It’s always entertaining visiting RFDs when the object is to find new and interesting cartridges for testing. Dusty boxes are pulled out from under counters; shelves neither noticed or touched by human hands in a decade are suddenly the center of attention. Even in spite of what must be a golden opportunity to offload old odds and ends that have been languishing awkwardly in stock rooms for what seems like forever, the staff can never quite conceal their surprise that someone has walked into the shop asking specifically for the things that they thought nobody in their right mind would ever use…
The other source of entertainment is that, since one is not buying necessarily untouched goods, there’s always a chance that one will discover something interesting and unexpected.
I ventured forth this morning, with the intention of making good on the telephone call I’d exchanged with the RFD yesterday. He’d informed me that, yes, they did have some 9mm Flobert ammunition in stock and that it was loaded with #10 shot. I went over to buy a box and to have a look at their range of .410 cartridges and managed to come home with three boxes of cartridges – containing four different brands!
For .410, I managed to get a box each of the Fiocchi “GFL36” 11g/#6 (Italian) and Lyalvale “Supreme Game” 14g/#6 cartridges. For the garden gun, a box of what I thought were Fiocchi “Flobert” 7g/#10 but which turned out to be, fairly obviously, a mix of RWS “Flobert” 7g/#10 and Fiocchi “Flobert” 7g/#7½ (Italian), given the stamps on the heads and cards. So, not what I expected, but nonetheless a new shot size to test in the garden gun. Here they are:
Three new, previously-untested loadings for pattern testing by the SmallBoreShotguns team: the .410 Fiocchi “GFL36” 11g/#6 (Italian) loading on the left; the 9mm Fiocchi “Flobert” 7g/#7½ (Italian) loading (with a handful of RWS “Flobert” 7g/#10 in the box for good measure!); the Lyalvale Express “Supreme Game” in 14g/#6 flavour on the right.
I may be able to get out this afternoon for a few minutes to test some of them, but failing that, Monday evening looks like a good moment for another pattern testing trip.
One of the downsides of being a “cartridge anorak” (and there are many, I can assure you) is that one spends so much time patterning, testing, analyzing and understanding that, when it comes down to it, it’s very easy to forget how to actually shoot. There are of course those of my acquaintance who would say that I’ve never given any impression of knowing how to do that anyway and I’ll be the first to agree – I never have been and never will be a great shot.
I do make the occasional great shot of course. The crow I knocked down at around 9am this morning on my walk around was a very, very long way out – far enough that I shouldn’t have attempted it – and would have been a nice start to the day, if only I hadn’t missed a handful of “sitters” within the ten minutes following. It’s quite a struggle to get underneath wood pigeons at the moment (they’re not short of places to feed), so most of those were crows – and really should have been dead crows.
A lot of the time I’m too tired to see the birds before they’re out of easy range and much of the rest of the time I seem to be hesitant. Out of a motivation to stop shooting distant birds, I now appear to have the worst of both worlds: I still shoot at distant birds, albeit less than I used to (and so take home fewer birds), but the time I now spend thinking about whether any given bird is too far out is often the moment I ought to be swinging the gun and firing at it before it becomes so.
Perhaps I’m going soft in my old age.
I ignored a another pair of inquisitive hares today, as I have done the last three times I’ve been out. They seem – the leverets particularly – to be quite unafraid of humans and will approach almost to within touching distance if one remains still. I suspect it’s poor eyesight – they bolt as soon as I make any noise – but it wouldn’t have been difficult to come home with a bagful on any of the last few visits to that farm.
I have heard it suggested that our landowner wants their numbers reduced a little – unfortunately, to deter the coursers who bring their dogs to chase them – but until I’m given word “officially” I’ll be leaving them alone. I still have a couple in the freezer and it’s game pie for dinner on Monday – perhaps I’ll go and dig one out.
All that aside, I felt very rusty this morning.
Pattern Testing
I did manage to do a series of patterns for the Eley “Extralong” #6 cartridge as planned. I also shot a handful for an experimental 16 gauge load (see below).
The Eley cartridge was – as the Eley cartridges have tended to be – better than most of the other makes, but only middling-to-good in comparitive performance. Hard #7 or #7½ shot still seems to be the better option in a .410, though perhaps my vehemence on the subject of larger shot has reduced a little by now – I can imagine why someone might choose to use either of the 3″ #6 Eley cartridges, though I personally wouldn’t choose them over some of the others I’ve tested.
The 16 gauge patterning was an experiment to determine whether 28g / #5 would perform well enough to replace the usual 28g / #6 cartridge I load for that gun. The motivation was simple: I would only have to buy #5 shot for reloading if it worked, which halves the minimum outlay on shot and allows me to buy less, more often. The trouble is, although the cartridge performed broadly adequately, I’m not convinced.
My 16 gauge gun is a Baikal with tight ½ and Full chokes and has always shot the #6 version of the recipe I use very well. I expect 80%+ patterns from the full choke barrel if I’ve loaded them correctly.
The 40-yard patterns shot with the #5 version were adequate, if a little below what I’d usually expect giving 119, 137 and 142 of (avg.) 203 pellets in the standard circle for 59%, 67% and 70% performance respectively. These patterns will all kill birds but they are much less performant than the original loading. This is perhaps due to the use of new, 67mm cases, rather than the 70mm cases I employed originally, which necessitated an adjustment to the shot column and reduced the crimp depth. Re-patterning the #6 load would perhaps be a sensible precaution in light of this performance reduction.
40-yard pattern shot through the full choke of the Baikal 16 gauge using a 28g / #5 reload.
Whilst the original #6 loading produced a usable 50-yard pattern of between 130 and 150 pellets, the #5 loading doesn’t begin to approach this, putting an average of 85 pellets in the circle at that distance. This suggests that it would be wise to continue to purchase and use #6 shot.
50-yard pattern shot through the full choke of the Baikal 16 gauge using a 28g / #5 reload.
I had intended to spend this week testing and writing up the report for the Eley “Extralong” #6 cartridge (the supersonic version) but unfortunately, I was taken ill on Tuesday evening and am only now starting to recover, hence the title of this post.
I plan to go out to the fields early tomorrow morning – hopefully before the wind picks up – in the hope of getting the required testing completed.
The other task I had hoped to complete this week, but for which the time requires continues to elude me, is writing up the many notes, anecdotes and other information I’ve been able to collect regarding the garden gun and 9mm bore shotguns in general. I’ll aim to get that done in the next week or so, but other projects are stacking up and even if I hadn’t been under the weather, I think I’d be struggling to keep on top of everything.
One Year On
As we approach September, we head towards this website’s first birthday. I’m not sure if we’re even officially “open for business” yet, but we have made a lot of progress and we have done a lot of – what will hopefully prove to be useful to others – pattern testing.
Having, in the past, worked hard to reduce my stocks of cartridges to a single brand per gun, I’m afraid that things are going the other way again. Even if I don’t intend to actually use most of the odds and ends left over from the patterning I’ve already done with the Yildiz .410 in the field, I’m holding onto them in case anyone ever asks us to do further testing (for instance, with chokes or ranges we haven’t yet attempted).
So, this morning, when I finally admitted to myself that my cartridge shelf was operating well over capacity, I found a box and packed them all away, but not without taking this photograph, representing our first year’s efforts:
A “cartridge mountain”, including most of the .410 (and 9mm) cartridges tested by the SmallBoreShotguns team in our first year of existence.
I think that’s a pretty respectable mountain of shells!
I started the morning early and went out to the farm where I usually do my patterning to find the landowner in his jeep and his workers in combines and tractors all over the place, which would have made shooting patterns there a potentially dangerous disturbance. I drove on.
The next farm was already cut and vacant, but there were enough children playing at the nearby recreation ground that I though it would be unfair to disturb them. I drove on a second time.
At the third farm, I found a car I thought I recognized and could just make out the shape of a hide on the opposite boundary. I believe one of the other members of my shooting association may have been attempting to decoy pigeons, but after a few minutes observation, nothing appeared to be moving and given that I was half a mile away, I set up the pattern plate and shot five patterns as quickly as I could.
Less Is More
As I said I would previously, I loaded some more of the 34g/#5 cartridge I intend to use with the Baikal 12 gauge I bought a few months ago, albeit, with the powder charge reduced by approximately 1.5 grains.
Three 40-yard patterns shot with the full choke barrel gave an average of 172 of 246 pellets (maximum: 179) in the standard circle which is an average pattern density of 70%. This is satisfactory and gives an on-paper maximum range of somewhere around 51-52 yards. In practice, I suspect it wouldn’t be hard to push that to around 60 yards with good shooting, as previous “field testing” has shown.
The two half-choke patterns shot today averaged 160 of 246 pellets in the standard circle at 40 yards, which is an average pattern density of approximately 65%. This is also adequate for a “near” barrel and should give a maximum usable range of around 47 yards on paper.
Overall, these figures represent a 5-10% improvement in pattern or around 7-8 yards of extra effective range, simply by lowering the muzzle velocity of the cartridge. If I sound like a stuck record on this subject at the moment, that’s only because it works – every time.
40-yard pattern shot through the full choke of the Baikal 12 gauge using a 34g / #5 reload.
I don’t shoot a 12 gauge much these days, so this loading will now “do”. I daresay it’s as good as any commercial manufacturer would want one of their cartridges to be.
I further suspect that the “ideal” constriction for this particular recipe is probably somewhere between the 0.017″ and 0.041″ of the half and full choke barrels respectively. I believe the closely matched performance from both tubes probably represents “going over the hill” in performance terms and that the full-choke patterns are borderline blown.
New Acquisitions
After finishing those patterns, I drove north to meet a friend and he and I went to visit the RFD from whom the aforementioned Baikal was bought. We went with various purposes in mind, but mine was mainly to look at a pair of 9mm rimfire guns which were available for very reasonable asking prices. In the end, I bought a “Modern Arms” bolt action gun, which will now become the SmallBoreShotguns test gun for 9mm Flobert ammunition.
A 9mm Flobert single-barrelled bolt action shotgun belonging to the Hedgewalker.
It’s a reasonably old shotgun – I’d guess 70-80 years old given the condition – and labelled “No. 3 Garden Gun” as one would expect for an old English 9mm. The proof marks date from no later than 1954. Unusually, however, it has rather a long barrel – 28½”, which is at least 4″ longer than most other examples. Ballistically, I’m sure that length of barrel doesn’t help, but at least there’s no question of it being Section 1. Confusingly, what appears to be a marking of 0.41″ appears on one side of the chamber, but it’s definitely a 9mm!
I found the gun was covered in grease, oil and some quantity of rust when I brought it home and examined it. It has cleaned up pretty well, although I killed my .410 copper brush by using it to hammer – literally – the crap out of the bore. I’m going to try to get a more appropriate brush to give it a gentler but more even clean when I go to the shop to buy some ammunition for it. It’ll benefit from another good scrub when it’s had its first firing, but that will only take it so far.
In fact, I’m inclined to do the initial testing required for the relevant section of SBS and then to deconstruct it, thoroughly clean, de-grease and polish it, then re-blue the metalwork. There is some surface rust on the action and very little of the original blueing is left. On that basis, stripping it down and refinishing it would extend its life, give me some experience doing that particular job but – most importantly – be no great loss if it all goes tits up and I break it. I don’t expect to be doing any hunting with it, given the handful cartridges I have for it contain #10(!) shot.
We shall see.
Hedgewalker’s New Name
It wasn’t just the 9mm that came home with me, however. I also managed to acquire a single-barreled Accacio folding 20 gauge. This gun will have no particular purpose at all, except that it provides a safe chamber and tube in which I can fire and test 20 gauge cartridges and that it “completes the set”.
A 20 gauge folding Accacio shotgun belonging to the Hedgewalker.
Of course, I don’t have any guns in the really big bores – 10 gauge, 8 gauge, 4 gauge, etc. I do now have an example of every common gauge from 12 gauge to 9mm rimfire, however, which means that, with the exception of precisely two brands of 10-gauge cartridges, I can now potentially fire and test any cartridge commercially-available in the UK.
For reasons entirely related to an occasional need for silliness, I therefore henceforth adopt the pseudonym “Multitube”, in recognition of this (rather fatuous) achievement!
More important than the invention of new epithets, this should mean that, when the SmallBoreShotguns team conceive of experiments to conduct to investigate this or that feature of shotgun shooting, there is at least one option available for firing the cartridges.
Again, I have no particular intention of hunting with the gun, though the handful of cartridges kindly provided by my friend containing 24g/#6½ do fit neatly into the gap between 21g/#7 (28 gauge) and 28g/#6 (16 gauge) and make me curious as to the efficacy of such cartridges on – for example – wood pigeons.
Test Firing
I did return to the farm I usually use to do pattern testing on my way home, in the hope of test-firing the guns. Unfortunately the harvesting continued in earnest and it was still unsafe to shoot, but I’ll try to get out one evening this week to try the guns out and create some initial patterns.
Aside
For those of you who have followed this blog since its inception, I need to mention two words: Carolina Reaper. I’m not growing any of that variety of chilli this year, but I did manage to obtain some peppers to taste this week.
In short, they are similar to the Naga peppers I like very much and they do have the traditional Habañero flavour, but they’re a lot less refined. The heat is intense but the flavour does not persist along with it in the way that it does with the Nagas – particularly when they’re cooked. Adding raw pepper “sprinkes” to the first dish gave a much better result than throwing them in with the other vegetables in the wok for the second. The latter approach essentially removed the “perfume” and left only base pepper flavour and capsaicin.
In short, I’m pleased to have tried the Reapers – they are still the hottest pepper in the world, I believe – but after you get to this level of heat, there’s really nothing between them in terms of “hotness” so it has to be all about how they taste as they melt your soft tissues into goo. The Naga has the better flavour, in my opinion – and anyway – what’s a million Scoville units between friends?
I thought I’d take the opportunity of a relatively “reponsibility free” week to get out to the fields again this evening and test the modified 12 gauge reload that I’m working on for use in my Baikal.
Unfortunately, it was not to be. Pouring rain and no sign of blue cloud anywhere made me abandon the outing before it started and instead, I came home with the intention of writing up this morning’s purchase – a box of Eley “Extralong” 18g / #6 – leaving only a single Eley cartridge (the same shell in a #5) left until that manufacturer’s range is completely tested.
The contents of the Eley “Extralong” 18g / #6 cartridge.
The testing of the 12 gauge reload will have to wait for another day.
Making Plans
I’ve arranged to travel, with a friend, to see a mutual acquaintance on Sunday lunchtime. This acquaintance, from whom I obtained the aforementioned Baikal, tells me that he’s in possession of two or three guns I really ought to have a look at and that prices in the £20-70 range are asked.
It may be the case that I return home with both 9mm rimfire and 20 gauge folding shotguns on Sunday evening – though the examples presented would have to be exceptional for me to buy both and risk the wrath of the resident accountant.
I require a 9mm for testing for this site and probably for a very small-scale pest control job likely to come up in a month or so, where even a lightly loaded .410 is likely to be too much gun. I will of course, keep readers informed on all points, but the short of it is a family member, a large number of rabbits and the need for projectiles lethal at 10 yards but essentially harmless at 25-30, which strongly suggests the use of a garden gun rather than an air rifle.
Time of Day
In collecting the new Eley cartridges today, I managed to have a 10 minute conversation with the two senior staff members at my local RFD. They seemed pleased to pass the time – I’m a “regular” – although less impressed with my comments on the performance of .410 cartridges.
Ignoring the fact that I was very likely correct on all points (they probably claimed the very same to each other after I left – the only difference being that I have the evidence to back it up), they did promise to try to obtain some of the Hull “High Pheasant” 19g / #6 cartridges which they seemed to think would sell well and give me the opportunity to buy a box for testing. I shall endeavour to do so at the earliest opportunity.
They also kindly knocked a pound off the price of the cartridges I bought, so I can’t have irritated them that much…
