doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Dumb question. Cause of shot dispersion

What a fascinating set of ideas. Now this is only theory but it sounds logical to me.
Your column of shot is pushed out of the barrel by the wad. The leading pellets are pushed by the ones behind them. As the pellets are spheres there must be a 'snooker ball' effect with many of the second row of pellets pushing the ones in front out at a slight angle. The third row will in turn push the row in front outwards if they are slightly inside of them and so on. The pellets not towards the outside will probably have 3 pellets pushing it equally from behind so should carry on in a fairly straight line - which would explain central density and why for a given load 12 bores tend to pattern better than 20 or 28 bores.
No doubt factors such as air flow through the shot mass and deformed pellets will also have an effect. The pellets on the outside of the column will be hitting still air on the outside while the ones progressively nearer the centre will be in a moving column of air with equal forces all around its sides.
I did read somewhere that the elasticity of the binding agent of tungsten matrix shot caused it to 'spring' apart like compressed golf balls but not too sure how one would go about devising an experiment to test this theory. If it were true then must substances have some elasticity - lead less than most - it doesn't bounce much when dropped but even a tiny amount may have an effect.
Just a few thoughts with absolutely no proof!!
Blow them all out of the water if you like - I have a tough skin!!
John

Sounds good to me.

It's not that the following pellets are pushing, but the leading ones are being slowed by aero drag. Guess it's all relative, Einstein.

Here's an actual experiment they could do on that stupid space station instead of just going around in ellipses.

We could prove or disprove the 'vector' theory of choke effect.

Just have them take a double shotgun up there choked cylinder and full.

Roll down the window and blast at a pattern board.

The cylinder choked load will make one bore diameter hole, and the full one? I think it would do much the same thing because aero effects predominate, certainly the hole won't be very big. Don thinks otherwise.

Of course, the recoil will louse up their heretofore perfectly trimmed orbit, and they better get that window rolled up pretty quick lest all the vacuum rush in.

It feels really good to have not tainted myself by reading any of the posts to this thread. I can only imagine and I'd bet it ain't pretty.

Great idea SJ, maybe the Russians will go for it (with a Baikal)!

JC

Now why didn't I think of that experiment! what a great idea. Thought this might be of interest - you can actually see the shot from my punt gun - there does seem to be some 'stringing' quite early on in the flight time and no evidence of 'mushrooming' that could be expected from the central column of shot pushing the pellets in front outwards - but then who cares - just look at the result - pretty dead I would say??

Trying a new photo hosting as I can't seem to get photobucket to work any more - sorry if the images are a little small - probably doing something wrong - I was not born to this technology - only visiting it as a pensioner!!
John
Looks like if you click on the thumb nail image - almost like magic - a larger image will appear!!

Hey Wonko,

Since you admit that 'ignorance is bliss', at least as far as this thread goes, why would you 'imagine' anything and thus louse up your perfectly satisfactory state of mind?

When the choke is tightened the shot string is lengthened. Because of the lengthened shot string fewer shot will be forced outward by the the pressure of the expanding hot gas as it initially exits the muzzle.

Have any of you ever owned a BB gun? A BB gun is just a shotgun shooting one pellet very slowly. Amazingly it is accurate! Speed that shot up and you have a smooth bore Brown Bess musket, which is amazingly inaccurate. That is because SPEED makes the round shot diverge.

You can ponder group impact, shoving from the back of the shot column, elastic recoil, and air drag until you are old and grey. They still will not validate a theory for consistently opening a pattern from a shotgun. Those factors are minimal.

If drag or jostling were the primary factors in pattern formation, what greater opportunity could be presented than by shooting a very slow shot load. I had a friend who did exactly that many years ago. Back when you could provide your own shells at a turkey shoot, he showed up with a bag of shells so slow that he had to aim over the target to hit it. You could SEE the shot column in the air, and it literally ate up the targets. His shot column did not disperse because of drag. It stayed together, and almost every shot hit the target. After he won about six straight rounds, the local club barred his shells and thereafter made everyone shoot the same shells, which they provided.

To open patterns you need speed, speed, speed.

Less powder, more shot, goes far, kills a lot

Old English poem