Shotgun Slugs in .69 Musket, getting ready to go

The .660 shotgun slug is nearly identical in dimensions to the .660 Nessler Ball.

Wrapped in a cartridge paper the same size as I use for .69 round ball , with the slug upside down like a Pritchett....it's a nice sliding fit.

Just a rough roll up to see if these fit.

I figure I could make a cartridge with two tubes close to the original one, lube the bullet end and should be good. Hopefully I'll get to fire some next week.

Okay, just to clarify, this will be a tear off the end, pour in the powder, then tear off excess paper, and ram down paper-patched slug. ? If so, consider dipping the slug end of the cartridge in hot bee's wax, that way no lube contamination of the powder.

My experiments so far, with pure bee's wax, show that it serves as an excellent lube, without any lube in it. Seems to keep the bore clean, and make loading easy.

Good luck, looking forward to the results!

Yes, I'm going for kind of a rough 1863 Pattern- Pritchett hybrid. It will be two paper tubes, hopefully to mitigate contamination. The nice straight sides of the slug make a great spot for lubed paper to adhere to.

It would be easy to just hot dip in beeswax but also, the fit is a "sliding fit" with not much windage, a hard lube might complicate loading? I'll give it a shot , I'll do up about 10 with beeswax lube.

With my hot dipped minne' bullets, the bee's wax does not make harder loading, it slides right down, and with subsequent shots, as the bore becomes fouled/smaller, they load the same, effort-wise. I believe any excess wax just shaves off, or displaces, and maintains zero windage.

With those bullets, I've obtained the best accuracy yet with any bullet or slug, and they are quite undersized for my bore, the bullet/minne' being .575", and my bore being .580" at least. But, that might not be a good comparison to what you are doing.

When initially placing them in the muzzle, requires some thumb-pressure, but not that much, once in the muzzle, then it goes down with little pressure/force. (clean or fouled barrel)

I think, but could be/might be wrong, but lube will eventually migrate up the tube, two tubes or one. I know it does on my early paper revolver cartridges that included a lubed wad, inside the tube. How much that effects the powder, I don't know. It's probably minimal. However, I do know that a lubed wad will, over time, effect the powder quite a bit.

For sure, make up a few hot-dipped without lube, see what happens.

Again...good luck!

If these do well, might be worth picking up a .660 slug mold for when I start casting.

Keep casting around for the solution.

Rat said:

Okay, just to clarify, this will be a tear off the end, pour in the powder, then tear off excess paper, and ram down paper-patched slug. ? If so, consider dipping the slug end of the cartridge in hot bee's wax, that way no lube contamination of the powder.

My experiments so far, with pure bee's wax, show that it serves as an excellent lube, without any lube in it. Seems to keep the bore clean, and make loading easy.

Good luck, looking forward to the results!

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I use Burts Bees Hand Salve ointment. It works great !

My own personal recipe is a mixture of melted bees wax, and walnut oil mixed or Olive Oil. I pour it in a tin and let it sit overnight until its a paste.

Rat said:

Okay, just to clarify, this will be a tear off the end, pour in the powder, then tear off excess paper, and ram down paper-patched slug. ? If so, consider dipping the slug end of the cartridge in hot bee's wax, that way no lube contamination of the powder.

My experiments so far, with pure bee's wax, show that it serves as an excellent lube, without any lube in it. Seems to keep the bore clean, and make loading easy.

Good luck, looking forward to the results!

Click to expand...

I have not had such good results with pure beeswax as a lubricant for muzzleloaders, particularly in cold weather. It gets gummy and stiff, and is hard to get out of the barrel when cleaning unless hot water is used, which I almost never do. Not available for cleaning in the field or at a range anyway.

smoothshooter said:

I have not had such good results with pure beeswax as a lubricant for muzzleloaders, particularly in cold weather. It gets gummy and stiff, and is hard to get out of the barrel when cleaning unless hot water is used, which I almost never do. Not available for cleaning in the field or at a range anyway.

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If you mix it with olive oil or walnut oil it has a softer texture in cold weather.

But I've found that lip balm like Burts Bees works best, it doesn't get hard and it washes off easily.

For patches, or tight fitting bullets, minne's, REAL's, etc., no, pure bee's wax would not be great. Where I find it works well is with loose fitting paper cartridges. but......

It has been working well for me shooting minne's in a 1861 Springfield, where the bullet is way undersized to the bore, in which case I dip the whole bullet up to the last lube-groove. With that bullet and load, in that rifle, I don't experience any problems as you mention. ?? But I'm not surprised that we would get very different results, as I'm sure our experiences are with completely different rifles, loads, powders, etc.

I have also been using felt wads soaked in pure, melted bee's wax in my .62" round ball rifle, my Brown Bess, my .58" shooting round ball, and my revolvers, with no gummy-ness or left over wax. ?

I believe that dipping the ball end of a paper cartridge results in a minimum amount of wax in the "system". ? I think mixing any oil into the wax will just allow that oil to contaminate the powder, and that's why I started experimenting with pure bee's wax to begin with. I've proved to myself that lube will contaminate the powder over time. Not a problem with target shooting of course. For hunting, not good.

In very cold weather of course, bee's wax might not be a good thing in a very tight bullet to bore fit, as far as loading goes. For loose fitting paper cartridges I don't think it would be a problem.

Again, I've never experienced pure bee's wax being "gummy", but I have made bee's wax lube concoctions mixed with different oils, or other things, and some of those mixes were indeed very gummy.

Unless you’re using a rifled slug, which it doesn’t look like, without riffing in your barrel, there would be nothing to keep the slug from starting to tumble. It sounds like an interesting thing to fool around with, but I think a rifled slug, tightly patched or very close to bore diameter would give better results.
Keep us posted on how it works for you.

FlinterNick said:

If you mix it with olive oil or walnut oil it has a softer texture in cold weather.

But I've found that lip balm like Burts Bees works best, it doesn't get hard and it washes off easily.

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Flinternick,do you melt the Burt’s bees and dip the bullets?

Stan flanery said:

Flinternick,do you melt the Burt’s bees and dip the bullets?

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No the Burt’s bees in its normal form maintains a nice pasty consistency. If if it hardens up on really cold days I just keep it in my pocket, the body heat softens it pretty quickly.

I use it for my smoothbore and my rifles.

The mixture I recently made of beez wax and olive oil and walnut oil works almost just as good, only issue was I used a little too much of the olive oil, you don’t need much.

I need to find a place that sells the tins of it, I use the lip balm which is more or less the same.

GregLaRoche said:

Unless you’re using a rifled slug, which it doesn’t look like, without riffing in your barrel, there would be nothing to keep the slug from starting to tumble. It sounds like an interesting thing to fool around with, but I think a rifled slug, tightly patched or very close to bore diameter would give better results.
Keep us posted on how it works for you.

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Tomorrow is the day, for testing.

The .660 slug is more or less an exact copy of the .660 Nessler Ball. These were made to stabilize themselves out of a smoothbore. The only riddle now is how much paper patching, what kind of paper, what lube, and what powder charge. Before I make paper cartridges I need to test all this.