My Trapdoor Loads, Technique and Equipment

[Larry Gibson]

"Oh and Larry, did you ever just try shooting a 410 2 1/2” shell in your trapdoor?"

Thought about it as I know it's been done for a long time but I haven't. I developed the load simply to duplicate (not to be confused with "replicate") a "foraging load similar to the original foraging loads. To shoot 410 shotshells in a TD would be, to me anyway, would be sort of sacrilegious.....

[smkummer]

So by all means, this was a success. Original 1884 with rod bayonet made in 1891. Lyman 457124 dropping at .460 unsized. Cast with soft stick on wheel weights and enough tin from 60/40 solder to give at least a 1/20 tin/ lead alloy. Air dropped. Lyman’s acc. load (45 th edition) of the starting load of 10 grains unique. The above load averaged about 985 FPS. With the peep at the lowest setting it shot this group a bit high at 100 yards. Perfect as our normal range will be 200 yards and it should be spot on for “clanking” steel at that range. There is just something about the bang “pause” and clang at that range. The tin really does help the mold fill out and makes beautiful bullets. Oh and the starting load is very soft on the shoulder as well. Unique is now getting hard to find and expensive if one does.