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Poor Mans Slug

Anything and everything related to ammunition can be posted here.

Moderators: Scorpion8, ripjack13, John A., nitesite

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PostPosted: Wed Jul 20, 2011 10:13 pm
What does everyone thing of this idea?








.270 WIN
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 21, 2011 12:45 am
DT, I have seen this before and offer this,

It may work well in a pinch, however, the choke and barrel aere made for the payload and shot cup to enter and travel the barrel and pass through the choke. the standard shotshell is between .030 and .050" thick on one wall. The pressure build up on that will take the load out of SAAMI spec's. When the payload gets to the choke, its in for another major squeeze. I can't see any other purpose for doing this unless it is survival, get my butt home and away from here. JMHO.
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 24, 2011 9:18 pm
Thanks for your input.

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PostPosted: Thu Apr 05, 2012 9:34 pm
870 is EXACTLY RIGHT!!!! It's nothing new..I did it 51 years ago after reading about it..If it is NOT a dire survival situation DON'T DO IT! You might get by with a cylinder bored barrel but any thing else is going to make pressures go through the roof and maybe you. Remember, when a shot shell is fired the load begins to compress just beyond the chamber and get squeezed(shot deformation) and pressure can drop. When it is restricted by the shell casing the drop in pressure in NOT allowed. Oops, you have a banana peel barrel. Doesn't fit in the safe anymore..Does it. :D
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 06, 2012 12:39 pm
Interesting points, and well worth mentioning.

With the time it takes to cut a hull, I could have replaced it with a properly designed ammo choice and not worried about what it might do to my firearm.
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 07, 2012 3:12 pm
Welcome to the Remington Owners Forum 1stlttightwad !!

+1 on it not being a good idea...
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 08, 2012 9:53 am
The highest risk comes when one is shooting cut shells from a tightly choked gun. It's not the pressure being the problem, because by the time a shot wad reaches the muzzle it's dropped significantly. The restricted diameter and thin steel walls of many shotgun barrels will simply crack or split from doing this over time.
An ATI stock set on a 1955 16-ga Wingmaster would make Baby Jesus cry...........

Cop
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 01, 2014 8:23 am
As others have said,DO NOT DO THIS!!!I can't see any reason why this would need to be done.The only thing you'll gain is a trip to the ER or worse.Leave the shells alone and shoot them as the were designed.
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 20, 2014 3:36 am
I agree with the general consensus here; outside of possibly a survival situation, these are potentially dangerous - especially with modern plastic shotshells - and shouldn't be attempted. Plus, there's no real benefit to them apart from their ease of construction. You can't load them in a magazine or cycle them in a repeater, and when you do fire, you're launching an unstabilized projectile that can't be counted on to fly true or stay together in the air. And while it'll do a number on a water jug, it'll never penetrate flesh & bone as well as a solid slug even if it manages to stay together in flight.




If you want a way to turn target loads into slugs during a zombie apocalypse or whatever, a campfire, a metal ladle, and the right round ball or slug mold is all you need. Open the crimps, pour out the shot, melt, cast, cool, reload, re-crimp. These can actually be loaded and cycled in a shotgun, and will fly and penetrate like real slugs.


.410
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 20, 2014 4:55 pm
If you want a way to turn target loads into slugs during a zombie apocalypse or whatever, a campfire, a metal ladle, and the right round ball or slug mold is all you need. Open the crimps, pour out the shot, melt, cast, cool, reload, re-crimp. These can actually be loaded and cycled in a shotgun, and will fly and penetrate like real slugs.

I completely agree. Even wanted to try this myself. The only thing is the availability of other materials capable of supporting the same ballistics of lead....such as pewter or plain steel. Does anyone have an insight on this?

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PostPosted: Mon Jul 21, 2014 3:24 am
JAC wrote:I completely agree. Even wanted to try this myself. The only thing is the availability of other materials capable of supporting the same ballistics of lead....such as pewter or plain steel. Does anyone have an insight on this?

Neither pewter nor steel are tough to get a hold of, but why would you want to use them? They're too light to match the ballistics of lead, and while you can cast pewter (which is primarily tin) on a campfire, forget about iron alloys. There're also other issues such as hardness and shrinkage.

If you're converting cheap target loads, you already have the lead shot, so why not just melt that down?

.410
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 21, 2014 3:52 am
Synchronizor wrote:
JAC wrote:I completely agree. Even wanted to try this myself. The only thing is the availability of other materials capable of supporting the same ballistics of lead....such as pewter or plain steel. Does anyone have an insight on this?

Neither pewter nor steel are tough to get a hold of, but why would you want to use them? They're too light to match the ballistics of lead, and while you can cast pewter (which is primarily tin) on a campfire, forget about iron alloys. There're also other issues such as hardness and shrinkage.

If you're converting cheap target loads, you already have the lead shot, so why not just melt that down?



Only if the lead resources were not available. Lead has been tested and tried for years not trying to make a change just trying to find a suitable substitute.

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.410
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 21, 2014 4:01 am
What resources? Lead? Shells?

The idea with cut shells is to convert target shells into improvised slugs. So the concept assumes you already have target shells to work with. I'm suggesting casting and reloading more effective slugs in the same situation by making slugs out of melted lead birdshot - which is very easy with some basic tools - and loading those slugs back into the charged birdshot shells.

.410
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 21, 2014 4:10 am
I'm not only saying for target shells this would be for any reloadable ammo shells say you had brass 12 gauge shells but you also have 30.06 . The concept you're speaking of is really good but I just wanted to know for a step further for the actual bullet.

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.410
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 21, 2014 5:35 am
Alright, so you're talking about more general reloading.

Tin and tin alloys can be used to make bullets and shot with simple casting tools and techniques, though it'll probably take some research and know-how to account for its different casting properties and potential for transitioning into alternate solid allotropes that are unusable for bullets if not alloyed properly. Tin is also much less dense than lead (7.36 g/cc vs. 11.34 g/cc when pure). For shotgun shot and simple slugs where you're limited to a specific shape, sectional density and total shot mass are going to be thrown off. Bullets can usually be made longer to improve sectional density, but then you'll need specific molds for that, and probably alternate load data for the decreased case capacity.

Honestly, while I knew about tin projectiles, I never really gave this application for them much thought, and I'm not sure it's worth really going into. For full reloading in a SHTF situation, I imagine procuring specialized energetic components like powder and primers (especially powder & primers that are compatible with/adaptable for your load data) would be much more of a challenge than scrounging up lead, which has a ton of applications outside of firearms.

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