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ian45662

45 Cal.
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Took my pedersoli 12 Ga. SxS with fixed choke out today and shot at paper for the first time I have had it. I tried to see where the POA was but even at 15 yards or so with 90 grains of powder and the same amount of 7 1/2 shot the shot was all over the paper. I loaded as follows. Powder, circle fly wad, cushion, circle fly wad, shot, over shot card. You guys know any ways to get better patterns or what loads work best for you?
Thank you
 
I load equal amounts 2f powder and shot, over powder card, lubed fiber wad and over shot card. Have good results on paper, Quail, and Pheasents.
 
Use 2fg to start,..... then lightly bend 1/8 inch thick NITRO CARD to get by choke,..... then two wool felt wads soaked with melted tc lube (yellow lube in the tube),..... shot,..... then over shot card... check the load height with ramrod lenght on fingers each loading.. If still haveing trouble criss cross the bend of two nitro cards over the powder.. the cusion wad is probably being destroyed going by the choke, and or your over powder card is letting gas go by scattering the shot.. You will probably get lots of advice, do whats easiest to do first, then try others till you get what your gun/weather/situation requires... this above loading should work well in all weather (in choked bores) if done correctly.. Be patient, its a great learning experience, and it will take time.. dave.
 
from my experiance I have found that less is more when it comes to front stuffers, start with a lighter powder load say 60g ffg behind 1 1/8 oz shot. Too much powder tends to blow the pattern. I started out shooting equal amounts of powder and shot in my original 14ga but found the groups tightened up with less powder
 
You say "fixed choke" but don't tell us to what degree is it choked, like cylinder and modified or modified and full, I'm not sure what we should expect, then when you say it's shooting "all over the place", does that mean a 6" circle, one foot, two feet, just what does "all over the place" mean? It's hard to diagnose a pattern by Internet but without details it is pretty pointless even to guess. :hmm:
 
To be honest with you I am not sure what the chokes are BUT if I had to guess I would guess one is cylinder and the other is mod. The pattern is all over the paper at 15 yards not dense either just spread out over all the paper. The paper is the size of a large target you get at wal mart
 
Is this a 12 gauge? If so, try 75 grains of FFg powder, one 1/8" thick OP wad, 1/3 cushion wad, lubed with moose milk, ( water, liquid detergent and water soluable oil- see member resources here for recipes) squeezed out, so that the cushion wad is damp but not dripping, then an OS card to give a hard flat surface to push the shot down the barrel, than 1 1/8 oz. shot, then another OS card.Run a lubed cleaning patch down the barrel when you seat that last OS card, to lube the barrel. If you rub lead off on a dry barrel, each succeeding pattern will be worse than the last, until you scrape or dissolve off the lead streaks in the barrel. The lube will let the pellets slide over the bore, rather than rub off lead the length of the barrel.

At 25 yds, that load should put about 50 % of the shot in a 30 inch circle. A good shotshell reloading manual will give the number of shot per ounce for whatever shot size you are using. for a 1 1/8 oz load, multiply that number times 1.125 to get the total number of pellet that you put down the barrel. Then count the holes. A cylinder bore gun should put all the shot in a 40 inch circle at 25 yards, but I find that optimistic with ML shotguns.

One real problem with your load is that the heavy wads pushing the shot follow the shot when it leave the barrel. There is a vacuum created by the shot and the wads are " sucked " into that space and actually bump the shot, causing it to spread wider than you want. ( Think of how race cars use the " draft " of a faster card to slingshot themselve around on the inside of turns to pass and overtake the lead car. The same aerodynamic forces are working with that shot column and those wads. By reducing the weight and size of the wads behind the shot, the wads drop away from the shot sooner, and are less likely to bump the shot.

The second method you can try uses only OS cards. You put 4 cards over the powder, then the shot, then 2 more OScards. Each of the cards has a pinhole poked into it with an awl, or needle, off center, and the cards are stacked so that none of the holes line up with the hole in the adjoining card. The holes let air out as you are loading them down the barrel, they are much easier to bend to get through any choke in the barrel, and air goes through the hole when the column of wads leaves the barrel to separate the cards, so they fall away quicker, than the above combination. If you lube the barrel as above, you again provide a slicker surface for the shot to pass over, you get less lead in the barrel, fewer pellets get flats on them, so they stay in the pattern longer, and the lube is there to soften the fouling that comes with the powder gases. The 4 cards used to replace the OP wad provide an excellent seal, so you don't have to worry about gases blowing by and ruining your shot pattern as the shot exits the barrel.

You do need to have a jag on your RamRod that is very close to the diameter of your barrels. In the case of barrels with choke, the jag has to be able to fit through the choke. That keeps the edges of the card from bending or folding, which would break the seal and let gases ruin all your efforts.
 
Another thing you might try is get larger paper to do your paterning on . You can use tar paper or construction paper that you get at home depot , it comes in rolls that are 3 or 4 feet wide by 50 ft long .with this it's a lot better to see your shot paterns as far as size and location from your point of aim. It worked for me
 
You can get end rolls of unprinted newspaper from your local paper as well. They make great patterning targets and most newspapers almost give them away.
 
I have found that I get better pattern without a cushon wad in my shotgun. I use two over the powder cards instead. My load is 80 gr. of FF, two .125 over powder cards, 1&1/4 oz. of shot, and then an over shot card. Leon
 
I have never been able to get tight patterns with a cushion wad either. Try the peirced overshot wad method mentioned above, or just use lubricated felt wads for both.
 
After trying the peirced overshot wad method, I found that I could use 2f powder and still get good penetration and decent patterns, they seal better.But,in the field I still like to use oxyoke style lubed felt wads. I have to use 3f to replicate the penetration, but I get great patterns and its lots easier when the doves are flying fast and furious.
 
I,m not telling you what to do but I do use the same gun as you and I use 3/4- 7/8 the powder to shot ratio and just use 4 OS cards between them. I dont even punch holes in the cards. Nobdy is wrong on this subject in fact it could be said that every body is correct. IMO thick wads of any nature were born out of a need to take up room in a cartridge of a standard length. In days of old 12g cartridges were 2" and 21/2" to accommadate 1oz of shot and BP generally, there was not much room for wads. Longer chambers came about to accomadate more shot and BP not longer wads. Longer wads came about to take up the room now offered by using nitro powder in allready established chamber lengths.
 
Thanks for all the imput. I will print this topic and take it to the range next time I am able to go. I will let you guys know what works when I have figured it out. After that I am sure I will need to start working on adjusting the POA
 
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