Great info rickt300!

I just did some shooting with my New Have 600 (Mossberg 500) using its smoothbore rifle sight barrel. I'm taking a different approach to the Lee slug now that I have the Hammerhead worked out, I cannot keep my mind from wandering back to the Lee Slug. The thinking centers on a couple of points; Hammerhead vs. the Lee "package"):

The Hammerhead pressure wad is a tight hull and bore fit. The pressure wads are easy to find at the target berm, and the one thing that you notice is full groove contact on both the sabot body and pressure seal. I have tried eleven different, recommend pressure wads, but only two have a tight fit of the pressure seal; the BPI 078 Lightning and PT1205.

The Hammerhead experience has lead me to believe that most column pressure wads are not up to the task. They might be suitable for moving shot but not the mass of the slug. The pressure columns on the recovered Hammerheads look like they could be reused. The pressure columns are typically destroyed on the different wads I've shot.

Where this is heading is that I'm not going to use a pressure wad with the Lee slugs. I need the pressure wad's cup, but I'm leaving the tail feathers behind.



The 20 Gauge cork and felt wads that I ordered from BPI arrived earlier this week and I immediately tried the fit and think I will go with the felt (white). I like the feel when seating the slug. Eventually, I will compare both cork and felt.



I bought a box of slugs when I was a kid, for my Sears & Roebuck 20 Gauge single shot, and immediately cut one open with a razor blade. I remember that thick waxed cards were below the slug. The Lee Loader instructions state and Lee's original Reloading Handbook illustrates the waxed cards in use. Right now, all I have are cards that are 10mm thick, so two are needed to complete the stack.



I have BPI's Flex Foam Wad, a .7" column of memory foam on order but they have yet to arrive. I did load up a couple of hulls with the components I have and shot them to see how they do. The initial shooting with the components I loaded above, had outstanding results at 50 yards! What I noticed immediately was that the fiber wad loads are quieter and the felt recoil less apparent.



I settled on either the 078 Lightning or PT1205 cup as they are both are 7/8 ounce cups which means that they are shallower than the others I have on hand and require less filler behind the slugs to bring the slug's ogive up to the leading edge of the petals. Why use a cup at all some might ask? The Lee Slug is under bore diameter and depends on the wad cup to act as a sabot for bore contact.

That is where this started with me, hunting whitetails and nilgai on the East Lake NWR. The best hunting is in the ebony thickets were the visibility is at best 50 yards.

I really like the old Brenneke slugs that had the fiber wads connected to the slug, shot great and left the barrel very clean but plastic has replaced the wads. I have never tried to reload slugs as even the cheap rifled slugs seem to do well enough.

I have read through this a couple of times and every time seems like i learn or catch something more.

Ranch Dog, have you gotten around to comparing the smooth and rifled bolt guns?

rickt the comment on 50 yards range is on point. What am I thinking with this question about smoothbore accuracy? The best looking places I have found are very thick.

I am especially happy to hear that the #2 loads and even #4 express loads could work for me. I have a mossberg 835 that throws a very tight pattern, it is unreal to me. I love Remington's express #4's for shooting fox squirrels high in the pines when i was in NC. A little more pricey than I am used to for squirrel shells but for an all purpose load I can use at Bardwell, it's worth every penny.

I might try some of those new express nitro steel #2 shells. Surely 1 1/8 oz of #2 steel at 1700 fps will kill anything inside 25 yards right? There are a lot of ducks where I have found pigs and if I could kill both without changing shells that would be a bonus.

Edit- thats remington hypersonic steel

Not enough to count as fact. I did shoot the Lee cast Slug above in both the New Haven 500 smoothbore barrel and the Marlin 512 rifled. The smoothbore was great to outstanding, the rifled was awful. I haven't shot them in the Western Field 170 bolt gun yet, but I suspect that they will be good.

I would probably say that if my maximum range for the hunt would be 50-yards, I'd probably go with a smoothbore barrel. There are a lot of them on the auction sites as everyone wants rifled barrels for the added distance. The rifled barrels are going to need saboted slugs to perform at a distance, so this becomes a bit of a hassle for the home caster reloader.

My next step with the rifled barrels, both bolt, and pump, is to get back to my Accurate 73-470S mold over a column of waxed cards.





The Accurate mold is a straightforward design to cast. I had tried to hand lube the grease groove on the first go but will powder coat the bullets on the next round. Also, the first casting was with pure lead, which made them a bit heavy; I will go with a Lyman #2 alloy clone, which will drop the weight to approximately 465-grains. In the shooting above, I was using a load of Hodgdon International, a very volatile powder, the charge from a load-sheet for one ounce of shot (438-grains). I have no doubt, the extra weight of pure lead ( 55-grains), was driving the pressure near or over the maximum. Extraction was tough.

Once I get a couple of slug designs that work for either style barrels, the simpler the components, the better; such as using waxed cards vs. pressure wads loaded on a simple press like the Lee Load-All II, I'm going to pressure test the with various common powders and pass this on to others. Yeah, I have pressure trace equipment but don't like using it until I have everything to my satisfaction. The strain gauges are an expense and are of limited life. I will use both bolt guns for pressure work.

As a note, I found new five-round magazines for the WF170 (Mossberg 395) at gunparts.com. That's gives the slug gun six-shots! I will get a picture of the setup today.

Here is the Western Field 170 I just purchased. It came with the standard 2-round magazine which sticks about 1" below the stock, but I found the new 5-round magazines at Numrich and could not pass on them. Six-slug rounds, ready to go, is impressive I think.

That is a sweet gun right there.

Thanks! Durn thing looks like a Remington 788 on steroids

As for smoothbore slug gun accuracy I think you will find a cheap foster slug load that shoots plenty good enough for shots to 75 yards pretty easy. Have had good luck generally with Remington, Winchester and Federal though I like the Winchester versions the best in my 20 gauges. At 50 yards with a Foster style slug my shotgun likes I had no trouble getting 2 inch groups. My first shotgun was a Mossberg 395, it had a u notch fixed rear sight and a bead front choked full. The narrow plastic buttplate made recoil with heavy loads tougher than it had to be but though the sights were off with some Kentucky windage I had no problem hitting a pop can at 50 yards with it. I absolutely had real problems hitting flying birds with it but rabbits were easy and I learned to use the edge of the pattern for head shots on squirrels and rabbits.

I have some Dduplecks Dupo 28s I want to try out of my Rem 1100. I have a Rem 870 slug gun with rifled barrel and scope that shoots Federal and Hornady sabot slugs lights out but hates the Dduplecks.

Ranch Dog it is all your fault.

I just ordered SPWs and the Hammerhead Mold today. Thank you for helping me spend money lol.

rickt300 the Hammerhead/SPW Slug is VERY similar to the Remington Buckhammers and the Hastings/Rottweil Laser Slugs that get rave reviews for accuracy.

Just my .02,
LeonCarr

Glad to help your spending Leon! I need to cast some more of the Hammerheads, but I'm not feeling it with the 100�. I came back in from ranch chores and said to myself: "suck it up cupcake"... I fell asleep as I ate a sandwich.

I did load some Lee one-ounce "sabots" with a Lee Load-All Junior. These will be shot in Western Field. The press is a neat, hard to find tool, that was intended to replace the Lee shotgun Loaders. I'm using a BPI 078 Lightning wad cup as a sabot, I cut the cup off the pressure wad with a razor blade and use waxed cards behind the cup.

rickt... there is a 395 on GunBroker that has had the choke cut off a Williams rear sight installed.

What you gritching about Leon? You needed to spend that $$$ anyway. Just make sure to save some for seed or I'll have dirt plots!

Gritching?

Don't disc up those plots and there will still be 4 feet of Millett in them come opening day

Just my .02,
LeonCarr

Griping & bitching

I looked at it, boy somebody put some kind of stain/paint on it with a paint brush. They want too much I think, I gave $28.95 for my 20 gauge at a Spartans department store back in 1971.

Yeah, the poor thing is a bit ugly. Probably will have a tough time getting asked to dance again.

Here is where I read no shot larger than #2 in the ACoE regs for the Fort Worth district.

I know this is an old thread, but I thought I should bring this up. I recently purchased SlugsRus and the Hammerhead slug. I’m working on testing new polymers for the sabots as we speak. Once everything is ironed out, I’ll roll out the website. If anyone has any questions about slugs or buckshot in general, I’ll be happy to answer any questions.

Grew up on buckshot when we still ran dogs,now hunt occasionally in the national park in segno Tex and have discovered Dixie TriBall they are in Florida if still in business,it’s loaded with 3 .60 caliber balls and I shoot them in a rem 870 with a 24 inch police special barrel with a simple red dot and will group 1 3/4 to 2 inch groups at 50 yards,killed several deer and hogs with this load,gets meat on both ends every time

Unfortunately, Mr. James Gates, the brains behind Dixie, past away. I spoke with him about his tri-ball and two ball loads. I’ve been successful in matching the performance of the two ball load at 50 yards. Using his exact recipe for the tri ball load, I haven’t been successful. Instead of getting a 5-6” triangle pattern at 50 yards, I’m getting a horizontal pattern 7-8” long at 50 yards. My recovered wads are melted and mangled. I suspect it’s from shooting them in my 835 that’s back bored and getting severe gas blow by.

Second the Fiocchi Low recoil..
Shoots just like a rifle to 50 yards and won't kill the shooter!