small cal smooth bore

[preston cook]

a quick question my knowledge of smooth bores is quite limited and i seen on another site a fellow that was building a .40cal smooth bore .my question is, would this small cal have any effective use on game.past 10yards or so. the bbl was a .32rifled bbl that was bored to .405 and is 24" long --- :hmm:

 

[RiverRat]

Hi trucker, with a short barrel like that, it will probably work good with prb out to 40yds or so. I don't think it would be that great for shot though at 20yds or greater. :hmm:

 

[paulvallandigham]

He is basically making a .410 shotgun. With such a short barrel, he is not going to get the ballistics of a modern .410, tho'. .410s are use to shoot Skeet, and those targets can be 22 yards from the muzzle at the furthest station. Breaking a " Possible" 100 x 100) with a .410 is still a challenge for Skeet shooters. The shot will kill at much further distance, but so few pellets will be in any kind of pattern with such a small bore that its not recommended that the gun be used at much more than 50 feet. 15 yards( 45 feet) would be my outside range. And I would feel much more comfortable holding shots inside 30 feet( 10 yards). At 10 yards the pattern is fairly small for these small bore guns, although the shot string might be quite elongated at that distance. Because the small diameter of the bore requires more of the shot to be in contact with one side of the bore or the other, more of the shot is flattened, and slows down and drops out of the pattern after about 10 feet. Its the inability of these small bore shotguns to deliver many pellets out at longer distances that limits their usefulness as a game shooting firearm.

A .32 caliber smoothbore, would be like shooting .22 rimfire shotshells, effective maybe to 15 feet[with #12 shot], and then only if you use #6 shot in it. In testing done on the .22 shot shells, many years ago, we found that at 20 feet, the #12 shot would not even penetrate denim fabric draped over a corregated cardboard box.

The smallest " center fire " cartridge shotgun I have seen was a 9mm pistol cartridge gun, loaded with a shot load in a European made smoothbore. I am sure even smaller cartridges have been tried with shot, and exist, but this was the smallest I have seen and examined at a Gun Show table. The owner had never seen any ammo for it, or even seen it offered for sale, either by dealers, or cartridge collectors.

 

[CoyoteJoe]

I think the 24" length would be more of a limitation than the .405 bore. A surprising number of the old long rifles were actually smoothbore, particularly in the Bucks County style smoothbores are close to half the total and some are as small as .40 caliber. A .40 caliber muzzleloader can be loaded to duplicate a modern .410 shotgun but black powder requires a longer barrel to pattern shot well, especially with no choke. With a barrel of 42" or longer I would expect a .40 caliber would make a good squirrel gun but that 24" barrel will likely blow patterns badly because the gas pressure would still be very high as the shot is exiting the muzzle, thus driving the rear of the long shot column through the front, sort of turning it inside out and scattering the pellets wildly.
For use with shot only there is no advantage to a small bore since one can load a bigger bore as lightly as one may wish. I have loaded a 12 gauge with 40 grains of powder and 1/2 ounce of shot and it patterned very well, with enough power to drop squirrels from the tree tops so if the old timers favored a small bore for economy they were mistaken, since their neighbor could fire the same light load from a .69 caliber and probably get even better shot patterns.
With ball one does not have the same flexibility as the ball must be somewhere close to bore size.

 

[paulvallandigham]

That 24 inch barrel will only fire 35 grains of powder efficiently.( Davenport formula, 11.5 grains per cubic inch of bore) More than that, and the added pressure will blow the patterns. Coyote Joe is right about that. And, I agree that a long barreled .40 will shoot much better, both PRB and shot loads. No matter what shot you choose, you don't have enough shot left in your pattern beyond 20 yards, nor enough pellet energy with those light loads, to kill effectively.

If he is going to use this with a .40 cal. PRB, that is another matter. He still is limited in the amount of powder he can shoot, but 35 grains of FFFg powder is going to give him 1320 Fps. MV, and just under 1000 fps. at 50 yards. That is more than enough to kill deer at close ranges.

I know an older hunter who has both a pace maker, and a defibrillater in his chest, and just can't take much recoil. He has a .40 caliber, short barreled rifle he is using this year to hunt deer in a state where that caliber is legal. He can't see more than 50 yards from his stand where he is hunting, and expects any shot will be at half that distance. He is a very experienced hunter, with literally hundreds of deer that he has killed, so he intends to use his new gun to take head or neck shots on a deer.

The barrel on his gun is shorter than this one described. It is, however, a rifle, and not a smoothbore. Its a tack driver at 50 yards. There is NO recoil felt when firing the gun. That was his main objective. He doesn't want that defibrillator going off when he doesn't want it to do so. If you have ever seen what the electric shock does from a defibrillator in the Hospitals, where they have paddles applied to the outside of the patient's chest, you understand why he is concerned.

 

[Capt. Jas.]

Sounds like a neat little set-up for shooting bumble bees out of the air while sitting on the front porch. :thumbsup:

 

[preston cook]

:rotf: :rotf: maybe barn rats or roosting-or- roasting-- pigeons thank you all for the info this is a most helpful board.

 

[BrownBear]

No idea on shooting PRB, but if you can get decent patterns it should be about as effective as a 410 with shot. I've got lots of history using 410 cartridge guns with a variety of chokes on game. Anti opinions are usually based on heresay, speculation and ignorance rather than feet on the ground. If you respect the pattern limits of a particular gun and load, it will kill nicely within its effective range.

Unfortunately I don't know of a way to predict just how far you can project an effective pattern with a rig like that. One cylinder bore 410 I had tossed a very effective 1/2 ounce pattern of #7.5's to 20 yards when using plastic wads, but wouldn't do it at 10 yards with fiber wads. If you're serious about the shot capabilities, I'd sure have that thing bored to the right diameter for using off-the-shelf plastic 410 wads.

It poses the question of what could be done (or whether it could be done) with jug choking such a small bore. Maybe someone with experience rather than speculation could weigh in on jug choking a small bore.

 

[paulvallandigham]

My "feet on the ground" experience with the .410 has produced similar results, BrownBear. I think the very small bore shotguns are extremely tempermental, and require a lot of work. Your suggestion that this friend bore the gun out so he can use standard .410 plastic wads is a good one, even tho' I don't like useing plastic wads in BP smoothies.

As to choke, I have shot .410s from cylinder to full, and can't find much difference in the patterns that we got. I am not talking about shooting one shot, then completely cleaning the barrel of plastic before shooting the next. I suspect, after some more experience with plastic residue in other shotgun barrels and their adverse effect on patterns, that the plastic in the .410 can greatly affect, adversely, the patterns you get, particularly when the plastic builds up in the bore shot after shot. That may explain, BTW, why our early testing of various chokes in the .410 produced nothing of note.

With a BP shotgun, the owner has the opportunity to grease that barrel after seating the OS cards on top of the shot load, before firing the next shot. I have done this in my 12 gauge, and it eliminates plastic buildup from the wads. I have not done it with my .410, yet. :thumbsup:

 

[Britsmoothy]

I too have enjoyed many years of success with a 410. I can see it being good fun with a steady dog and rabbit.
I have heard 40 cals are good ball shooters and would surely make a good small deer getter.


Britsmoothy.

 

[BrownBear]

I can see it being good fun with a steady dog and rabbit.
Britsmoothy.

Aha!!!!

I can see points in common as well as differences. When I think of a "steady" dog, I picture a pointer. In over 40 years of dogs and rabbits, I've always used beagles and bassets. Enthusiastic and fleet footed as they are, asking one to steady and point would be like asking a politician to walk past a crowd of voters.

Ain't gonna happen!

But the idea of training a pointer to work with rabbits, now there's something worth considering.

What breed do you use?

 

[Britsmoothy]

Tia is a springer cross with a cocker. She will work like mad and her body language tells me what is about but I can stop her with hand signals and or a whistle or hiss which lets me get in position and then tell her to "get in" again to flush.
There are loads of pics of Tia on leverguns .com if you wish to search for them :hatsoff:

Britsmoothy.

 

[BrownBear]

Wonderful looker, and obviously well trained!

I more or less divide my rabbit (or hare) hunting between shooting on the run with shotgun over dogs or spot-and-stalk with a rifle. A trained pointer might just be the best of both worlds for me, especially when I factor in the ptarmigan hunting in our high country.

Thanks for the lead!!!!! :hatsoff:

 

[Britsmoothy]

same here with the rabbit shooting, I never have shot at grouse. I had chance years ago in scotland, black cock and red grouse but I never had ago as I was mainly after deer. Often wish I had now but back then I had not realised the joys of smokey guns :thumbsup:
Good luck this season :thumbsup:

Britsmoothy.

 

[Tinker2]

I have a 9mm RF shotgun that I shoot. It works great for
everything that I use it for.

I have been thinking that a new small smooth bore
flintlock would be nice.



Tinker2

 

[Deadeye]

I just built a .50 smooth flinter with 36" barrel
weights 6lbs. Shoots great with ball or shot. With #8 shot at 20 yds. 26 pellets on a 4x4" target and 219 pellets on a 12x12", that's with 3/4 oz. of shot in a "post it note" capsule.
Would be a great squirrel gun if we just had some squirrels in Utah but should be good for rabbits and grouse, we have lots of those.