I have not used a 12 ga. gun waterfowling for many years now. I use my Parker D 10 ga. (2 7/8") exclusively, simply because it outperforms ANY 12 gauge gun I have ever owned for waterfowl, either antique or modern. This is using brass hulls, card wads, and blackpowder. I highly recommend anyone interested in the short ten to read Sherman Bell's article he did in the Double Gun Journal (vol. 11 iss. 3).
Bell himself admits that smokeless loads can't come close to matching the performance of blackpowder loads in this gauge configuration (when trying to keep pressures low). Very large loads of blackpowder, up to 4 3/4 drams of 3F, had significantly higher velocity, with a much reduced pressure over any of the smokeless loads that were developed.
It would be interesting to experiment with other large gauge guns to see if this trend holds up. It has been thoroughly demonstrated that smokeless loads can match the pressures and velocities of the old blackpowder loads in smaller gauge guns (12 ga. and smaller). It is interesting to find that blackpowder outperforms smokeless in the 10 gauge, again that is, when trying to keep pressures low.
It would be a good experiment to see if there is a water shed point with the 12 ga. Does an 8 gauge, have an even higher discrepancy between velocities and low pressures with bp than the 10 ga ? Or is there a point of diminishing return. What about a 6 gauge? I know it's off topic, and probably nothing more than interesting theory, but it was surprising to see how well the 2 7/8" 10 ga. performed with blackpowder over smokeless.
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10-09-2014, 02:35 PM
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