I loaded some 2 3/4” 1 3/8 ounce Monday with 800x it gave off a jolt first in a 28” Sterlingworth which I thought would lessen in the heavy HE . Not so much :whistle:

What!!! No replies from the savants about being kind to old dry wood? :rotf:

The HE in my possession is a restock so no old dried out wood :whistle: Of course not the case with the Sterlingworth .

Yeah Craig I was referring to the Sterly. You might want to keep in mind that the vintage 12ga/3-inchers were loaded with long obsolete single-base straight NC powders. The closest we can get nowadays is SR4756 which as you know is also obsolete but still can be found here and there. I personally haven't loaded any higher velocity 1-3/8 ounce loads in 12ga/2-3/4" hulls but if so I'd likely look for published data with SR7625 or SR4756.

I still have a goodly supply of 7625 . I’ll scratch around and see what I can find .

their rough on the shoulder and old wood but I like heavy loaded shells.... a 3 and half inch in 12 ga is as bad as they get...I have some factory 7 dram loads in the 8 ga I always figured this would be a stout load too... a 3 ounce load in a 10 ga magnum is a stout load also...charlie

One of THE worst I ever felt was from a Remington SP-10 I bought new , it was one of the LE-89 guns . Anyway sitting and patterning that SOB with 2 1/4 ounce Turkey loads , thought I broke my nose with that (I big time crawled the stock then) but it literally knocked the snot out of me . Second worst was a 5 1/4 pound Darne 20 gauge with plain old 7/8 ounce skeet loads . One of my 8’s with ten of the 000000 pellets isn’t for ladies or those with a weak constitution , but it is manageable .

I tested out a VH 16 with 1 1/8 ounces on skeet. After 25, I was sure I would never try that again.