I've never given " cleaner burning " powders with a shotgun a second thought - it's a smooth bore, not a rifle. If there's a little more fouling at the end of the day, so be it. It all comes out with a couple of passes with a tornado brush, a soapy water patch, and a clean water patch. But that's just me. Grafs sells their brand of BP cheaper than the others. I usually get 20 pounds at once to make the hazmat fee a little more bearable. Or get a couple of buddies to go in with you. In the past I've used 1F, 2F, and 3F for shotguns. It takes less powder for the finer the powder. For 1oz loads it's 75/3f, 82/2F, and 94/1F. Actually 82grs is the load normally used with 1 1/8oz 12ga loads. And probably 2F is what most guys would use. That's a 3 dram load that is suppose to have a 1200fps velocity. But my Lyman BP handbook shows a 3 1/4 dram load of 2F to achieve 1200fps with fiber wads. This is in muzzle loaders, but I don't think there'd be much difference if it were cartridge loads. I sometimes use a star crimp for BP, but normally cut the 1/4" of crimp of a paper or plastic shell and use a roll crimp. Then I can write or use one of my stamps on the over shot card of what's inside. With the stamp I use black ink if it's a BP load and red ink if it's a nitro load. You can get the stamps and roll crimper from BPI. A star crimp is used for good " friends "- I just slip one in their shell pocket when they're not looking. A buddy left his plastic container of WWs in the club house one day. I load just Remingtons so I had to find a couple of WWs and load them with smoke. It took me about 3 shells before I could get them looking exactly like his so he wouldn't notice the difference. Once about 9 years ago there was 5 of us shooting skeet and one friend was shooting twice at birds he missed. At station 6 he was getting low so I said here, have one of mine. At that time I was loading BP in Federal shells only so I knew what was what. It was just getting dark out and he was shooting a ported Browning O/U. When he shot, the gun with flames coming out of the ports about 12" went up in the air almost out of his hands. After a bunch of cuss words he said he thought he blew the gun up. NO BODIEE ask me for a shell anymore. I can't even give one away.
__________________
Paul Harm
|
Threaded Mode