Light shotgun loads

[Holiday]

Well, it's time to start my daughter, Miss Molly Morgan on the shotgun. I have a Spanish coach gun that I have been useing in 12 guage. It has a short stock and I have been using a lace on recoil pad with a block in it to bring it out to my length of pull. So it is about the right length for her with out the extra pad. Here is the problem. I'm afraid, even with light loads, that this gun is too much. I loaded the smallest bushing in my Lee Loadall and used Unique. But the results were less than satifactory. I plan to get another powder. What is a good powder, and load, for LIGHT 12 guage loads? I have considered a 20 guage, but from all I hear, loading a 12 light will have less recoil. Also, since I shoot black owder, I am thinking of loading light Pyrodex loads. Any suggestions?

[Bad Flynch]

Been there, done that. Winchester makes a superlight AA load, can't remember the name, but it is somewhere around 24-26 grams of shot and it travels at 980 fps. I have seen in print, but not personally tried, that this load will do fine in CAS.

For home loading of smokeless loads, I looked all over and finally found some 7/8 ounce loads at 1155fps. You can't duplicate the Winchester Featherlight(?) loads at home yet. Hodgdon publishes 7/8 ounce loads for WinAA cases and I thought that they worked well for me.

I am currently loading 7/8 ounce of shot in new paper hulls with black powder and a roll crimp. Graf and Sons has new Cheddite paper hulls, and I bought an assortment of old-fashioned wads from Precision Reloading and Ballistic Products. That, along with a shell vise and a roll-crimper. All works well with 2&1/4 drams, by weight, of 2F Black Powder and the 7/8 ounce of shot. All you have to do is use one nitro card wad over the powder and fill the rest of the column up so that it crimps properly. I use an 0.030" over-shot wad (this is old-timey wads, Not plastic). The drams of powder are drams Avoirdupois, which makes 2&1/4 drams about 61.5 grains. The Avoirdupois dram is not the same as the unit with the same name in Apothecary's system. That should be good for about 1145-1155 fps, but I haven't chronographed it yet.

The single drawback is that you must put some compression on the wad column to get uniform ballistics. I use a 650 MEC loader and put about 80 lbs of pressure on the wad column before I put in the shot. When I was a boy, in 1958, learning to load shotgun shells, we used old fashioned wads and tried very hard to get the right pressure on the wad column.

The old wads are only approximately the size that they are stated to be, as the material is not stable, dimension wise. Add to that you will have some compression of the powder and of the wads, making the pressure you put on the column change the column height. You gotta experiment with black powder to get everything to come up together at the right height. Nevertheless, it is possible to get some nice loads with a little experimentation.

Hop this helps

[Holiday]

Thanks, I appreciate the information. I will keep it in mind, but I may have found an easier solution today. My local dealer keeps a small supply of Aguila's mini shotshells. These are short, about half the length of a normal shell and are very light loaded. I bought a box and my daughter was able to shoot them. For the time being I will try these. But I eventually want to move on to black powder for her.

[Sweetwater Jack]

The Winchester shells are what were once called "Featherlites", now they are: "Lo-noise/Lo Recoil" shells. The Winchester stock # is AAFL12-8, as I recall. They still have the feather on the side of the shell.