Good thread Ron. I've been experimenting with my new 10 ga as well lately. It's a #3 frame D grade hammer gun with .793 bores, choked full and full. I turned out some brass, thin walled 2 7/8" hulls at work, and have been working up some black powder loads for waterfowl. My best loads are 4 1/2 drams of FFFg Goex with 1 1/2 oz of buffered bismuth, in sizes #1 and #4. I use 9 ga. card and felt wads. For #4 shot I load one 1/8" hard card wad, one 3/8" felt wad, and one 1/4" greased felt wad with a overshot card between the greased wad and shot. The over shot card is glued on with Duco cement. With #1 shot I have to replace the one 3/8" felt wad with a 1/4" felt wad to get everything to fit.
With this configuration my right barrel patterns 78% and the left 76% at 40 yards. After reading about Sherman Bell's testing with blackpowder loads I'm taking an educated guess that my velocity is around 1250-1300 fps with these loads. Switching to Swiss instead of Goex powder would increase my velocity and pressure, but may diminish my patterns, more testing is necessary.
Keep experimenting with powder, shot, and wad configurations, one of them with be the "magic" one. Sometimes it seems light loads can be a little more finicky for some reason. It probably has to do with how the added card wads react with the shot column. Best of luck to you.
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