10 gauge Punkin Balls

[ArtS]

I haven't worked with any of my 10's, but I have a couple of old ones which are cylinder bore. I may give them a try.

I have had good luck in 8 gauge. I have a high grade Webley & Sons single barrel light waterfowl gun that has no choke and has a standard bore. I bought some bore size cast balls and loaded them with a powder charge good for the same weight of shot and they shot very well at 30-40 yards. I used a cork under a cushioned shot cup wad with the cup cut off where it just contacted the ball. Roll crimped the case. made a couple with the case cut off and sealed them in with parafin, which works fine with a single barrel. Many of the old large gauge guns had cylinder barrels like a muzzle loader. The Webley is an 1872 gun. I believe there was a lot of reticence concerning choke boring in the initial days of breech loaders. I you have any choke free guns, try finding a true bore size ball. It may surprise you.

I also have a Sauer double that is a form of cape gun, but I hesitate to call it that. It has a 16 ga left barrel and a 20 bore right barrel. The right barrel is fully rifled, not a Paradox style choke. The barrels are identical on the outside. The right barrel was chambered to a 20 ga size with no forcing cone. Then it was rifled to a depth of a 16 gauge bore. I determined that it was actually a European shotgun based round that was made in several shotgun cartridge gauges and lengths (maybe Lancaster but can't remember without looking it up. A chamber cast showed it was a 20ga x 1-5/8". Rough measurement was that the twist was around 72" which should work with a roundball, which I believe was the intended loading. It shot quite well with the light loads I tried. A bore size ball was quite accurate with the rifling.

These things take a little work but are fun to play with. I would like to push the 8 ga ball and kill a deer with it. A hard ball with a max load would be fun to try for an elk in the woods.