Before heading out to mow, I thought I would take the time to answer repeat questions I have gotten through PM or email.
Q - Have you customized your shotgun barrels in any way and why?
A - Yes, the forcing cone has been lengthened 2" and polished to a mirror finish. The reason for doing this, is that with a short and abrupt forcing cone, the wad can be damaged and the Round Ball can become deformed, ie., out of round, and as such accuracy can suffer greatly.
Q - What are your favorite wads to use?
A - I personally like the Federal 12S3, Winchester AA12, Remington Figure 8 and most any other wad that can handle these high velocity Round Ball loads. I do not and will not use any of the Clay Buster wads, as they do not have the same strength resilience as what factory wads do. Something else that I do, is coat all wads with motor mica. This greatly reduces the wad to bore friction, and keeps plastic build up to an absolute bare minimum.
Q - Are all of your Round Ball loads high velocity?
A - No, they are not. Other Round Ball loads are used for regulating double barrel shotguns, whether they be an O/U or SxS. Other loads are for personal defense. Depending on their particular use, Round Ball velocity can vary from 1,200 fps. to 1,800 fps..
Q - What is the energy level of your hunting loads?
A - Hunting loads carry well over a ton of energy at 100 yards.
Q - What is the as accuracy potential of your loads!
A - Since most of my customers shoot double barrel shotguns, a lot of the pictures and targets that guy's send me, show two holes in a target that are an inch or two apart at 30 yards. Some have shown 3" or less at 50 yards, and guys with a well tuned pump or semi-auto can do under 3" at 75 yards very consistently.
Q - Can I buy directly from you?
A - Yes. I do not source my loads out to anyone! I load and sell 10,000 rounds a year, and very seldom will I exceed that limit. I load one month a year, and if a customer drops from my order list, then I will pick up a new customer from my waiting list and start loading for them.
Any other questions, please feel free to just ask!
Round Ball
B.C. of 486gr .690 balls is roughly .095, even if you do get them up to 1800fps (you definitely can, even with BP- in a ML, French and Austrian musket loads only ran around 170gr of 2-1F and were intended to yield 1600fps), they only maintain 1526ft/lb at 100 yards. Sight height is .75" (1st trajectory is for ML irons, 125yd zero), second is for 1.5" scope height (130yd zero).
0- 1800fps, 3496 ft/lb, -.75", -1.5
25- 1619fps, 2827ft/lb, +1.5" , +1"
50- 1455fps, 2283 ft/lbs, +2.9", +2.7"
75- 1310fps, 1851 ft/lb, +3.3", +3.4"
100- 1189fps, 1526 ft/lb, +2.4", +2.8
125- 1096fps, 1296 ft/lb, 0", +0.7"
150- 1026fps, 1136 ft/lb,-4.4", -3.3"
175- 972fps, 1019 ft/lb, -10.5", -9.3"
200- 927fps, 928 ft/lb, -19.1", -17.6
Large bore round balls work well within 2-300 yards, just don't expect the numbers to give an indication of what kind of damage they can inflict; as heavy ball like these have quite a bit of momentum, and despite the low SD (.146) and velocities at range, they penetrate reasonably well, due to moving so slow that they don't excessively deform (although at that point, you are relying on crush damage to kill, with a .690" hole does well to bring down even larger animals like buffalo). Even in a Smoothbore, they can be usefully accurate, and if you use a rifled barrel or choke, especially so. The trajectory is poor, so you need to have sights that can accommodate that, or keep your shots to point blank range (the example was for a roughly 6" circle, commonly held as the ideal target area for common deer species, if your animal is larger, your target area gets bigger, and your PBR increases)
