Friday, October 20, 2017

Speedloaders

One of the complaints about muzzle loaders is the time to reload. In practice I've recorded myself getting off a shot every minute while loading "from the pouch". In reality I had the powder flask in my back pocket, the roundball in one shirt pocket and patches in another but you get the idea. For the shotgun its harder. Shooters of yore carried a shot pouch not entirely unlike my powder flask. I'm not at that level yet so I cast around for a way to carry pre-measured shot and powder and ended up buying some speed loaders.



I forgot to take a picture of them so the Amazon link will have to do. While these are geared for rifle shooting I thought they'd work out for the shotgun too and for the most part they do. The reason I got the Thompson Center brand is because I could cut the tubes down to fit my load. I'm shooting 1 1/4 oz of shot and an equal volume (about 3 drams) of powder. This is a heavy load for my 16ga but patterns well and should work on most any birds I'm likely to encounter.

The TC speedloaders will hold about 2 charges but theres no good way to keep the charges separate so I could cut the tube down to hold just one load.

Instead I decided to get creative:



In the foreground my shot dipper, behind it my speed loaders. There 10ml "regent containers", or in common English, little plastic bottles. I like that they have screw on lids which keeps everything contained. I like that they're see-through so. can see whats in them and I like that the plastic takes Sharpie marker like a champ. The ones with the black top are powder, the S marks shot. They are a bit more than twice the size they need to be, 5ml would be perfect but they're less than half the cost total that the speed loaders would be EACH.


Ben wants to go duck hunting tomorrow so currently I've got all 10 bottles loaded with bismuth #4 shot from Rotometals. I'll let you know how it works out.



Again if you follow the links and buy from Amazon it'll help me out by sending a little cash my way but please don't feel like you have to...

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