doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Powders for 2 1/2 loads

What powders do you guys use for your 2 1/2 inch loads? Anyone use fiberwads instead of plastic wads?

Green dot

Alliant Extra Light for 12 gauge and

Alliant 20/28 for 20 gauge

with plastic wads.

12ga light target loads, 700x, hunting loads PB(stocked up when I saw it was going to disappear). 16ga target loads get Green dot and hunting loads Longshot.

Reloading for 2 1/2" 16 gauge I use Universal Clays, partly because it was what I had on hand and I have a lot of it*. I tried fiber wads with a roll crimp, but between a lot of unburnt powder and an inability to get the muzzle velocity to at least 1150 fps for skeet I ended up switching to plastic wads. Even with the plastic wad and roll crimp I still get a little bit of unburnt powder.


*I bought the Universal Clays primarily for reloading handgun ammo, that I am able to use it for 16 gauge loads is just luck on my part.

I've had success with green dot with 2" shells with plastic over the powder wad/no shot cup. I've been working on fiber loads but haven't been happy as yet. I have made a die that will produce a cupped nitro card wad similar to the old Winchester nitro cup wad. Once I have some ballistic tested I'll let you know what seems to work.

Thank you guys! Any data on using smokeless in Brass hulls?

I had several 2.5-inch 20 gauge loads pressure tested by Precision Reloading. The two powders I used were Alliant Longshot and Winchester WSF. The one I liked best, because of low pressures and reasonably moderate velocities, was the following:
New primed Cheddite hull, 18 grains Longshot, BPI brush wad (no shot cup), 7/8 oz lead shot, roll crimp.
Test result for this load (6 shot string) was: avg pressure 7128, avg velocity 1222.
The other loads using WSF and one with 19 grains Longshot and various wads gave higher pressures and velocities than I wanted with a vintage gun.
I loaded up a batch of the above recipe except that I reduced the powder to 17 grains. They gave nice even patterns with #8 shot at 20 and 30 yds out of my Army Navy, and will be my load for woodcock and (hopefully a few wild) quail this coming season.

My LC Smith 12 gauge has 2.75-inch chambers so I can use my MEC single stage press to re-load 2.75-inch Remington and Win AA hulls. I have been loading Alliant Extra-Lite 14.8 grains, Claybuster 0175 wads, 3/4 oz shot, fold crimp. I haven't had this load tested since it is listed on Alliant's website (almost exactly). It is very low-recoiling and breaks clays great. If I needed 2.5-inch 12 gauge shells I would use this recipe with a brush wad, and roll crimp them.

While not 2.5" but 2", I've used Int'l and a combination of a BP gas seal and fiber wads pushing 7/8 oz. I couldn't get consistent velocity with nitro cards and fiber wads in the 2" hulls. For 2.5" 12 and 16 with plastic wads, I like American Select. Gil

The comments regarding overpowder cards and felt wads are interesting regarding inconsistent/lowish velocity with questionable velocity(?). Any other thoughts about why this should be, other than the remarks already made which advocate either a plastic or cup card over powder?