So the stevens hammer gun is calling my name. The goal with this load is to stay under 7000 psi and around 1200-1250 fps. So for the task I have selected monarch in 12 gauge 2 3/4. These are the academy house brand. The reason for the low pressure is not to crack the new stock, which was fully bedded, and not supposed to ever crack, but I’m not going to take any chances as this is an early 1900 one. This load is 19.0 grains of American select, win primer, cb-6100 wad. 1 oz of #8 shot. Should be 1200 fps and a low 5900 psi.
Another load added, same hull (monarch) with cheddite primer, 18.4 grains of clays, GU-1225(BP spitfire wad) 7/8 oz of #8. 1250 fps and a little over my goal at 7300 psi. Primer change may get me a little closer to 7000, but pattern first to see if it’s worth it. The first one has dished crimps, these hulls are Rio’s so lots of volume. The second and third shells are loaded the same with an addition of a 14 gauge over shot card on top of the shot. While crimps are more my speed, we will see what the pattern results say.
One of the questions that seem to be asked a bunch on just about every forum is it better to use over shot card or filler under shot to raise the shot column. I have loaded both with no real change in results on pattern board. I chose to use over shot card on this one because 7/8oz of #8 sits pretty much inside the shot cup, I have loaded shells with the shot above the wad a little and again noticed nothing worth talking about.
If your still reading, you have noted that the monarch shells are Rio. They are made by Maxam, which also makes Rio. Now if you don’t know Rio they are the largest ammo manufacturers in the world. Anyway what’s important is that it’s a straight wall hull. Straight wall hull is a straight wall hull. When I was stationed in Europe and reloading with their data, they didn’t even specifically what hull. These hulls above were loaded with cheddite hull load data and will be perfectly safe. There are some issues with Rio hulls but I will cover this in section II
Hi Ranger. With the under vs overcard. I listened Podcast from 2019 driving yesterday with Marty Fisher interviewing Tom Roster the Ballistics Gyru as 3 part series. Apart from being super interesting it touched on this very subject where his testing showed the better you can dampen the shock and pellet deformation to the lower pellets touching the wad cup results in more even pattern with less flyers and better overall result pattern past 40 yards out to your 60 70 for sporting clays. Be interesting to see if a cushioned undercard actually improved things in comparison when your patterning results.
Auzzie: you got a link to that pod cast. I would like to listen in on that. When I loaded the federal 20 and looking for a way to adjust column I placed a cork filler under the shot and was thinking I would see some different results and maybe a little less recoil. I didn’t feel any difference, however, shooting off a rest you take the full force of the recoil so not really a good test. I do believe that as the shot travels down the barrel it does deform to some point, but it requires high speed camera to pick it up. There is much debate over shot string and patterns, but everything that I have read(a lot) there is no difference at 40 yards in shot strings. My pattern lane is 40 yards with no more room. I had to beg for that. I know I patterned my brass 16 gauge shells with fiber wads and it was a damn good pattern out of cylinder barrel, so how much does that deformed shot matter? Don’t have an answer. I’m guessing these guys know their stuff, and have done the testing to back it up. Very interesting stuff. Sure wish I could get paid to play with shotgun shells
Apparently a live weekly radio talk show with feature guests on voice america variety channel Thursday’s at 6pm Show is wing and clay nation hosted by Marty Fisher. According to their voiceover add you go wing and clay radio archives then on demand for a podcast. I completely found by accident . Listened to a few now as podcasts on way home in car and hooked . Tom Roster is featured twice 2019 and again 2020. Believe you can use Spotify ,google play , I tunes or tune in. Trust I am not that It Savy. Regardless you will like the content of what he has to say. It was an eye opener.
https://www.voiceamerica.com/episod...ks-shotshell-ballistics-for-clays-and-hunting Auzzie: good find sir, I found it.
Range update on the monarch. Went to pattern board. If you recall when I first got this stevens it shot about 8 inches to the left and low. I am stoked to report that the 1 oz load is a keeper. The shotgun now shoots where I look. Guess all those alterations was worth it. Now I have to decide if screw in chokes are next. The 7/8 oz load still needs some work so more on that at a later date
Nice result. Much better scenario than last year when you were contemplating and investigating offset chokes. If you remember then I said you have to get it shooting where your looking to have any consistency. Now get the 7/8 sorted and your set.
Yes sir, that was great advice. Still not as natural as mounting my others, but need to practice. A sxs is a very different animal. I’m gonna play with the 7/8 oz, but I’m ok with 1 oz also.
7/8 oz? Who the hell thinks it’s ok to shoot 7/8 oz out of a 12 gauge? So I’ve spent the afternoon playing with the monarch hull and several 7/8 oz wads and various powders. Let me just say they all suck! The stack height isn’t correct for this hull. These hulls just have to much room for 7/8 oz of shot and decent crimps, without some sort of overshot card, filler, spacer or whatever you wanna call it. Some are ok adding a cheerrio, but not the case here. The following load is the same 7/8 oz load that I already shot, but had to add and overshot card under the crimp, to get crimps that were not dished. This hull has been cut to 2 1/2, loaded and roll crimped. The pattern results were fired from auto5 with screw in skeet choke at 40 yards. Very soft recoil, but it did cycle, most likely would not have on the second shot as the action moved slowly
Hi Ranger. The roll crimp load looks pretty good to me. I reckon the 7/8 should work real good. You just might have to experiment a bit with cases to get the right result. Have played with lot of light loads for skeet and run them out of an 1100 auto as have shoulder issues. I am into minimal recoil. Ended up after a lot of experimenting, running straight wall cheddites and B&P H27's or Guilandi with 13/16 oz shot. Load uses 209 and 19 grains of AS 30 which is basically your Hodsons Clays. With that powder charge height can get away with that wad combo without an over or under card but only those wads. What I did find after cutting tons of eurotrash shells apart length ways and measuring was the basecup length varied quite a bit and the conical shape down towards the primer varied a lot volume wise between all the brands. Found being picky with my shells out of the bin brand wise that I know well from research allowed the combo to serve myself and son real well. We would have run 20000 at 13/16 without issue. It also lets us shuffle the shot up to 7/8 or 1 oz on odd occasion if we really want without any issues or changing powder charge. A real universal target load good for skeet ,trap or 5 stand without recoil. Been a real win but took a bit to get there I will leave you on that note with my cartoon add about the Biodegradeable Ammo we discussed.
auzzie: I shoot a bunch of 12 ga 7/8 oz, but they are always 2 1/2" RST(cheddite hull). They load great and perform very well. The only reason I'm playing with these Monarch is because there are a bunch of these and they are free. Guy dropped about a 1000 of them in the trunk of my car at the range yesterday, come to find out I didn't know the guy, but someone that knew me, told him to just put them in the trunk of that car, the guy reloads and will be happy to get them. Sometimes you have to be careful what you ask for! Anyway I use the Guilandi wads in several hulls and I like them, they seem to work better then most other wads. I have been looking for some of the H27 to try, but most places are out of all wads. Probably a really bad time to be looking for a new load. And yes the base wads are different heights in some of the euro trash, that will be a side note in part II, and can have some pretty bad outcome. Your cartoon gave me a chuckle, I read somewhere that there is a US partner on board, so I may get my hands on some after all. I'm ok with helping out the "Toads"
Keeping with your Eurotrash theme the Aust Olympic team has decided to call local club I go home for a while for training in lead up to Tokyo. The bins will be overflowing full of all sorts of Italian and Spanish Eurotrash offerings never seen or heard of before, since team are supported by the big B.....a who import all their stuff in 40 footers from Italy and Spain. I was told that was how the bioammo suddenly appeared from nowhere with all the little booklets as they will be spruking the team use this and that from their product range. Typical BS marketing. This should provide no end of weird and wonderful subject matter and questions for part 2
Yes sir it should. I do shoot some clever from Italy and they are fine shells. One of my local reloading stores use to carry them, but they have since closed their doors. There are only 2 reloading stores here in Houston. Then some of the ranges carry small stuff here and there. I just ordered a flat of Rio paper shells from BP, we will see how they perform. I’m on the look out for some of those bio ammo shells too
Ranger, This is the shell/hull I have best success with all round. I classify it a cheddite but you may be able to enlighten me to your definition. As a factory they are excellent and loaded in New Zealand as 1 oz lead using Vectan 28 powder from France and uses Margonini NSI primer.Base cup is also just tight enough to get away using a 209 in an O/U without having to massage with the tool or supersizer which makes them my number one choice for bin diving. In the image of wads these are the ones from my testing and experience that work best and importantly reliably for straight wall Eurotrash and give stack height flexibility discussed before when used with that particular shell. From Left to Right "Double V" which is the factory load wad , Next is Block Wad which comes from Fiocchi international factory loads. They are a 7/8 shell for bunker. Then favorite what I call H27 type 1 which are a factory special by B&P which you can't buy. These things are just plain brilliant. I just go down the paddock , steal from the toads and pick up what I want. Give them a fussy careful inspect and wipe over and back in. The ultimate in recycling . I have loaded thousands upon thousands and never have a fizzer. We shoot all out competition confidently with them no problem. They are just so forgiving and reliable. You have to excuse me being a scab but I just don't get many choices or options to run with so pickups it is. You do what you have to do to keep going. "Got to help save them Toads" When I can actually get my hand on new stuff my go to are B&P H24 , B&P H27 and the Guilandi. They all work brilliant as well. I like the Guilandi best. Just a shame reloading is pretty much dead here now and there are no reloading houses etc. My shooting buddy and I are the only ones left I know of that persist reloading in any club 150 mile circle of us. I will let you digest all this and leave you alone to work on your Part 2
Yes sir you are correct. I would also call that a cheddite, either way it’s still a straight wall hull and would load as such. I have found that the hulls with 30mm thick plastic and the higher brass, I assume those are 16mm, load a little better and a little longer. The current monarch’s that I’m loading has the lowest brass and are only good for about 2 maybe 3 reloads, before the plastic gets brittle. Same here on the reloaders, they are going away, however, there has been some new interest due to the ammo shortage. It’s just so expensive to get set up. I was already set up way before all this, so I just needed a few components. Even the simple single stage reloaders carry a steep price. And now there seems to be a good supply of federal 12,20, so it’s hard to beat 7.49 a box for the normal shooter.
As part of this section I wanted to post some pictures of the hull trimmers that I use. I use these more then you would think and each one has its sweet spot on what it will do. Starting at the bottom of the picture working up. This trimmer is from guy on 16ga forums Next is gaep trimmer from Italy, it comes with adapters for all gauges. If you want to cut Winchester AA’s in 410 you will need one that’s turned down or it will not fit inside the hull correctly. Next is a homemade trimmer that I made while waiting on one from 16 ga forum. Last is one from Rudy at creative reloading solutions. ok so you may ask why so many, well each one does the same job, trim hulls, but depending on the hull and what your doing and what gauge you will find each one has its sweet spot.
The one from creative reloading has a cool little pin in the end that should ride inside a spent primer or as I found out tonight, inside the primer pocket. And yes it clearly says do not remove the piece that I removed, however, we are all big boys, and no one likes lawyers anyway. The 7/8 oz load in the monarch had crimp issues as stated above, so I cut them to 2 1/2 and decided to roll crimp. The problem with cutting fold crimp fired hulls is the crimp memory is usually pretty good and will resist just about everything but that fold crimp. I started with my home made trimmer which works great on 16 gauge hulls, but 12 gauge was another story. I ended up using the one from creative reloading with the spacer and guard removed and the hull deprimed, as the special little pin didn’t like the spent primer. Most likely due to these hulls have been fired 3 times and the more times a hull is reloaded the less the crimp opens up. And I hope you know that with each firing the plastic will stretch and get more brittle.
