If you're nervous about the substitution, the Lyman manual has a Longshot load for the "Federal Plastic Hunting Cases, Paper Basewad" (that includes all Top Gun hulls) with 36 gn of Longshot, Fed 209A primer, 12S4 wad for 1510 fps at 10,500 psi. The slug loads seem to really tear up the hulls anyway, so this is a fine way to do it. A lot of people worry about the fiber basewad working loose in the TG hulls, but I've never seen it-use them for one reload and toss there are always plenty more where I shoot. I think virtually all experienced reloaders agree on this. You can always use Top Gun hulls with Gold Medal load data-this will always be safe, and the pressure will always be slightly lower with the fiber basewad Top Guns the TG hulls have a bit less room than the GMs, but the difference is minimal. Maybe I need to get a bigger variety of wads and powders.Hi Mojo, I have looked in my Lyman 5th Edition Shotshell Reloading Handbook, and on the Alliant and Hodgdon sites. The official Lyman slug loads call for 12S4 wads, which will often have just enough room under them for a thin card, but I'm comfortable subbing the 12S3 where the stack height works out (and it's hard to blow up that Benelli barrel, since it's rated for 14,000 psi.)įulltang, I do have a few dozen Top Gun hulls, but have not found much heavy slug load published data on them (most slug loads I find are for the Gun Club hulls, or Federal Gold Medal of which I have none). The genuine Federal 12S3 is a good match for the Lyman slug, and fits the Benelli barrel, but try to pick up some Top Gun or Fiocchi hulls on the range (there should be lots of them all over the place) and you'll see plenty of heavy loads listed for them. Plus, the crush section on these wads is rather flimsy. This combo give OK accuracy, but it's a loose fit in the Benelli barrel (I have a Benelli Nova Tactical) and there's a big jump across that 3.5" chamber, so this will never be a long-range slugger. The Lyman manual lists a sabot slug load with 25 gn of Herco, and win 209. About the only wad I've found useful here is the genuine WT12 (orange) wad, or the equivalent WAA12. No problem using them with lighter slugs, but the wad combo is the issue here. I have hundreds of once-fired Gun Clubs, too-but I don't use them for heavy slug loads. I want to try a gas seal and some combo of felt filler wads and nitro cards to build a shot column that won't crush unevenly, but cannot find such a recipe with my hulls and slugs. I imagine the unevenly compacted crush part is largely to blame for my poor accuracy. The DRA12 wads that start with all petals intact have the petals ripped off (usually leaving 1 or 2 intact) and the "crush" area is always unevenly compacted. I have tried trimming or completely cutting off the petals with no appreciable difference. My inconsistent accuracy at 50 yards ranges from 3 groups within 4" to only 1 out of 3 shots on the paper (and the paper is 11x17"!!). I have tried the Lyman shotshell recipe (Gun Club hulls, ~40-43 grains Blue Dot, Downrange DRA12 yellow wad, W209 primer) with and without nitro cards. The only folks I know of that shoot new STS shells are serious competitive target ( trap, skeet, sporting clays) shooters.I have maybe hundreds of once-fired Remington Gun Club Hulls, a smooth-bore Benelli Supernova Tactical pump shotgun, Blue Dot, Longshot, and Herco powders, DRA12, Remington 12S3 and DR 1 1/8 Blue wads, W209 primers, and Lyman 525 grain slugs I cast.
Especially since they command a market price $.05 a piece. Gun club new shells can be bought for a minimum of $2 cheaper than STS shells per box.
The only reason they reload the gun club hulls is because they are plentiful and a lot of people fire them once and throw them away. They use the same components and a duplicate load for either of the two. I have friends who have loaded tens of thousands of both shells. The case mouth is moved a bit during the powder drop/primer inserting station, but that is only to spread it open to ease the wad insertion at the next stage. The plastic portion of the hull is not actually resized. If you fire the shell in the same gun all the time resizing is less necessary because the hull (really only the base) conforms to the chamber of the gun. Assuming your reloader has a resizing station the steel base is more difficult to resize compared to the brass base. I think the reason the gun clubs “feel” different when being reloaded is due to the steel bases of the gun clubs compared to the brass base of the STS hulls.
0 kommentar(er)
