doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Reloading Manuals for low pressures

I need a good reloading manual for low pressure loads 2 1/2 shells etc. to use in my vintage 12ga. The manuals I have only list modern loads and the ones that do list loads for low pressure don`t offer very much. I`d like to find one that`ll give some good detail on the aspects of shotshell reloading. My knowledge for reloading shotshells is slim but i`ve been reloading rifle and pistol for a number of years so i`m not totally in the dark.

Burch

Ballistic Products has some low pressure/short shell manuals as well as their own wads/etc. the only downside is that they tend to only list loads using their own products.

I don't load 2.5" shells but do make low pressure shells using some of the info found in he Lyman #4 shotshell manual as well as off of the data from the powder company sites (Hodgden, IMR, etc).

I would use loads found in the "cowboy action" sections of most free, factory manuals. While the "conventional wisdom" is to never substitute components, you're dealing with low pressure to begin with, not borderline maximum loads. You'll have to use shorter wads of course, but I don't think loads in the pressure range you want will be drastically increased by a 1/4" shorter shell. JMO, as always.

I thought about cowboy loads but couldn`t find anything on 2 1/2" shells except for brass casings.

My Hodgdon Powder manual has quite a few 2 1/2" loads for their powder. I use some of those and some of ballistic products data with Fed hulls in 1 1/8 oz loads. I mostly roll crimp but can do it with star crimp on my PW loader with 2 1/2 shell holder.

I didn't mean you'd find 2-1/2" loads. I was suggesting using 2-3/4" load data in 2-1/2" cases.