45cal multi shot?

I was bored last night....so I proceeded to sort an butt load of 12 gauge shells my son brought home from a turkey shoot he attended with friends.

Since I ended up with a box full of pretty green Remington club hulls...I decided to load a few up. 2 25rnd boxes of 1-1/8oz 7.5's later I was running low on shot in the hopper....so I emptied it the rest of the way out to do some "special" loads.

I proceeded to decap/resize, prime, drop the powder charge and insert the wad as usual. The I decided to drop a 230gr lead cast bullet in and center it on the wad....then trickled #6 shot around the bullet to keep it centered then up and over the top of the bullet until the shot was level with the tips of the wad petals. then crimped as usual. I haven't tested them yet....but I will asap. The powder and charge I was using is the recipe is use for target or light field loads...so it is pretty light. If it tests out good....I might beef up the load using a different powder/charge combination.

This load really isn't good for any practical uses....but it should be fun shooting jugs,cans,etc....maybe zombies

I'm sure the bullet will tumble like mad....but that's still a solid chunk of tumbling lead moving at over 1200fps,LOL

Just a cautionary note Hawcer .... Did you weigh the payload? the reason I ask is "Light target load" is usually with a fast powder like Red Dot Clays Etc. they dont react to well with a heavier payload. FWIW

Yes, I weighed them...thanks for bringing that up since I forgot to mention it. The payload ends up just a tad over 1-1/8oz loads. I compared both the shot only weight and the shot plus 45cal bullet weight. I measured in grams on my rcbs electric scale...I don't recall the exact numbers, but they were close.

I was thinking of using card discs placed under the bullet to reduce the amount of volume for the shot to occupy to get them perfect....maybe I'll do that tonight. If I can get that to work well, I'll repack the couple I've already made the same way.

I had a chance to test these yesterday...the light loads worked well and the heavy loads loaded with Longshot powder were devastating.

The 45 cal bullet did show signs of tumbling as expected and the hole left by the bullet was always within the shot pattern from about 15-20 yards when fired at a test board.

We also fired upon 2 foot long sheets of ice that were about 4 inches thick....a sheet was easily turned to crushed ice with one shot.

They should make great defense rounds or short range pesky critter getters.

you could do that with a 45 cal round ball that would be awsome and probly more accurate it wouldnt tumble not sure what the weight difference would be though

I don't know much about shotshell reloading. But I was wondering if the hardness of the lead bullet that you used makes any difference? I hear people talk about trying harder lead alloys or softer lead alloys in rifles and handguns. Did you have to make sure the lead bullet was a soft lead alloy?

The bullets I used were cast from wheel weight lead....so a bit on the hard side.

chilled magnum shot is on the order of 14 - 15 BNH so thats not out of line for a shotgun.

yea i know my wheel weight bullets are super hard! not sure what the BNH is never tested it i bet one coming out of a 12 gauge would hit like a train no matter what the hardness lol