doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com 12 ga Bismuth load with card and fiber wads

Anyone have a recipe? Want 1 1/4 oz load at normal velocities.

My only experience with bismuth shot and card/fiber wads has been in M/L shotguns. It works fine.
With cartridge guns, you should be able to take a plastic wad load and sub with a .125 nitro card on the powder and enough cushion wads to make a good crimp.
The card/fiber wad does not seal as well as a plastic wad so pressure will be a bit lower than the same load with the plastic wad.
I�ve done this with lead shot but not bismuth.

I've hesitated to respond because there's a Hodgdon lead recipe I've adapted to No. 4 bismuth---"finding out for myself"---and I don't want to get into the weight/volume conversion controversy. My opinion is pressure/velocity should be equal for bismuth and lead: same weight shot and powder and same primer, hull and wad.

All cautions offered, I've had good results with the Hodgdon 1 3/8 oz recipe from its 2003 manual of FGM hull, Rem 12H wad, 28.7gr Longshot, W209 wad, velocity 1185 and pressure 6900. (See above re adjustments.)

Another 2 3/4 12ga 1 1/4 No. 5 bismuth load is Rem-Pet hull, Windjammer wad, 17.5 700-x powder, Rem 209 hull, pressure 7600, velocity 1145. I use both in my dear old American classics, pleasure to shoot, no complaints.

Weight/volume cannot be simply & safely ignored. Greater volume = more bore contact, thus more friction, giving higher pressure. Admittedly not a great amount but present never-the-less. The initial pressures of the lead loads you mention are low enough that even though the Bismuth pressures are not necessarily identical, they are most likely Safe.

I am new to reloading have been given conflicting advice about fiber wads and nitro powders. When compressing the powder, should the fiber wad be compressed too, or only the powder and OP card, with just light pressure on the wad?

Thanks.

Agree completely with you, Millar: they should not be ignored. You are correct. I believe there is higher pressure from friction. There is greater risk but I felt acceptable under the circumstances. It's what resourceful country boys do every day around machinery, always determining acceptable risk.

I use pressure on the nitro card only.
The fiber wads are just seated lightly on the nitro card.

Here�s a post circa 2008 from Lagopus regarding fiber wads:

Re: Reloading with fiber wads [Re: AmarilloMike]
lagopus Offline
Sidelock
***

Registered: June, 22 2008
Posts: 2408
Loc: Derbyshire, England
I load with little else because a lot of clay grounds in England, and game shoots, insist on bio-degradeable wads. Most of my loading is with components easily sounced in the U.K. but I do have some information for Hercules/Alliant powders and CCI & Winchester primers. Most loads just require a slight powder increase with the use of fibre wads; usually 1 to 1 1/2 grains extra. If you use the same load and just substitute a card and fibre wad you will certainly be on the safe side. Try that then just increase the powder load by 1/2 grain increments but do not exceed 1 1/2 grains over standard. Lagopus.....

The entire post can be found here:

http://www.doublegunshop.com/forums/ubbt...229b3f069eaf438