James Fischer
.22LR
I've been reading the various reloading guides to learn about reloading for 12 gauge, something I've ever bothered with before. The fits and starts in ammo supply is bothersome, so even if it ends up costing more, reloading seems a good way to at least keep shells on hand for regular range and skeet practice.
But - the Youtube videos seem to be hazards to navigation. For example:
If I take a brand-new 2 1/2" long 12 gauge shell with 1 1/8" oz of birdshot, and remove the birdshot, replacing it with a 1oz slug, or even with 12 (1.09 oz) or 13 (1.18 oz) pellets of #1 buckshot, I now have the wrong amount of powder, as the payload is now different. I could understand putting in different size pellets if I could keep the weight the same, but I'd want to keep it very close to the same (1.125 oz) pellet weight.
But how much room for error is there, here? Is 1.18 oz "close enough" to 1.125 oz for the thick-barreled Mossberg shotguns? 5% may not seem like much, but when I see so many very specific "recipes", I tend to think that there is more than the simple mass of the pellets to consider here.
It is true that shells with birdshot are more readily available than the larger sizes, but I hesitate to think that this kind of "reloading" to do things like "cut down 2.5-inch shells to 1.75-inch 'minishells' with different payloads would be advisable, and it would be better to only reload spent shells, using a recipe requiring powder that one may simply have to wait months to get.
But - the Youtube videos seem to be hazards to navigation. For example:
If I take a brand-new 2 1/2" long 12 gauge shell with 1 1/8" oz of birdshot, and remove the birdshot, replacing it with a 1oz slug, or even with 12 (1.09 oz) or 13 (1.18 oz) pellets of #1 buckshot, I now have the wrong amount of powder, as the payload is now different. I could understand putting in different size pellets if I could keep the weight the same, but I'd want to keep it very close to the same (1.125 oz) pellet weight.
But how much room for error is there, here? Is 1.18 oz "close enough" to 1.125 oz for the thick-barreled Mossberg shotguns? 5% may not seem like much, but when I see so many very specific "recipes", I tend to think that there is more than the simple mass of the pellets to consider here.
It is true that shells with birdshot are more readily available than the larger sizes, but I hesitate to think that this kind of "reloading" to do things like "cut down 2.5-inch shells to 1.75-inch 'minishells' with different payloads would be advisable, and it would be better to only reload spent shells, using a recipe requiring powder that one may simply have to wait months to get.