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Bill K
PostPosted: Thu Apr 11, 2019 10:07 am  Reply with quote



Joined: 13 Oct 2014
Posts: 253
Location: North Shore of Boston

I've been shooting & reloading for longer than I care to admit.

And my dumb question is, why are there different load recipes for different manufacturer's hulls & wads for the same shot load ?

I understand that there are varying inside diameters of hulls and outside diameters of wads, and that there must be surface friction coefficients to be considered. So mix and match is to be avoided - if possible.

BUT !, how much difference can there be between a load recipe for a Winchester hull + Winchester wad versus a BPI wad in a Remington hull, etc.

Certainly there is some assumably minute difference in chamber pressure - but not enough to damage a gun or radically affect performance.

Where I live in Massachusetts we don't always have a choice as what to buy.

BPI won't ship ANYTHING to Massachusetts, and I'm a little upset about driving 50 miles to get to a store only to find empty shelf space where my desired powder should be.
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WyoChukar
PostPosted: Thu Apr 11, 2019 12:31 pm  Reply with quote



Joined: 16 Jul 2015
Posts: 2124
Location: Hudson,Wy

You'll shoot your eye out kid.

Just kidding. For what it is worth, sometimes it matters and sometimes it doesn't...in actual practice.

Starting with a high pressure load that uses a mild primer in a Cheddite hull and swapping that load into a Win CF hull will get pressures up fast. Then, additionally substituting a Fed 209A primer to boot is going to get pressures mighty high. Things get out of hand even faster when loading steel shot (or equally hard shot types) due to the lack of malleability and cushionless wads.

Now on the other hand, when loading mild loads at mild pressures with similar components, there are many instances when some interchange is safe. An example are my 16 ga. hunting loads using Longshot powder. I use a mild load and it goes into both Herter's and older Fed hulls since the data is very similar, even with published data at maximum. In this case the difference is not worth worrying about, particularly since my loads are far below maximum.

Switching from a compression formed hull to a euro style hull will result in lower pressures and is generally safe. The only concern here is that if one is already using a low pressure load, then inconsistent ignition may occur with the additional pressure drop and result in some blooper loads, and nobody wants a stuck wad in the barrel!

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skeettx
PostPosted: Thu Apr 11, 2019 12:49 pm  Reply with quote
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Joined: 15 Apr 2007
Posts: 9455
Location: Amarillo, Texas

Hello Bill K

Have you enrolled for the FREE Yahoo group??

http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/reloading16gauge/

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Brewster11
PostPosted: Thu Apr 11, 2019 11:36 pm  Reply with quote



Joined: 08 Feb 2009
Posts: 1301
Location: Western WA

Quote:
And my dumb question is, why are there different load recipes for different manufacturer's hulls & wads for the same shot load ?


Not a dumb question at all...actually I've been asking myself the same thing for some years and thousands of 16 ga reloads.

I'm leaning toward the view that if you are only concerned about safety margin (taking a deep breath here), then hulls, wads, primers, and maybe even powders don't really matter with modern guns and you aren't using a thin walled 6 lb British 16 bore or Uncle Charlie's damascus handmedown.

No, you can't swap steel or tungsten for lead shot, or Red Dot for Longshot, but if you have been using a well established load and you switch components, the pressures might vary maybe 50% but your gun won't burst or bulge, and if it does, it shouldn't have been in use anyway. If your gun doesn't have at least 100% pressure margin of safety, you are playing Russian Roulette even with factory loads.

And when it comes to published loads, many, if not most, make no sense to me whatsoever and some are worse than worthless. Different powder lots can make more difference than anything else.

What most concerns me are the wildly inconsistent published results I have come across in various sources for the same or nearly identical load combinations. This tells me that the practices and conditions in some testing labs and powder companies are not in complete agreement, and their results are not to be taken on blind faith.

However to get back to your point, there is a deep logic in finding the right combination of components and loads for a particular gun and shooter, and it will be discovered by experience. I don't think any amount of lab data will reveal what your shoulder, ears, gun, chrono, pattern board, scores, and birds in the freezer will tell you about a particular combination.

As I meander around here, I guess I'm also saying that any reload poses a risk for older guns.

This is merely my considered opinion and if someone here says the barrel of their modern gun bulged or burst when they switched components, I will stand corrected.

Good Luck,
B.
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