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<  16ga. Ammunition & Reloading  ~  saboted roundball load.
16gaugeguy
PostPosted: Mon Nov 27, 2006 2:17 pm  Reply with quote
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This thread is for any of you do it yourself diehards like me. I've discovered an easy way to make your own saboted shotgun loads for a rifled shotgun barrel. The main reason is because I dispize paying through the nose for ovepriced sabot rounds at the average rate of $1.70 per shot. This high price does not encourage practice. I beleive in practice. therefore, I also like low cost ammo. I also like to experiment with ballistics. $1.70 per round is too much to pay for curiousity too often.

I use this technique for a 12 ga. but the basic idea should work for any gauge down to a 20. The low limit is the weight of the lead roundball. .56 caliber for a 20 ga. is probably the bottom line, but any 16 ga will use a .62 caliber ball which weights about 380 grains or 7/8 ounce. A 12 uses a 495 grain, .69 caliber ball which is just about 1-1/8 ounce and will smack the bejabbers out of any North American game animal you can name including moose and big bear.

Here is how to load a 12 ga round. you can figure out a 16 from the info. Just do the math. FPS is about 1300 and pressure will be under 11000 psi. This is not a load for an antique so don't try shooting it out of gramp's old double please.

1. Take one Fiocchi 12 ga target load hull, resize, prime with a new type CCI 209 primer. Drop in 27 grains of Unique. Seat a Federal 12S3 wad(1-1/8 ounce size) firmly on top of the powder.

2. place one .69 cal pure lead roundball which has been striated around its circumfrence sprue up and carefully centered in the wad. Seat with about 80 pounds of force. fold crimp as usual. you are now done.

It is important to striate the circumfrence of the ball with any common pair of round pipe pliars. I just set the jaws to encompass the ball and carefully squeeze the toothed part of the jaws to bite the ball evenly and completely around the equator. These striations will bite into the plastic wad and help it transfer the spin to the ball as it traverses the bore. It works to perfection if you take your time, bite into the ball evenly and as deeply as hand squeezing will permit. Don't squeeze hard enugh to misshape the ball. Remember, its pure lead and fairly soft.

You will have no leading problem and your gun should keep them all inside a 3" group at 75 yards if you have loaded them right. My Citori 12 ga field model, epuipped with a Winchester rifled slug tube will put them all in a 2 inch group at 50 yards all day long. I swab the bore after three shots too. It helps by removing plastic fouling before it can plug the rifling or build up and effect the accuracy.

for 16, I'd use a .62 caliber ball, any powder drop that will send a 7/8 ounce shot load out AT 1300 fps and at 8500 psi. ( pressures will be slightly higher with the ball, but will remain under max. Herco is probably a good one to look at. I think an R16 or SP-16 wad will work fine. Just make sure the wad and ball inside it measure about .010"-.020" bigger than your bore diameter for a rifled barrel. .010" works for a smoothbore.

A roundball trailing a 3" piece of nylon yarn will also fly true out of a smoothbore barrel. Just drill a small hole opposite the sprue and stake a piece of yarn in with a wooden match stick and some superglue. Be careful to center it opposite the sprue and seat the butt end of the stick flush. Load it sprue up. I've seen these tailed balls group into 3-4" out to 75 yards with an occasional flyer. But they all will stay in a 6" circle. This is inside the vitals area of your average whitetail. good luck.


Last edited by 16gaugeguy on Thu Nov 30, 2006 4:59 am; edited 1 time in total
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hoashooter
PostPosted: Mon Nov 27, 2006 5:23 pm  Reply with quote
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Joined: 08 Nov 2005
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Does Lyman still sell the kit with 10 slugs and ten wads to roll your own????If I look hard enough there is a package in my loading room---they only cost a few bucks.
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16gaugeguy
PostPosted: Tue Nov 28, 2006 6:02 am  Reply with quote
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Location: massachusetts

I've never seen one. I do know Ballistic Products and Precision Reloading sell the slugs. I don't remember excatly how much they cost, but its nearly a buck a throw. BRI slugs and sabots were once available, but were also pretty high in cost. I have not seen them sold as reloading componants recently.

I cast my own roundballs out of salvaged pure lead. The cost is a few pennies per ball at most. My total cost per round is about 15 cents. The round ball is the easiest projectile to cast there is. I can cast a 100 in less than an hour. Plus, no special sabot wad is needed

These sabot/roundball rounds group nice and hit very hard. The round ball also tends to penatrate in a very straight line as opposed to tipping and veering off like most marginally stabilized slugs and minie balls will. A .62 or bigger ball will smash through the shoulder and leg bones of just about anything that walks our continent. The pure lead ball also tends to wad up and retain its weight rather than breaking up into sections. Its a very clean and thorough killer.

However, the best part to me is that I have the ability to roll my own. I'm not dependant on the ammo companies to provide me what I need at their terms costwise. I've been watching the cost of commercial saboted slug loads go higher every year. Plus, every time I find one I like, they discontinue it for a new, improved, and even more expensive round. Now I can just thumb my nose at their malarky. Independance has its strong points.
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