basic shotgun questions

[Bezoar]

i admit i am not the brightest match in the box, so just bear in mind with me a bit.


Every magzine says that to keep the payload from being damage during firing, i need to have a plastic shotcup with the crushable piston area as well as plastic buffering material.
It sounds nice, but every round of ammunition with those features i have taken apart have been damaged already. The 30 year old factory loads of hard lead buckshot and the 3 year old federal plated buckshot, all had flattened sides where they touched another buck shot in the cup.

why is shooting a 45 colt load through a choked .410 barrel gonna blow the choke/muzzle apart, but a plastic shotcup with a slug or even steel shot inside will not do that? Does the plastic wad have a miracalous power of compression that regular lead does not?

choke, what differences in effectiveness occurs when you go form just card wads ala the old bp muzzlelaoding shotgun, to fancy plastic shotcups?

relief choke apparently is an old method where the last 25 to 30 percent of the barrel is gradually tapered out to a larger bore diameter. Writers tell us thats a really stupid thing to do, but yet a few years ago when they started selling shot shell adaptersso you could fire off a 410 or 16 guage in that favorite 12 guage of yours, it was a good idea even though it does the same effect as a relief choke..

if i reload my own shotshells, can i replace the fancy plastic shotcups with extra pellets? just curious if i can as long as i stay inside pressure limits.

 

[Fred Fuller]

Well, I'm not really an expert, but since no one else so far has ponied up to try and answer your questions I'll give it a shot.

Every magzine says that to keep the payload from being damage during firing, i need to have a plastic shotcup with the crushable piston area as well as plastic buffering material.
It sounds nice, but every round of ammunition with those features i have taken apart have been damaged already. The 30 year old factory loads of hard lead buckshot and the 3 year old federal plated buckshot, all had flattened sides where they touched another buck shot in the cup.

I quit reading gun rags a good while ago, so I can't say what they're saying. But I know that my long-time favorite and best ever performing buckshot round (Texas-made Estate Low Recoil, aka SWAT 00) had no piston or cushioning element at all in the shot column. Rather than type a bunch of stuff to describe it, let me refer you to an old thread about it with pictures- http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=73967 .

why is shooting a 45 colt load through a choked .410 barrel gonna blow the choke/muzzle apart, but a plastic shotcup with a slug or even steel shot inside will not do that? Does the plastic wad have a miracalous power of compression that regular lead does not?

That's one I don't know anything about to speak of, but if the manufacturer says it's OK (i.e., stamped on the side of the barrel) I'd do it, if the mfr says no or is not available to answer questions, I wouldn't do it, given that the .45 Colt round has a bullet diameter of approximately .454 or .452 (lead or jacketed) while the .410 has a nominal bore diameter of... .410.

choke, what differences in effectiveness occurs when you go form just card wads ala the old bp muzzlelaoding shotgun, to fancy plastic shotcups?

There are all sorts of factors which contribute to pattern size and density- choke and the components in the shot column are just a few of them. Hardness and roundness of the shot, velocity of the load, internal geometry of the barrel which determines how 'harsh' or 'gentle' the barrel is in launching the shot load, buffering in the shot load, and packaging the shot load to avoid damage in the bore all have an impact on patterning. As a rule modern shotshell components produce better patterns with lesser degrees of choke because they serve to keep more shot round and undistorted and therefore tracking in the pattern.

relief choke apparently is an old method where the last 25 to 30 percent of the barrel is gradually tapered out to a larger bore diameter. Writers tell us thats a really stupid thing to do, but yet a few years ago when they started selling shot shell adaptersso you could fire off a 410 or 16 guage in that favorite 12 guage of yours, it was a good idea even though it does the same effect as a relief choke..

It's also referred to as 'jug' choking- and the larger diameter section of bore was followed by a short section of original bore diameter, giving the effect of a choke. Thus:

http://www.ssaa.org.au/stories/shotguns-a-beginners-guide-to-shotgun-chokes.html

A method of choking called ‘jug choking’ has long been used to improve shotgun performance - by enlarging the bore for a short length just behind the muzzle. The shot column expands into this area and is then constricted again at the muzzle. Thus, a fixed choke shotgun with fairly open chokes could be converted to a tighter choked option by jug choking.​

The man who was my gunsmith when I was a youngster (Ralph Walker of Selma, AL) used to do jug chokes as needed before choke tubes got to be popular. I see that Knight does jug chokes on their BP shotgun barrels still. With the advent of choke tubes that can be installed in almost any barrel, jug chokes are used much less these days. I haven't ever seen anyone refer to a properly cut jug choke as 'a stupid thing to do.' Some untrained unequipped butcher grinding on a shotgun bore, yes that's generally not real bright. But someone who knows what they're doing in a properly equipped shop can still cut a jug choke that's safe as anything else in life.

And I think comparing using 'shell shrinkers' to jug chokes is apples to oranges- you're launching a payload from a smaller shell down a larger bore and that's it, even if the larger bore is choked the constriction is nothing like as small as the smaller shell's bore would be.

if i reload my own shotshells, can i replace the fancy plastic shotcups with extra pellets? just curious if i can as long as i stay inside pressure limits.

IMHO mucking around with any part of any loading data in a manual, or making up loads as you go along, or changing things in loading data to suit yourself, ain't one of the brighter things in life to do. I strongly advise against it.

hth,

lpl/nc