides of it...I assume it's enough power to penetrate a turkey's head/neck/neck bone, etc.

I sat in a tree stand last week and watched nine big beautiful Tom's come feeding through an Oak flat scratching for acorns...all had 10-12" beards dragging the tops of the leaves...one came within 10yds of my tree...and of course turkey season is closed.

 

[vinnynj]

i have made and used paper shot cups i had a brass rod turned to 600 with a concaved end on one side to hold a 600 rd ball for miletery cartrige quick 2nd shot for deer for shot i usepost it notes that jous fall shy of overlaping 2times and nickel plated 5 1/2 shot over 2 wonder wads have killed tree rats at over 40 yds think thay are as tough a criter as it getts( ever skin one or five} have to play wih powder and shot i use 95 g shot and 95 2f goex in my 20 in my 2o pistol i use cup 45g 71/2 nickel shot and 45 3f verry nasy to 15 yds good luck vinny

 

[Rebel]

Man, that's a pretty stout load for a .20 ga. That's the load i use in my .12 ga.for geese, only with steel shott instead of lead.

 

[rabjr]

Ok if I did this all right, this is how they should look? I scrounged up a couple of # 7 1/2 shot shells to use just as a test. The cup is holding pretty close to 1 5/8 oz of shot and is .20 thousands under bore size.

 

[madstone]

I like 4's for gobblers. They carry beter and add some penetration at the longer ranges. 6's always made me stay so close I was unable to get many. (maybe a duplex load of 6's and 4's?
:results:

 

[musketman]

Ok if I did this all right,

Looks good, you can load them on top of a fiber wad and place a over shot card on top and run them all down in one stroke...

Or make the paper tube a skosh longer and fold the paper over the shot, both work fine...

Great picture... :redthumb:

 

[roundball]

Ok if I did this all right, this is how they should look? I scrounged up a couple of # 7 1/2 shot shells to use just as a test. The cup is holding pretty close to 1 5/8 oz of shot and is .20 thousands under bore size.

Looks just like mine...good job!

I pour the powder, seat a couple of wonderwads all the way down and compress the powder the way I want to...then start another wad a couple inches into the bore, slip a paper cup down in on top of it, pour in the shot, place the OS card on top, and carefully slide that all down until it stops.

Note: For some reason, I chose not to compress the shot charge as I knew it would manually burst the paper cup...just seemed like I shouldn't do that but I have no earthly science to back that up at all...and you know the old saying, once I got a repeatable, workable configuration, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" took over. Figured next summer I could experiment to see if compressing/bursting the shot cup manually has any effect.
Maybe when you range test yours and get things working this way, you can try a few that are manually compressed/burst and see if they act the same.

Anyhow, assuming they work for you as they do for me in my GM barrel, you'll be shocked at how tight the pattern is. Except for a turkey head/neck, you just about can't use this load on anything less than 25yds as it will destroy it.

For squirrels, rabbits, etc...I assume the shot charge would either need to be significantly reduced or just not use the paper cup so the shot charge would spread more quickly giving a thinner pattern, etc.

Let us know how you do

 

[rabjr]

Great, now I need to build a smoothy to use these in haha.

 

[madstone]

With patterns that shoot too tight, you might try, as suggested, folding over the paper at the top so it will open up and catch air and leave the shot column unmolested.
Very light charges may not be opening the ctg and result in my "shot grenade" arriving in one mass!! ( I used charges of 6's tied in the corners of thin "baggies, loaded tie up! At 40 yds and light loads they arrived in one big massive load. At 40 yds they put all 225 6's in one small hole!! Made people mad as heck at old time turkey shoots!)
Bump the load gradually and you will find an optimum load that allows the shot to leave the paper after exiting and yet not have an overshot card in the way?
:results:

 

[Bob J]

Roundball-
I read over your directions carefully. Using a 5/8" dowel built-up with about 4 wraps of masking tape, I think the resulting cups fit the 10 ga. about right. The fit is maybe a friction fit; that is they BARELY touch (due to imp cycl. and mod. chokes) but slide down easy. My best load prior was 110 grains 2f and 1 1/2 oz. #5 shot using two over powder cards only (V. M. Starr concept) or one over powder with cushion wad. Think I will try this with two or three wonder wads (SHOULD I ALSO USE OVER POWDER CARD?).

Thanks for the info - will post results once I have opportunity to try it sometime between now and spring gobbler season.

 

[Rat]

You can indeed duplex and triplex your shot loads. I use mostly #4 for turk, but about the top 1/4 layer is smaller shot. You could try that, or two thirds #4, one third smaller shot, or half and half, or whatever made sense to you. It works.

Rat