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If I remove the shot cup petals on a plastic wad and just use the base would it increase or decrease the pressures?
Why would you do that?
Less
and great plan to use the wads you have and are confident with their performance. smile
Joe, rather than hurt yourself running with scissors, have you consider using the BP gas seal? 250 for under $10. I've been using them with Alcan-Bluestreak fiber wads in 2" 12 ga. handloads. When I handloaded my NID 3.5" 10 ga., I made a "spreader" type load by cutting off the gas seal and using it instead of the fully petaled Pattern Driver wad. I agree with Mike about less pressure, but if you cut off the cushioning portion of the wad as well, not so sure about that affecting pressures. Gil
It won't effect pressure. You're still sealing the powder with the same plastic seal. The crimp and payload will effect pressure. If you're just wanting more spread you're good. But you'll be able to add more shot and that could change things. I've been trying to use 444 Marlin brass for 410 shells and I've been running out of room so I cut the petals just to get the 1/2oz load. With just a OS card glued in I'm not getting enough resistance and a dirty barrel. The shells are bloopers. A buddy has a 45 die what will work. I'm gonna try to swedge the brass in a bit hoping that will help. It's what the military did with their brass case buck shot loads.
Paul,
I've been shooting RMC brass hulls out of a .410 since 2016 and I've never had an issue with bloopers gluing the osc with Duco cement. I don't know the length of the brass hulls you are using, but mine are 3" which is overkill as the shot column extends only 2.75" more or less. I'm not using lead but TSS up to 7/8 oz. I wouldn't recommend crimping the brass without a little more research as to what pressures you'd generate. I know there are some loads out of brass hulls that "crimp" brass and there was someone selling the tools to do so at one time on the forum classified section. There are some 3/4 oz. lead loads using the Stump wad in 3" shells listed in the BP Advantages manual using Lil Gun and a fold crimp. I wouldn't hesitate loading this load in my brass and using Duco (as recommended by RMC) to secure the osc. Gil
Virtually all of my reloading is for 2 3/4” hulls, even for short chambered guns. But not having anything else to do over the holidays I decided to load a few 2 1/2” shells just for the heck of it. My standard load uses a Federal fiber based game hulls, a Federal 209 primer, 20.5 grains PB, a Federal SO wad and 1 oz #7 and a 6 point crimp. These are my quail loads. So, cutting the hull to 2 1/2” and using the same data I have to put about 100# pressure on the wad to collapse it enough to make room for a roll crimp. Works super! But if I cut the petals off there is plenty of room to roll crimp without having to put any pressure on it. Just piddling around.....at the distance most of our wild quail are shot at—30 yards or less—a bigger pattern isn’t a detriment even in my cylinder bored hammer guns.

My current favorite quail gun is a very early Charles Daly hammer gun made in the early 70’s. Has original 28” length cylinder barrels and weighs 6/10. Lots of drop in stock which is perfect for real wild bird flushes.
Joe,

As you are actually lightening the weight of the ejecta/payload by cutting off the petals, I would expect that you are also lowering the pressure being generated, all other factors being equal.

If your curiosity is great enough you might consider sending both loads for testing as long as its the same pressure gun being used for both loads. And keep in mind that pressure guns are like engine dyno's; no two of them read exactly the same even though they are supposedly measuring the same things, so you will get different numbers if you send one load to one place and the other to another or even the same load to two dif. places. You will need to send them to the same place to get meaningful comparative data for that reason and that's all you will get, good comparative data. Actual pressure numbers reported will likely not be absolutely accurate, but close enough and will not alter the findings. Just saying.

Happy New year(!) and we can hope for better bird populations come next fall than this past year has produced. Still time to get plenty of walking in before this season closes;-)
Tw, you are right about the birds, the Panhandle numbers are again bad. Most of the country in the eastern side is not even being hunted. However I lucked out and my cousin’s ranch east of Amarillo has a number of large, healthy coveys! Not great but ok. I’m being very careful with them and only taking a few. They all have been healthy and no eye or cecal worms or seen so far! The ragweed made seed this year and bird crawls are crammed with it at evening time. And all this despite only 6 1/2” rain during the entire year—about a quarter of average!
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