Post by homerj on Sept 26, 2014 5:31:42 GMT
I am a huge Dave Canterbury fan and love his Youtube channel, one of his series is the 21st Century Longhunter where he tries to simulate a frontier era longhunter using modern day equivalents. His ideal hunting rifle for this is a single shot break action 12 ga shotgun, he has a few videos demonstrating its versatility like the one below where he reloads his spent shotgun shells with pyrodex and bbs.
I know shotgun ammo is still pretty affordable and available but since I caught the blackpowder bug this really appealed to me and I got a H&R 20 gauge partly because I wanted to try this out for myself.
I followed Dave's instructions in the video and got my supplies:
-209 shotgun primers
-A Block of Paraffin Wax (148 degree melt point)
-Copper plated steel bbs
-Hot glue gun
I knocked out the spent primers with a screwdriver(small hex bit) while the shell was secured in my AR armorers wrench.
Once I knocked out primers in 8 spent shells I split them up into 2 groups of 4, group 1 will use cloth wadding and group 2 will use card wadding (softened up pieces of business card). Each group will be split again with 2 loaded with birdshot and 2 with wax slugs.
I tapped in the new primers with the screwdriver (bit removed).
Loaded each shell with 100 gr of pyrodex. I shoot my .45 cal cap lock with 100-120 gr with no issues and I am not worried about a modern shotgun capable of handling magnum slugs. If I don't post a follow up you guys know what happened lol...
dropped around 80 gr of bbs in the birdshot shells then capped them with their respective wadding types. Melted down wax for the slugs and added bbs and topped those off leaving a little room for a hot glue seal (to help keep the wax from melting).
The caps didnt come out as smooth and even as I wanted but good enough for a seal, I lost the first slug when the wax shot I poured in was too hot and started melting the plastic. Not gonna lie had a little pucker moment right then and dumped that slug in some water . Gonna try these out after work tomorrow and hopefully have enough fingers to report back.
I know shotgun ammo is still pretty affordable and available but since I caught the blackpowder bug this really appealed to me and I got a H&R 20 gauge partly because I wanted to try this out for myself.
I followed Dave's instructions in the video and got my supplies:
-209 shotgun primers
-A Block of Paraffin Wax (148 degree melt point)
-Copper plated steel bbs
-Hot glue gun
I knocked out the spent primers with a screwdriver(small hex bit) while the shell was secured in my AR armorers wrench.
Once I knocked out primers in 8 spent shells I split them up into 2 groups of 4, group 1 will use cloth wadding and group 2 will use card wadding (softened up pieces of business card). Each group will be split again with 2 loaded with birdshot and 2 with wax slugs.
I tapped in the new primers with the screwdriver (bit removed).
Loaded each shell with 100 gr of pyrodex. I shoot my .45 cal cap lock with 100-120 gr with no issues and I am not worried about a modern shotgun capable of handling magnum slugs. If I don't post a follow up you guys know what happened lol...
dropped around 80 gr of bbs in the birdshot shells then capped them with their respective wadding types. Melted down wax for the slugs and added bbs and topped those off leaving a little room for a hot glue seal (to help keep the wax from melting).
The caps didnt come out as smooth and even as I wanted but good enough for a seal, I lost the first slug when the wax shot I poured in was too hot and started melting the plastic. Not gonna lie had a little pucker moment right then and dumped that slug in some water . Gonna try these out after work tomorrow and hopefully have enough fingers to report back.