doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Forcing cones in old doubles

A fraction of an inch can be pretty long, Don, when the shot column itself isn't much over an inch in length. Think %, not raw measurement. And I believe Brister pretty well established from his tests that the 3" .410 does indeed have a long string, comparatively speaking.

Brister also claimed the 28 gauge had a "Short" shot string ""WHY"". The 28 has the next longest shot column length of all the regular Gauges.
The 3/4oz load in a 28 has a longer column length than 7/8oz in 20ga, 1oz in 16ga or 1�oz in 12ga. Why would it have a shorter shotstring if column length has anything to do with it?? It is of course shorter than even the �oz load in the .410.

I cannot recall the man who did the testing with the old "woodie" station wagon driving 30MPH (I believe it was his wife) pulling a hayrack with plywood on side with ducks painted on it and shot with the "short string" Winchester ammo. He was able to prove 2 things for sure:
1. He had a very brave and understanding wife...

2. Shot strings are much longer than the everyday scattergunner realizes and the more "overloaded" the shell, the longer the string.

We have all heard the old banter about a "square" shot charge. This of course is impossible due to the fact that a shell is round, but in principle it has some merit a shot column that is as long as it is wide or as close as possible tends to perform better. This has been tested and slightly proven.

Fact is we can disscuss this adnausim and it doesn't change the fact that if you don't put some of the string where he's gonna be you ain't gonna break/kill your target. Shotshell performance has been hypothesized in many ways from lead formula, to velocity, to pressure, recoil, ect. ect. ect. Now throw in all the "advancements" in bbl technology and all the hooplah and who knows what to believe.

I believe a gun should fit as well as you can make it fit, shoot instictively to point of impact for you and be balanced comfortably for you. We all have our theories and reasons and I say if it works for you, great. If not do some more experimenting and practicing till it does. Main goal is to have fun and enjoy.

The 28 has often been called a "square load". By the definition of the shot column being as long as it is wide, this is certainly not even close to being true.

Burrard had some pretty good coverage of shotsrtinging in his book, mostly done with the standard British game load shell; 12ga, 3de-1 1/16oz #6. A few things worthy of note though are I think;
#1; A very high percentage (I recall about 75%) of the shot load was found in the forward half of the string. The extreme of the "Tail" consisted of only a small % of the total & was likely the badly deformed pellets. Thus reduction of deformed pellets can result in a dramatic reduction of string length, but in actual effect nowhere near the "Lauded Improvement" to the load.
If you have made a 30% reduction in string length by moving up 5% of the shot a 30% increase in effectiveness of the load has not been made, just another "Mis-Use" of statistics.
#2; When he did test some 1�oz loads he was "Surprised" that he found no increase of stringing over the 1 1/16oz load. Thus an 18% increase of column length in the shell did "NOT" result in an 18% increase of the string in the air.
#3; His final conclusion & this with paper hulls loaded with card & felt wadding, sans any shot protector cups etc was;
Unless you are a specialized shooter, regularly shooting at birds in excess of 40 yds, flying in excess of 40 MPH at an angle of near 90� to the shot line "FORGET SHOTSTRINGING", its simply not an important factor.
With today's improved shells it is I feel sure even less so, & it doesn't have to be a WW Mark V in any case.

I think the most hilarious thing I ever read on the sq load was in a premier issue of a new rag devoted to shot-gunners some years back. A quite noted author wrote a "Resounding" article on the 28ga & promoted its Sq load effect. He defined the Sq load as being a shot load equal to a bore size round ball. He then correctly stated this could be found by dividing 16 by the gauge number & listed the 28 ga round ball as 16/28 as .57oz This is of course correct with rounding to two decimal places (plenty close for the purpose. But THEN he further stated this proved "conclusively" the 3/4oz load in the 28 was the "Perfect Sq Load". I don't know if he was really that Dumb or thought I was, but I learned way back down in Grammar School that .57 & .75 are not one & the same even though they do contain the same two digits, just rearranged. A sq load in the 28ga depending on whether one uses the equal column length to bore dia or the round ball equiv will be from just over 7/16oz for the first to just over 9/16oz for the latter, certainly not the 3/4oz load.
I can't really recall ever reading anyone whom I assessed to have reliable credentials who gave any advantage to the so-called sq load.

In spite of the fact I am always interested in these posts and register all the info,
I have come to the conclusion, after over 40 years of hunting, that the less I
think about when shooting, the more birds I hit!

JC

�Qu� Juan Carlos dijo!

Pigeon Shooting: With instructions for beginners and suggestions for those who participate in the sport of pigeon shooting.
Albert William Money, Arthur Corbin Gould 1896
http://books.google.com/books?id=qkEEAAAAYAAJ

"I would lay great stress on the necessity of concentrating your whole thought and attention on the shot."

Miller, I think you may be inventing what Brister claimed. He only credits the 28ga with a short shot string compared to the 3" .410. At least that's all I can find scanning the chapter in his book on string. Maybe you can do better, but here's the quote:

"The moving target showed quite clearly that the longer and heavier the payload of shot packed into the case of a cartridge--relative to the size of the bore--the greater the shot deformation and poorer the pattern percentage on crossing targets. This is why the 3-inch .410 (which is in effect an elongated mini-magnum) strings shot much more erratically and with less efficiency than the same shotload fired from a 28 gauge. The 28 gauge has a larger bore relative to the length and weight of the shot column being pushed through it."

You may be thinking of someone else who made a general statement crediting the 28 with a short shot string.