28 gauge round ball loads

gmerkt · Oct 10, 2022

28 gauge round ball loads, turns your shotgun into a musket. Kind of.

Two cut-aways.

Shell on the right, this was loaded with a Ballistic Products (BPI) brush wad, their generic round ball (.505), and I used 15.0 gr. of DuPont PB.

Shell on the left, my improved version. This was loaded with a later version of the BPI brush wad and a 230 gr. .535 Speer round lead ball that was more closely matched to the choke in my NEF single shot gun. This one is powered by 14.0 gr. of Unique. In both cases, Fiocchi pre-primed hulls were used.

The difference in length is due to a change in the brush wad height, and I used an overshot card on the longer one.

I also have a 12 gauge and a .410 bore shotgun each but I don't load for them. I keep stocks of factory ammo on hand for those. I also have factory 28 gauge ammo, but I hand load for that as well. Because specialty rounds for 28 gauge are few and far between. So the hand loads I make for 28 are round ball, Foster slug, Traditions 240 gr. lead sabots (made for black powder), and #4 buckshot. I experimented with steel flechettes (in Vietnam we called them "nails") and they worked through the 28 but I couldn't get much payload in the 28 hull.

When I say handloaded, that includes no shotgun press. I use a little shotshell vise that I got from BPI years ago. I don't make all that many of these. First of all, I don't resize used hulls. I buy a bag of pre-primed Fiocchi hulls which for my uses lasts a while. Once fired, I throw them away. When I load them, I charge several at a time, then I seat the wad with a small arbor press. I only use the vise to secure the hull while I finish up with a roll crimp.

gmerkt · Oct 10, 2022

The last time I was out shooting, I took some of these along. The .535 round ball will penetrate 3/4 inch finished plywood at 25 yards and keep on going. I fired one into a chunk of big lam beam and it sunk in 2-1/2 inches. So they show some promise as a defensive round. My #4 buckshot rounds also will penetrate 3/4 inch finished plywood at 25 yards.

po18guy · Oct 10, 2022

Very interesting! Since Unique maxxes out at about 7.5 grains with a 230 gr. slug in .45 ACP, am guessing the larger volume of the shotgun shell and lower resistance in the barrel allow acceptable pressures. Pretty cool. Ya know, if you ever found a used Lee Load-All at a garage sale, it would vbe even easier and cheaper. But, they are not $29.95 like they "used to be."

gmerkt · Oct 10, 2022

po18guy said:
if you ever found a used Lee Load-All at a garage sale,

Truth be told, my experience with reloading started with shot shells. Over ten years before I started in on centerfire stuff. Right after I got out of the army in 1972, I met a gun guy and we palled around together. One of the things we liked to do was shoot (very) informal trap. One guy would throw the clay bird, the other would do the gunning. Somewhere around 1973, I bought a loose in a box, used 12 ga. shot shell reloading outfit. Garage sale or equivalent. I had no mentor for doing it, I was completely on my own. It came with one shot bushing and one powder bushing. I bought a pound of Hercules Red Dot, a 25# bag of recovered shot from the Winchester range, some generic primers, and a bag of Remington RXP plastic wads. I think most of my used hulls were Rem. At the time, I did not appreciate the relative precision of book shot shell load recommendations. With this questionable beginning, my product actually came out well. They all fired and with a little practice, my crimps became respectible. If I remember correctly, I fired the last of them about 12 years ago and they were still good. I got married in 1974. After that event, the trap shooting with my pal tapered off rapidly.

Okay, after all these years, I was hard pressed to remember just what kind of press it was. There is a strong memory of a big, ugly U shaped handle. But it wasn't a Lee Load-All, because the bushings were blued steel cylinders and the charge bars were different. I've looked on the interwebs and now I'm pretty sure what I had was a Lyman Easy. It was old when I bought it in 1973.

As newlyweds, we had rented a little, lap sided bungalow. It had a little, old-timey garage out back barely big enough for my 1955 Cadillac. Which was one of the cars I had when we got married in 1974. There was a little bench built in one corner of the garage, no lighting, which I had to rig up. When I had my Cadillac parked in there, it still allowed room for the bench. And that's where I set up my shot shell reloading station. This was an older, quiet neighborhood. The garage was on a dead-end alley. It took a bit of maneuvering to get my 55 Cad back through that alley and into the garage. I never locked anything up when we lived there.

My wing shooting these days is just about nil. A couple of years ago, I sold off some of the factory 12 ga. and .410 bore factory ammo that I had. I believe I still have over 500 rounds of .410 that I'll probably never use. I play around with the 28 ga. in order to keep it versatile. But loading birdshot for it on scale isn't in the cards.

Re. my experimental loads. I admit to doing what the reloading books tell you not to do. That is, extrapolate an experimental load from a known, recommended load. I give consideration to payload weight and how it relates to charge. The .535 round ball load at 14.0 gr. of Unique is about as far as I want to push it. Shotguns work at typically lower pressures than centerfire. The lead ball has a frictional surface very much reduced from the bullet in a centerfire bore. You also must pay attention to what choke your shotgun has, as this is the maximum restriction.

Of course different gauges of shot shells have different ranges of acceptable powders. Unique may not be the best modern choice for 28 ga. I already had Unique on the shelf (for .45 Colt, 255 gr RNL, 8.5 gr.), found some compatible resource data for it so used in in my round ball loads.

Ckgworks · Oct 10, 2022

Nice! I load a 3" tri-ball for 12 gauge.....Dixie slug published the load data. When loaded properly it will keep 3 325 grain 60 cal balls in the size of your palm at 35 yards. Unbelievable penetration and power compared to buck shot or slugs.