Shotguns, What constitutes "Regular" rounds? Options

[Austere Emancipa...]

I'm a bit embarrased to say I'm not completely sure whether the shot generally stays completely inside the plastic wad while in the barrel or not. If it stays in the wad, there will be no damage to the barrel because the only thing it contacts with is the plastic wad. If the pellets touch the rifling, then obviously the barrel will have a whole lot of wear.

The shot pattern will be hopelessly wide in any case. As in, the kind of pattern you get with canon SR choke rules...

This post has been edited by Austere Emancipator: Oct 30 2004, 02:54 PM

[mmu1]

According to a site on shotgun patterns I've read, the wad separates from the shot slowly enough that it often still ends up pushed into the target along with the shot at 5-10 foot ranges.

[Austere Emancipa...]

Yeah, I got that much. I was wondering more about whether it's common for some pellets to be pushed out of the wad as it makes its way out of the barrel, so that there's a small cloud (or just a few pellets in case of larger shot) scraping the sides of the barrel. That could lead to ruined rifling.

Thinking more about it, it shouldn't happen. The wad is constantly accelerated as its moving in the barrel, so the pellets should be firmly inside the wad all the way out. So I'd expect there's no damage to the rifling from firing shot.

[Raygun]

Any kind of lead shot (buckshot included) won't do any significant harm to a shotgun barrel other than normal wear, even if it comes in direct contact with it (and it often does as the wad used is often just a plastic piston and a piece of compressed fiber cushion that sit between the powder charge and the shot column and does not encase the shot). The lead alloy used is much, much softer than barrel steel. The shot will deform long before any permanent damage is done.

Steel shot (or other steel projectiles, like flechettes) will damage a barrel if it repeatedly comes into direct contact with the barrel. The steel used if often hard enough to dig gouges out of the barrel steel (and yes, it does happen, especially in older shotguns). Also, being harder, steel won't compress through chokes like lead does, so there's a possibility of ruining chokes and barrels that way. As has been said, most steel shot loads are encased in a plastic cup or sabot that's designed to discard from the shot after the package leaves the barrel. It minimizes the risk of barrel damage.

Any kind of shot load fired through a rifled barrel is going to have an effect on the rifling, and will eventually round off the corners of the lands. Rifled barrels are not designed to fire shot loads at all. As Aus suggested, centrifugal force imparted by the barrel rifling will cause shot pattern density to suffer (not that that matters much in a room-to-room fight if that's what you're thinking about). Probably not to the extreme of SR's rules, but still not very good.

[Vagabond]

I can't remember my sources- but I do seem to recall reading that buckshot did something funky to the rifling of a barrell. Maybe I confused it with a type of buckshot. I'm too unmotivated to look it up. I was also told during shotgun training at the academy it's not a good idea, either, but damned if I can remember why they said right now...

As for the plastic staying on the wad... it's supposed to stay on until the round leaves the barrell.

[Austere Emancipa...]

[mfb]

maybe i'm missing something about how shotguns work, but wouldn't keeping the shot encased in anything render choke settings useless? i mean, if the shot isn't released from its configuration until after it leaves the barrel, the choke setting isn't going to be able to shape its spread pattern--it won't start spreading until after it's passed the choke.