Home Forums Reloading Shotshells Basic math please.

I've very familiar with rifle hand loads,

crash course on shotshells please, asking for a friend, (seriously)

He grabbed 2, 25 lb bags of shot, 8 lb jug of powder, not sure of type powder,

So he has 56000 grains of powder, and 50 lbs of shot,

Roughly speaking how many shells we talking here?

12ga, trap loads, 2 3/4 inch shells. 8.5 shot.

Primers will be the issue, he has 2k.

About 2240 shot shells. ASSUMING 1 1/8oz target loads at about 1250 fps, and about 25 grns of powder.

Which one is the limiting component? I don't get that high of a number. Maybe I messed up my math, but 50lbs of shot is 800oz. If there is 1.125 oz per shell I get just over 711 shells can be loaded.

56,000 grains of powder can load 2,240 shells, but the last 1,500 will be blanks.

7/8 oz of shot is approx 18 boxes, 1 oz of shot is 17 boxes. 1 1/8 is 16 boxes. From the 16 yard line 1 oz of shot
is more than enough payload to break birds...and much less recoil.

Shot is limiting.

There are 800 oz in two 25# bags. That's how doc got to 17 boxes for the one oz payload.

Assuming a 20 gr powder charge of, say, Green Dot you'd get 2800 loads from an 8# jug. If you had Clays or Red Dot, and used a 17.5 gr charge, you'd get 3200 loads.

So your buddy will need another 5-6 bags of shot. Plus another 800-1200 primers, of course.

Is there a Hodgdon powder called Hi skor 700 X?
The pic is blurry but thats what I'm seeing.

Looks like about 18 grains per,
So powder for about 3k.

Thanks guys.

1oz loads... 16 loads per lb... 400 per 25lb... 1lb of powder at 18gr will be 388 loads per lb.

Right now he can load 800 rounds of 1oz... or 32 boxes.

Kent

Correct...for what-ever darned reason I thought he was asking just about powder..

Yes, there is..

700X is what we loaded hundreds of thousands of rounds with. Love it.

For recreational or league skeet, trap, or sporting clays, 7/8 oz of shot will do just fine and get you another 2 boxes of shells per bag. I've mostly used this load for my 12 ga for over 25 years. I'll go to 1 oz when using 7.5 shot to keep pellet count up to my minimum. With the price of shot being the most expensive component (primers don't count as the are unobtainable) saving a bit here adds up.

Most bagged #8 measures between US #8 and #8.5 anyway. For 16 yd trap and average NSCA stuff (not talking FITASC or PSCA) it works on most presentations under 40 yds. Keep a few #7.5s for rabbits beyond 25 yds, or if quartering.

And 7/8 oz will handle the above, and with less recoil. Far as I can tell ATA is a game of recoil-attrition.