doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com spreader loads through somewhat open chokes

nca225 if you are going roll your own spreader loads try different wads and velocities to adjust your pattern. My Fox and Lefever 16 gauge guns really respond well to Spread-R discs loaded in Cheddite hulls with Cheddite wads at 1170 - 1220 fps with 1 ounce of shot. IC opens to cylinder, Modified opens to IC and Full opens to light modified. Of course your results may differ. To get more spread remove the petals from the one piece wads. I have also tried to substitute Nitro Cards and fiber cushion wads for the plastic one piece wad but I have gotten some pretty patchy patterns beyond about 20 yards even from Full Choke guns.

They were Polywad Doublewide spreaders. I should add that Polywad replaced the case very promptly and let me keep the remainder of the first case to shoot through tighter chokes. I load my own spreaders now, using their inserts, but always add a bit of shot on top.

I shoot an Improved Cyl(.012) in Sporting Clays and use a Fiocchi spreader for some of the close ones. It at least doubles my patterns and breaks clays well out to 20 yds .

I have not tried to clip the petals on my PC Post wads with enhanced post, but assume it would further open the pattern. If I can find some post wads, I will give it a test.

Depends on the spreader shell you choose, as well as the individual gun in question. Using a Polywad factory spreader load, I got very good results through the tight IC barrel (likely close to your skeet II or LM) of an Ithaca Classic Doubles 20ga. Eventually decided to have all the choke taken out of the R barrel of a Sauer 20ga. The spreader pattern through the ICD's IC choke was not quite as open as true cylinder, but pretty close. For me, because I live in grouse and woodcock country and have the opportunity to hunt them quite frequently, it just made more sense to modify a gun so I could shoot regular loads through it, saving the trouble of reloading spreaders (or the expense of buying them). Since I had that done, I've also discovered that a cylinder bore throwing 3/4 oz of 8 1/2's at skeet birds also works very well.

I use a BPI X-Stream, plastic X insert, in the WS-2 barrel of a 12 ga. M-21.

That's choked .015, and is way too tight for the second shot at skeet.

I load 1 oz of 9's with a 1 1/8 oz wad and just push the X wad in the shot. I've been told to put the wad in first and then add shot over it, but I'm not taking all day to load a box of shells. I use a Grabber.

It works fine. Incomers at 1,2,6 & 7 think it's a skeet choke.

One thing I quit doing is removing the petals on 20ga wads to make spreaders with the X-wad. The barrels leaded so bad, I was afraid of causing a lead obstruction with the sheets of lead the shells left on the barrel walls. No more of that.

+1 on do not remove the petals from plastic wads, as SJ says, the leading is horrible and hard to get out.
On another note I tried to remove plastic build-up with carburetter cleaner and it worked very well indeed.
Just do it outside and wear safety glasses and gloves. That stuff is strong!
Mike

King's comment about fear of superwide dispersion suggests that maybe no one has used a big enuf bedsheet to really know if there are 10' wide dog-unfriendly "patterns". I've always heard that bore scrub and setback created the worst fliers (erratic shot paths) and I assumed this implied wide dispersion or at least departure from a populated pattern. You can count shot all day for other ends; in this case you prove nothing if you can't get a count total equal to the number of shot in the shell. I've clipped the connections between petals on some other wads but never removed petals. It seems to me that doing so only "opens" patterns by removing shot from the central core, that is, dispersion of the useful non-flier core is nearly the same diameter as that produced by a petaled wad but percentage in useful pattern is lower.

jack

The widest spread I've ever seen came from the disc shot loads that used to be available (from Orvis?) Pretty nice patterns, out to about 20 yards. After that, the pattern pretty much ceased to exist. I didn't have a 10 foot wide pattern sheet, but since most of the pellet strikes weren't on the sheet I did have, I assumed that they had to be somewhere else. On the other hand, given the aerodynamics of disc shot, I'm not sure how much danger they would pose very far out.

The best plastic wad cleaner I have ever seen is 75% kerosene or the new diesel and 25% acetone. It works wonders for me.