Home Forums Reloading Shotshells 410 shells?

Why are 410 shells so expensive? I know they are more difficult to load and I know they don't do the quanities they do of 20 and 12. I can buy 12 or 20 in top gun or gun club loads for $8.50/25 and 410 shells are $22/25. There's a lot more shot and powder in a 12 gauge load.

I've heard 410 cases are harder to make and I know they can be harder to load with shot bridging etc but the cost still seems like a bit of gouging. I used to pay $5 for 12 gauge trap loads and 410 3" were usually about $8. It seems like some money could be made on 410 ammo and I occasionally see some import stuff but what's keeping someone from starting to load and sell a bunch.

You can even buy empty hulls to load anywhere and its been that way for a few years. Seems like someone could get some Chinese plant to make them a bunch of hulls to sell to reloaders. People are getting them to make scopes the should be able to make some plastic hulls.

The new keltec ksg in 410 has me thinking.

Bb

12 ga is about 80% of the market, 410 is under 2%, maybe well under. Just the economy of scale to divide costs per shell between the two is an enormous difference. Add in that there is no separate line devoted to making each gauge so one would have to shut down a line for a high demand item to make a low volume item and then switch back. That is fairly expensive to do - I don't know the current cost but in 2006 switching just the bullet type in say a 30/06 from a 150 gr Nosler Partition to a Plain Jane 150 gr cup and core ran $17,000. $17,000 for every change adds up which is one reason there are often shortages of items in less demand.

Before fall squirrel season. I loaded up 35 boxes of them. 3 inch with 5'and 6's. I squirrel crow and qauil hunt with one.

I bought a MEC .410 loader and never looked back. I can Load 2.5" AA hulls for ~3.00 a box. The only issue I have is 3/4 oz wads for 3 inch shells are impossible to find as they sell a 5/8 oz wad that is short.
Rich

Most 3" factory loads employ a 1/2 oz wad. That has alot to do with the pattern inefficiency of 11/16 and 3/4 oz .410 shells.. I've done alot of .410 patterning. By the time most 3" shell payloads reach just 10 yds there's only about 9/16 worth of Pb pellets in the useable pattern. It gets worse from there.

That is why I load mostly 2.5" hulls. I get a good pattern from them.

How does it do with dropping shot? Does the shot bridge? I've heard anything bigger than 9s can cause problems in the 410 loaders. I'd like to be able to drop as big as #6s. If that's possible I'll get another mec. I have 2 sizemasters, one in 20 and one in 12 and a die set for 28. I love my sizemaster but fir a 310 I'd probably just get a 600 Jr because the 410 sizemaster doesn't have a primer feed anyways.

I'm thinking about buying a ksg in 410 because I think my kids would love it. My 10 year old daughter is tiny weighing in at about 58 pounds. I think she'd love a 410 ksg and it could be her and my wifes home defense gun.

Bb

Have a 9000. Even with #9s I make a habit of rapping the frame couple times after shot drop before fully lifting the handle for shell rotation. Used up to/including #8s. This hesitation also helps get a full powder drop (296).

Found polishing the inside of the drop tube helped, as did scoring the bottom of the drop tube lip.

Even so, think you'll be hard pressed to get trouble-free drops with US #6. Not saying don't try, but you'll have to go slow and be patient. Don't imagine you'd load #6 in high volume.

I load #6 , 7.5 , 8 and shot bridging happens sometimes . I went with the plastic drop tube and that seemed to help lessen it. Slowly sliding the charge bar to drop shot seems to help.
I have the MEC 600 Jr. so its easy to make sure since you load 1 at a time.

Burley boy,

If one does the "tricks" described, you find #6 shot will bridge frequently, 7.5 will bridge less often, #8 will on occasion, and #9 rarely when using a single stage loader. This is due to SAAMI tolerances being +/- one shot size for a given size. As mentioned, slowly moving the bar back and forth with a single stage will lessen this tendency to bridge but not eliminate it.

Ya know, I just gave up on trying to get 5's and 6's to work in my Mec. A 1/2oz of 5's actually works quite well for tree top squirrels without worrying about where the bullet will land.

I made a dipper from a 50 AE brass case, and soldered a small nail to the side. Slow, but effective.

I missed answering this somehow.

Back when lead was legal for waterfowl, I learned to make shot wrappers from overhead projector sheets as part of making tight patterning loads. The last couple decades I've used the plastic sheets used for letter covers. One cut them into thin strips that would run from the bottom of the shotcup to the beginning of the crimp and just long enough to have a slight overlap in the cup. As an aside, the tightest patterning loads used just the over powder/gas sealing portion of the wad followed by fiber wads to adjust stack height and the shot wrapper, no plastic wad. This provided good gas sealing, better cushioning to prevent setback and the wrapper material was sufficient to alleviate bore scrub and did a very good job of containing the buffer. Those shells were time consuming and a pain to load and I'm glad I no longer chase that wisp of smoke.

When the 3" wads for the 410 were discontinued, I switched to making wrappers to add to the shorter wads. I haven't made any wrappers in years as I found a couple bags of 3" wads for the 410 which makes reloading so much simpler.

Hard to load, translates to loss in the loading process. The long skinny 410 tends to have a fair number of collapsed hulls during the crimping process. Each shell collapse takes time to clear, then the 410 shot shell must be broken down if you want to save the components after a wall collapse.
You can load 28s all day long without a single problem, not so much with a 410.