cut shells

Very dangerous. I have read that this practice causes 2X normal pressure.

Doug

Well if anything. They ruined a good bucket.

Shotguns are not built with the safety factor that a centerfire rifle has. If you spike the pressure in a shotgun, I am sure there could be a catastrophic failure. The real problem is, the shotgun barrel usually bursts right where the non-shooting hand holds the forearm. The length of the shell has little to do with the pressure in the shell.

It is dangerous to shoot a 3" shell in a 2-3/4" chamber because the end of the star crimp folds into the barrel's forcing cone and the shot and wad has to force it's way past the unfolded crimp. I believe ringing a shotshell would create pressures greater than the use of a 3" shell in a 2-3/4" chamber. Thus causing a real problem. By the way, paper shells compress easier than plastic shells. I was given 6000 paper shells a few years ago and I have loaded them extensively. They are much softer than plastic shells.

Another old wives tail with shotguns is, removing the shot in a 12 ga shell and replacing it with dimes. This could be done with a cylinder bored gun but would cause high pressure in a full choked bore. Also the dimes will not fit in a modern shell with a shot cup plastic wad. It would work with an olde fashioned all paper wad with no shot cup. A shot cup wad would increase pressures as well.

Doug

Well, I can tell you. Today, I tried both wax slugs, and cut shells in my Maverick 88. I did pick up an Imp. Cyl. choke before I tried this.

The report: Both worked well, and no kaboom. I have an old oak tree that I use in the back yard for a backstop, and both burried about 2 1/2" - 3" in the old tree. I did recover one of the cut shells, and the wad was still with the shot and hull.

I was using 2 3/4" 7 1/2 shot for this. The one point I saw on another forum that made me feel a little bit better about trying this is the fact that the crimp is the safeguard, or the pressure relief for the cut shells. if pressures get too high, the crimp lets go, and the shot and wad leave the end of the gun. Now if this were to happen, the hull would remain, and be an obstruction.

This is not something I will be doing on a regular basis, but it does work.

Now for the wax slugs, HECK YEA, those should be no danger, and they do perform almost as well. From 25 yards into the old tree, I still only saw one hole, and burried quite deep. Trying to recover this, was well lets just say, I saw the mass of shot, but could not recover anything. they just fell into my hands.

What a blast.

Paul