Description
The Lyalvale cartridges contain an average of 102 pellets which, interestingly, is closer to the number of #6 shot that one would expect from the original 3/8oz (c. 10½g) loading from 100+ years ago when the 2″-chambered .410 was first standardized.
The cartridges contain a short plastic obturator which covers the powder underneath a short fibre wad. They are crimped with a rolled turnover and thin card. The case is a standard 2″ parallel tube plastic case, supplied in red with Lyalvale branding printed in black. A single pellet was found to be deformed in the cartridges examined and the size of the shot was broadly consistent.
Recoil
The 2″ cartridge offered no perceptible recoil although of course, physics dictates that there must have been some! A T-shirt and jacket were enough to negate any noticeable effect of firing.
Performance
Performance from the diminutive shell was both absolutely and relatively poor. The single pattern produced to date showed 77 pellet impacts in the 30″ circle at 20 yards, for a percentage performance of 75%. This is unusually poor: we would have expected 95-100% of the original load to impact within the circle at that distance, which suggests that the rolled turnover card may have interfered with the behaviour of the shot column. The obturator and wad were embedded in the cardboard when the pattern was retrieved and examined – they had been crushed together to about ½ of their original depth, but appeared broadly to have behaved as they should.