Muzzle loading shotgun?

[Front Room Woodlander]

I have owned and used shotguns for some years.
I have had a long time fancy to reload my own cartridge, just for fun, and will no doubt eventually acquire the various items required.
In the meantime I wondered about using a muzzleloading shotgun. I have locked at flint lock designs but not really pratical for my rough shooting and I dont do enough clays (though would still be welcome in my collection). So was thinking of a percussion cap style.
I would welcome any advice, shared experiences regarding the legal bits (I have had conflicting advice even from the police) and to makes and models.
Many thanks

 

[IanM]

They are great fun, slow to shoot but beware black powder smoke is addictive. Once you have bought one you will soon be buying another then another.

Gun goes on a SGC. You need an explosives certificate, free from your local police station, ask for a 'COER1' form and a RCA document to transport it, free from HSE, you just send them a copy of your explosives certificate and the RCA comes back by return post. No inspections or tests for either, just red tape that really does not apply to muzzle loaders but we are caught up in the mechanism. You will need a locked box made of wood to store the powder in, plenty of plans on the internet and simple to make yourself. Easy to load and shoot. Have fun.

Look up MLAGB (Muzzle Loaders of Great Britain) all you need to know.

 

[Corfe]

I used muzzle-loading percussion cap rifles in the States (Enfields and Springfields). Made my own cartridges and had a blast (sometimes literally) It puts a real sense of craft into shooting. I would say go for it. I had mates who used to go hunting with them.

 

[slowworm]

Can you use black powder substitutes such as Pyrodex to start with? That way you don't need to jump through the hoops to get black powder and get a storage box etc.

 

[Front Room Woodlander]

Modern powders are much more efficient than black powder. One would therefore have to use much less or run the very real risk of producing gas pressures to great for the barrel to contain.
Hence my enquiries about muzzle loading shotguns. I am hoping there is some one who will share the benefit of their knowledge and experience of these matters.

 

[santaman2000]

Modern powders are much more efficient than black powder. One would therefore have to use much less or run the very real risk of producing gas pressures to great for the barrel to contain.
Hence my enquiries about muzzle loading shotguns. I am hoping there is some one who will share the benefit of their knowledge and experience of these matters.

Not sure about the other subs but as for pyrodex RS (rifle and shotgun powder) it's used on an equal basis as blackpowder when measuring by volume. It was deliberately developed for this one for one sub. I don't know any reason the other subs would have developed theirs differently but in any case they will have instructions on the labels or other enclosed literature.

 

[IanM]

Forget the Pyrodex, next you will be having a plastic stock on your shotgun. The hoops are small and easy to jump through and there is nothing like doing it right.

Pyrodex is so artificial it hardly seems worthwhile bothering, might as well use cartridges.

A working smokepole, ramrod perhaps, a pocket of powder, an old cartridge case cut down to your load maybe, a pocket of shot, some caps and off you go.

You can get more sophisticated with flasks and shot socks, wads, overshot cards and things but they just add to the fun and let you monge around antique shops on wet days poking into corners.

 

[lavrentyuk]

We have two Enfield Percussion cap muzzle loaders in the house, Son No 2 and myself.

Stick with the gunpowder for the smell alone.

The various bits you need to carry the kit is available from Civil War sutlers - some lovely leather pouches. We make up powder quantities in folded paper in advance.

 

[mrostov]

A lot of the old trade muskets on the American frontier did double duty as shotguns. A modern reproduction should work just as well.

One of the reasons the Native tribes here during the muzzleloading era preferred muskets to rifles was that they used their muskets as shotguns so often, usually using river gravel as shot. Any rifle they had tended to quickly lose it's rifling due to this practice. A lot of the old trade muskets had bores roughly equivalent to a modern 20 gauge or 28 gauge shotgun. The Native tribes would often hunt from very close so it was common for them to have a gunsmith at a trading post chop the barrel down to about 14 inches.

This was the type of firearm a large number of the poorer settlers used during the westward expansion right after the US Civil War, since one of these could be bought very cheaply as war surplus. At the onset of the war, the US government cleaned out all of the warehouses in Europe of old smoothbore muskets. Most of these were put into storage during the war as rifled weapons came into plentiful supply. After the war there were tons of them the government deemed obsolete and wanted to simply get rid of so they were sold off in large numbers for dirt cheap. Many prairie chickens (grouse), cottontail rabbits, and other game were harvested with one of these.

A reproduction muzzleloading double barrel will often cost you more but there is a demand for them from Civil War reinactors. The muzzleloading double barrel shotgun was a very popular calvary weapon during that war, especially with the South. They are also popular with some of the 'buckskin' crowd as a lot of the mountain men of the fur trade era also kept a double barrel shotgun handy as their go-to weapon, especially when on horseback.

 

[Front Room Woodlander]

Such a rich fund of information. Thank you all. Please keep responding.
I have spotted a nice double barrel 12g muzzle loading shotgun that I think will fit the bill but still want to know more about the how tos, whys and wherefores.