doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Foot Pounds of Recoil in 16ga Loads

I have all of my books packed. Would someone help me out on a few 16 ga upland/waterfowl loads to determine which I believe is called foot pounds of recoil. It's a modern SXS shotgun with steel shot proofed barrels.

Using a 6lb 8oz shotgun. If shot size is required figure 6 shot.

1 1/4 oz @ 1260fps @ 10,000psi = foot pound?

1 1/16oz @ 1315fps @ 9,600psi=foot pound?

1 oz @ 1250fps @ 8,900psi=foot pound?

Go here and plug your numbers into this little calculator thingy. You'll have to come up with a number for wad weight and powder charge weight. Pressure means nothing, AFA recoil goes. Works good.

http://omahamarian.org/trap/shotshellenergy.html

SRH

Foot pounds of recoil is not near as important as recoil velocity. For instance if you have a 6 lb gun & a 9 lb gun recoiling at the same velocity the 9 pounder will have 50% more foot pounds, but will not affect you 50% worse.
If on the other hand you increase the recoil velocity of that 6 lb gun to give equal foot pounds as the 9 pounder it will kick the Snot out of you. If you take the total weight of everything that goes out of the barrel, multiply it by the velocity & then divide by the weight of the gun this will give you its "Approximate" recoil velocity. The reason it is approximate is that once the wads clear the muzzle the expanding gases escape at a higher velocity thus that portion is not identical to the shot & wads. The suggestion has been made to use 1.25 times the powder charge for an even closer approximation, thus if you were loading a 20 gr charge enter 25 instead. Keep in mind all weights "Must" use the same units. Matters not if you convert to grains, ounces or pounds, so long as all are the same.

I don't understand the usefullness of this information. I know that a 1.25 oz load in a 6lb 8oz 16 (or 12) is going to kick, a lot. A one oz. load not so much. I prefer 7/8 oz.

1 1/4 oz load: 29.5 ft/lbs, 15.4 ft/sec velocity
1 1/16 oz load: 21.2 ft/lbs, 13.0 ft/sec
1 oz load: Can't find any listed quite that fast. 1200 fps would be 16.1 ft/lbs, 11.4 ft/sec.

All of the above in an 8# gun.

I can tell you from experience that those 1 1/4 oz 16ga mags in a light gun will get your attention.

One very good reference is Shotshells & Ballistics by John Taylor. There are exhaustive listings of loads by gauge, shot type, shell length, charge, velocity and recoil energy. Real good run down on commercial loads from which you could probably extrapolate info you seek.

Jager, that's the source I used for the above numbers. Very handy indeed. Every now and then, you'll spot an error in the numbers: several loads the same in terms of shot charge and velocity, different recoil, different velocity at various distances, something like that. But it must've been one heck of a chore to proofread that book!

But it must've been one heck of a chore to proofread that book! [/quote]

LOL Larry. I use to be into pretty serious center fire rifle reloading, lots of numbers. Outside of helping my neighbor de prime 12&20ga AA's to run through his 2 automated Hydra~Mecs I have never loaded shotgun shells.

Thanks for the advice. I know the 1 1/4's will be stout! Those will be regulated for cold weather with winter clothing and for jump shooting ducks!