Shot in a rifle

[Pancho]

I've never tried this. What would be the expected result of shooting shot from a rifled barrel. I'd expect increased lead fouling......maybe. But what would one expect of the shot pattern as compared to a like load in a cylinder bore smooth bore.

[72coupe]

Pancho I have not tried it in a rifle. I have loaded shot in my 58 Remington though and at short range it works quite well.

I suspect in a rifle though due to the centrificale forces created by the rifling you would get a doughnut shaped group.

[Old Grump]

Yep, at 30 yards out of my 50 caliber a perfect little donut with a big hole in the middle. It would have been a clean miss if I had been shooting at anything I wanted shot unless it was really unlucky.

[Omnivore]

Same experience here from a pistol-- more spread due to the rotation of the shot load, creating a doughnut shaped pattern. Not very useful. The size of the doghnut will be determined in part by the rifling twist rate, and probably by the depth of the rifling. Therefore your mileage will vary. Try it with some different shot loads and see what happens.

I wanted to try trap shooting with a pistol, but decided that if it's going to work I should get another barrel for the Colt revolver and ream out the rifling. Or get a smooth bore gun.

Then there is the Taurus Judge revolver, designed to take 45 Colt cartridges and .410 shot shells with its rifled bore. There's also a "survival" type single shot long gun out there, the name of which escapes me but I've held one in a gun store) also rifled and also designed to take .45 cartridges and shot shells. Seems it works OK in some situations, so again; try it.

[Lanius]

Yep, at 30 yards out of my 50 caliber a perfect little donut with a big hole in the middle

So, is it a little donut, or a big donut? What size it is, approximately? A little donut cannot have a large hole in it, I believe.

[Pancho]

Actually this whole train of thought started because I've got a Taurus Judge and my experience with 000 shot at 20 feet showed the buck tending to freight train. At 30 feet the pattern was still about pie plate size. I'm going to have to try some #4 or #6 and see what it does. Of course I'm prepared to find that shooting any kind of shot from a 3" revolver will not relate at all to a rifled long gun.

[StrawHat]

I suspect the outcome would be determined by the twist of the rifling. A barrel cut for a heavy slug (fast twist) would spin the shot quite a bit while a round ball twist would be gentler. An express twist (something like 1 turn in 100 inches) might work as might a straight twist like the German used at one point.

[Old Grump]

So, is it a little donut, or a big donut? What size it is, approximately? A little donut cannot have a large hole in it, I believe.

Magic I tell you, it's pure magic.

Rim of the donut was just a few inches thick, the hole a good 20" across. The shot was spread unevenly around the rim of the donut, I'm sure there were quite a few flyers that never made it to the cardboard. The 9"x11" paper with the turkey target had one pellet in the upper left hand corner of the target. I kept the target and is what I meant the target would have been pretty unlucky to get hit. the single pellet was a good 3" from the head. A live turkey would have taken a few pellets to the outer edge and wings if my shot was centered and at that angle most would have probably glanced off his feathers. It would not have been a killing shot.

#6 shot and 50 grains of FFg. Maybe another combination would have worked better but that single shot made me think it was better to stay with my 20 gauge.

[Lanius]

Oh, 20" across.. that's useless. I thought it was, you know, donut sized
Well, why do we bother with rifling anyway? For hunting, I've seen some pretty good groups from unrifled barrels with slugs. I hear good ones can do 6 MOA.. isn't good enough for hunting?

[junkman_01]

I hear good ones can do 6 MOA.. isn't good enough for hunting?

Maybe for ELEPHANTS! Close up!

[Old Grump]

Well, why do we bother with rifling anyway?

Same rifle shooting round ball I get 4" - 6" at 100 yards, good enough for a deer in my neck of the woods. My smooth bore and rifled bore shotguns get 4" at 100 yards so they are all good but slugs are a lot different from round ball. I'd say the rifling has earned its place in my rack.

My rifled 20 gauge shotgun is almost as bad as my rifled BP gun so common sense says it was an interesting experiment but not a working load past about 30'. I think the only reason the shotgun did better was because of the shot cup.

[OldDirtyCracker]

I thought about getting a .54 pistol and using a half dozen .31 balls. Eventually came to feel if I had one I'd rather use a giant maxie. I did read somewhere about the Judge making donuts with #6.

[Sunray]

Shot out of any rifled barrel flies in a spiral sending the shot who knows where.

[Varmiter]

Shooting shot out of a rifled barrel will always scatter considerably more that out of a smooth bore shotgun.

A friend bought a Judge, and the pattern of shot was terrible. Then he tried the Winchester 410 SD rounds that contained 5 round balls. Can’t remember the diameter. Scattered terribly again.

The way I solved this problem is to fire form 444 Marlin brass to 410. Then 15grs Herco under a 410 wad with four .360 dia balls. Going down the barrel the balls are lined up, and since they are centered in the bore there is very little scatter. At 25 feet the pattern is about 2 ½ inches out of a rifled barrel.

Chris

[Lanius]

There's no Taurus Judge version with a smooth barrel?

[Varmiter]

Nope. That would be illegal.

[72coupe]

The twist rate of the Judge series is very slow. It is not capable of stabilizing the 45 Colt beyond a few feet.

It has just enough twist to be a legal shotgun pistol.

[Pancho]

Taurus has a new version of the Judge that has a rifle barrel, I wonder what the twist is. The gun is featured on the cover and an article in the NRA's club magazine.

[junkman_01]

Lanius

There's no Taurus Judge version with a smooth barrel?

Varmiter

Nope. That would be illegal.

NOT illegal, but regulated under NFA Title II law as an 'Any other weapon'

"Any other weapon: Any weapon or device capable of being concealed on the person from which a shot can be discharged through the energy of an explosive, a pistol or revolver having a barrel with a smooth bore designed or
redesigned to fire a fixed shotgun shell"

[Varmiter]

Well, technically you are correct.

Short barreled shotguns (SBSs) - this category is defined similarly to SBRs, but the length limit for the barrel is 18" instead of 16", and the barrel must be a smoothbore. The minimum overall length limit remains 26".

Anything outside the min dims here will require the $200.00 stamp/permit. And another little goodie, once you have weapon requiring the stamp/permit, you have actually given ATF an open invitation into your home to check out not only where the weapon is, but what use it’s being put to, if any.

[junkman_01]

Not to nit pick, but the 26 inch total length doesn't apply to 'Any Other Weapons'. That is what a cartridge handgun with a smooth bore barrel would be.

[BobGrand]

I have a Lasserre Comanche 45/410. It does a terrible job with the 45lc and with 410 slugs. It comes with a "choke" attachment for shooting shot loads. The choke has very aggressive straight rifling that is designed to stop the spin of the shot as it leaves the barrel. It actually does a pretty decent job. When I tested it I first shot with the attachment for the 45lc. That is simply there to protect the external threads on the end of the barrel. As has been mentioned above, the result is a donut shaped shot pattern that does indeed leave your target as very unlucky if it gets hit. When the choke is installed the pattern does a fairly good job of patterning the shot. I used this pistol for a couple years when I took the end of my right hand middle finger off and required a couple surgeries and recovery periods right in the middle of bunny season. Wouldn't want to miss all the fun

[sanglant]

double layered lubricated teflon shot cup, so the outside bit can spin and the center stay pretty much not spun?

edit: and yeah i know no shot cups in traditional muzzle loading SGs, but there's no rifling either.

[Jim Watson]

In France it is popular to hunt woodcock in brushy wetlands with clear ranges measured in feet rather than yards. Shotgun barrels with slow twist rifling to scatter the shot at short distances are popular. If you don't want to pay for it or be limited in other shooting, they also load shotshells with cubical or flattened shot for wide patterns.

I am quite nearsighted and if I had lived in the flintlock era, a Kentucky rifle would have been wasted on me. A nice light fusil or fowling piece would have been a lot more useful.

[Pancho]

I shot an encyclopedia with my Judge 3" shells loaded with 3/0.
This is not presented as a definitive test but at 15ft. the pellets freightrained all piled up on the back cover. It would be my guess that that 1 1/2" wet book put up a lot more resistance than a block of ballistics gell.