Well. I loaded 10 shells today to get my feet wet in 10 ga. I cut 10 new Cheddites to 2-5/8" using a piece of copper slipfit repair pipe, a 3/4" oak dowel and a sharp knife. took less than 5 minutes and perfectly square.
I wanted to use everybodies standard light load of 19 gr Red Dot, 1-1/8oz shot. Using the BP 10 ga plastic shotcup wad, I cut off about half the shotcup. Using hand tools, I dropped in the powder, seted the wad, and dropped in 1/8 oz of 8's. I needed a minimum of 3/4" of filler to think about a roll crimp. I didn't have any thick smallbore wads, and it would have taken a whole bag of card wads to load a few shells. I remembered the bean idea from this thread and decided to try that. I dumped the shot, dropped in the same volume of beans, then redropped the shot. Things looked about right, but then I got to thinking about the beans. They had seemed heavy when I dropped them so I weighed them (red beans) followed by an equal load of small navy beans. They both weighed 4.5 grams. The 1-1/8 oz shot load is 32 grams. It turned out that the
beans added 14 % to the shot load. That bothers me. I actually was going to use 18 g instead of 19 for the Red Dot,but still if you look at loading data for light 12 ga loads as an example, the difference in pressure is really significant in going from 1 to 1-1/8 oz or 7/8 to 1 oz. Not dangerous in the light load range but certaibly enough to move them into normal pressure ranges. I suspect if the whole reason of this is to use low pressure loads in old guns, the bean method may be negating the benefit.
I ended up using cream of wheat instead of the beans. The same volume of cream of wheat weighed 3.5 grams and provided more filling since the shot didn't settle into the beans. I dropped the shot load to 1 oz for safety, and the hulls roll crimped beautifully using a hand held two speed driver drill and a new BPI single roller crimper. I put one drop of Teflon gun lubricator on the crimper and it heated right up and did a great job.
I guess my question is if anyone has had pressure testing done on duplicate loadings with and without heavy fillers like beans or large stacks of cards.
When I ever get my gun back together I think the logical thing to do is cut the shells to around 2" so that a short shot cup and thenstandard light load will fit with a roll crimp. I think I will do a duplicate loading in a 2-5/8" shell with the bean filler and have the two loads ballistically tested. Maybe throw in a third load with styrofoam beads of pieces to see what the actual weight effect is. I think it may be significant.
I think the best system would be to load heavy loads in the 2-5/8" cases, then when the mouths wear out, cut them again to 2" and use for light loads.
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12-05-2021, 10:01 PM
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