Wax Slugs

[kynardsj]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfbrP7ujerE&list=SP3D334C9E7FF1FCCE
 
This may be old news to some of you but this process turns ordinary birdshot into something entirely different.

[kynardsj]

Never got any replies on this but I wanted to add some pics of how well they work. The boards are 5/4 decking and the range is 10 yards. One on the left is regular 7 1/2 shot and you get what you'd expect, a lot of small holes. The one on the right is 7 1/2 shot turned into a wax slug. the last pic is the back of the board. A very inexpensive way of making a devastating round. Inside of my barrel is as clean as a whistle too.

[hillbill]

hmm, be interesting to do a gelatin test with the wax slugs and a real slug.

[kynardsj]

Go to Youtube. They have a pile of videos on them. Don't know about the lead slugs but there are some with the wax slug being shot into gelatin. Wax doesn't have the range of lead but for closer work they're devastating and also cheap.

[JonnyReb]

 Pretty neat concept and worth remembering. Would be a decent home defense round for sure. Now for taking out bee nests in the eaves of your house or barn, I recommend a lightly charged load of silica sand. Doesn't remove paint if you keep your range appropriate and vaporiZes bee's and nests. .     Learned this in scout camp when the range officer came up with it to remove wasp nests infesting the cafeteria, using no poison. Made a heck of a mess but sure did the trick on those bees.  J

[kynardsj]

The thing that amazed me when I did the test on the boards was when I shot the first one with the birdshot it flipped a time or two as expected. I stood the second one up against the same stump and when I shot it with the wax slug it never moved. I thought for a second I had missed until I saw the hole. This thing must have been scooting when it went thru it.

[Ranger99]

i think i prefer the cut shell biz over
the wax shell. i've thought about trying
either some hot glue or rubber cement

[flmason]

I wrote several powder companies looking for valid loads and safe ways to build these kind of loads up. After all, it's rather intriguing that you can make slugs this way. Solves the problem of few good slug molds out there that don't require plastic wads.

Not one company responded.

I'd be worried about pressure spikes since shotgun powders are among the fastest.

I suppose it's reasonably safe in cylinder bore guns, just take the actual weight into account... but with a choke I have to wonder what the effect of filling up the space between the shot with wax is.

I know people have done it for decades if not over a century, but lack of any pressure data worries me.

To some extent I guess they are breaching rounds or homebrew glassers.

And I guess you could even do things like make hollow base molds and such, or stack up a fewer smaller diameter wads in the bottom to have the brenekke effect. Was seriously infatuated with this idea for a while. After all it promises to cheaply and easily extend the abilities of your shotgun.

But that lack of data really worries me. I've read of a few barrel blowups with these. But who knows what the details were. E.g maybe the reloader accidentally double charged, etc.

[Ranger99]

you might want to watch that "iraqveteran8888"
where they shoot cut shells and wax shells
and for sure watch them put all those different
rounds through the cheapy .410


best one i've seen

[flmason]

you might want to watch that "iraqveteran8888"
where they shoot cut shells and wax shells
and for sure watch them put all those different
rounds through the cheapy .410


best one i've seen

Oh Yeah, I've seen it. I seem to recall them taking one shotgun and finally blowing it up with a massive overload. Been a while since I was pouring over those.

I wish some manufacturer with good testing facilities would just step up to the plate and do the pressure testing to settle the matter. (Can't afford to do that study myself, LOL!)

Wax Slugs are certainly an attractive idea, no doubt.

[Ranger99]

i don't remember them blowing anything.
they put all those rounds through that
cheap 410 and measure the muzzle and
the projectile each time.


you'd never get a component manufacturer
to condone any kind of "improvised" loads
in this the day and age of lawyers and lawsuits.
a trespasser can sue a landowner now if
injured while criminally trespassing and has
a better than average chance of winning.


if somebody was to show that altering
inexpensive ammo would take the place
of more costly ammo, they'd have a stroke.


it is a nice tip to know though

[flmason]

i don't remember them blowing anything.
they put all those rounds through that
cheap 410 and measure the muzzle and
the projectile each time.


you'd never get a component manufacturer
to condone any kind of "improvised" loads
in this the day and age of lawyers and lawsuits.
a trespasser can sue a landowner now if
injured while criminally trespassing and has
a better than average chance of winning.


if somebody was to show that altering
inexpensive ammo would take the place
of more costly ammo, they'd have a stroke.


it is a nice tip to know though

The idea is not to get them to condone modifying cheap ammo. I didn't phrase it that way. I asked Alliant etc. about correct load workup and if they had any information on this type of round. I was thinking more along the lines of complete, from scratch round build up.

Knowing that manufacterers probably use the cheapest fastest (i.e lowest cost per round) powder, I'd be afraid to tinker with that idea to any extent.

Here's one blowup they did... not wax slugs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0MYG_-XCY0

Not IraqVeteran8888 but an allegeded waxer blowup

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnTAr5jqJQI

I'm having a hard time finding it, but I thought IraqVeteran8888 had doubled the lead and powder in one wax slug experiment with the idea in mind of testing the limits. Just can't seem to find the right search term or pick it from his list.

Anyway, I think the point stands, that if we do wax slugs, we're in uncharted territory, granted... even by the book loads are just approximations.

In the end, I actually *want* wax slugs to be safe. Very cool idea. But would like some certainty about it. Could see keeping a box of them around "just in case". But not sure what to think about a constant diet of them.

The exception might be in cylinder bore guns, possibly with powders that have pressure characteristics like black powder... then it would seem a little wax would just be other less dense payload. Seems like it'd be a great idea to try in a Brown Bess, LOL!

For me it's the choke and constriction that makes me wonder. No idea how the wax affects compressibility and resultant pressures.

[charles p]

Most people on here should be able to afford a small box of slugs for whenever they are needed.  Why compromise?

[flmason]

Most people on here should be able to afford a small box of slugs for whenever they are needed.  Why compromise?

No Doubt, LOL! I do have some factory slugs loads sitting around.

What was behind my thinking was the lack of decent Forester type slug molds, forming tools. (If you want the fins, I guess.) Even the Lee and Lyman molds I think are geared for plastic was columns. My hope was to be able to craft my own shot cup, say out of wraps of paper and fill them with wax + shot and solve the problem of "no good molds for use with traditional card wads".

It's not a matter of compromise, but of options.