doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Old reloading data for the 410

Hello gentlemen:

The other day I was looking at the No.39 Lyman Ideal Handbook (copyright 1953) and find, in the shotgun section, a handload for the 410 caliber consisted of 1/2 oz of shot and 7 grains of HERCULES RED DOT.
Also there is a similar recipe with 5/8 oz. of shot and 6 grains of RED DOT!!!
I will be happy if I can use this data today, because I could reload 1,000 .410 shotshells with a lb of powder!
Why this 60 years old data was completly valid (published in a respetable handbook) then but not today?

What do you think?

Best regards,

The data might still be valid for paper shells and cardboard and fiber wads, which was all that was available back then. I have also seen old data for 700x in 28 ga., but you won't find it in modern manuals. I suspect that a lot of the old data wasn't tested for pressure.

Red Dot is way too fast for .410, even in small quantities. What were the pressure and velocity figures for these loads?

I just checked again the old handbook.
The shotshell loading recipes are on page 130.
Charges for 10, 12, 16, 20, 24, 28, 32 and "410 Gauge or 36 calibre" (sic).
For the column it only says: "Powders for loading Skeet, Trap and Light Hunting Loads" and, besides Hercules Red Dot, there are DuPont MX, B-P Super-M and Acapnia.
There are no presure or velocity listed.

No pressure listed is a big issue in adopting old load data. Further aggravated by not having the exact same components of the 1950's.

I like old references but am wary of applying the data without some validation of it applicability.

I believe I have a Lyman's 1st. laying around somewhere ...if that would help??

D.

Consider that capacities of tubes (a shotgun bore is a tube) are proportionate to the squares of their diameters.
"IF" you would be willing to touch off 22 grains of RedDot under 1 5/8oz shot or 19 grains under 2oz of shot in a 12 gauge, by all means have at it. Those are comparable loads to those .410 loads cited.

About 20 years ago, I loaded a case full of light 12gauge 800X loads in the DuPont loading guide. Nasty. Poppers and squibs in cold weather. Called Remington - they said "Oops - our bad - shouldn't have been in the book"

I would think high pressure would show signs on the hull and head before reaching dangerous levels in a .410. Sticky hulls, etc.. Also, keep in mind that a typical .410 firearm is structurally capable of much higher pressures than a typical larger bore, especially a 12ga firearm.

For example, a typical 12ga 1040 steel barrel with .035 wall can handle 6500 psi at that location, which is approximately halfway down the length where pressures should be very low. A .410 barrel of the same steel with .035 wall can withstand 10,900 psi or 167% of the 12ga. The chamber area benefits similarly from the smaller diameter. But that doesn't consider that many .410 barrels have dramatically thicker chamber walls compared to a 12ga., often having wall thicknesses adequate suitable for metallic cartridge use.

Why not just load up a few (3-5) and send them off to Tom Armbrust for testing? Then you will know what the effects of using modern components will be.