Hodgdon HS-6

[aviator]

Gentlemen and ladies: Recently I found a recipie for reloading #4 buckshot into Winchester AA hulls. I made a special purchase of the wads needed and then proceeded to search for the powder required, Hodgdon HS-6. Not realizing that this is a popular powder for handguns as well as shotshell reloading, I was a little surprized at not being able to find the powder at the normal places. I will be using the shotshells for home defense rounds and plan on loading about a hundred shells, requiring about a half a pound of powder. If anyone knows where I can find what I need please advise. I would be happy to buy a whole pound or whatever I can get. Thank you. Regards, Hank.

[Seismic Sam]

Uhhh, you plan on using handloaded shotshells for home defense rounds?? If THSHTF, THIS is the ammo you want to bet your life on, and that of your family?????

I actually don't know very much about shotshell reloading, but I'm sure there are a variety of things that affect the performance of a shotshell, and what happens if you miss one of them or flat out don't know about a particularly obscure one than can affect the pressure or velocity or spread of the load??

Does somebody else who IS a shotshell reloading guru want to jump in here??

[Sigfan220]

Shotshell reloading isn't rocket science. So what if the velocity or spread is off, it's a SHOTGUN.

I just wouldn't do it due to the liability of using it for defense. I can see the newspaper headlines now...

My permit to carry instructor strongly recommends using factory loads for defense. I AM NOT quoting a MN state law if anyone is asking. Just the opinion of my instructor, based on his reasoning I would agree.

[aviator]

SS: Thank you for your response and concern. Yes, I do plan on using reloads for home defense. While I do not claim to be the master of reloading, I have been reloading shotshells for over 25 years. I would certainly be open to any inputs anyone has, always ready to learn etc. Please advise what your concerns are? Reliability? I don't remember having a misfire with a shotshell. Failure to perform? This particular load is one I found from Hodgdson's website and am following it to a "t" if I can get the powder. It will have more than 3 1/2 times the lead of the average handgun round with an equivilant velocity so I don't think performance should be a major concern. One of the concerns I do have is recoil. Factory ammo, 3" mag, OO buckshot has way more recoil than is tolerable in one of the shotguns in which I intend to load for. My daughter won't be able to use it with the factory ammo currently available.

Sigfan: You are most correct. Reloading shotshells is not rocket science but I regard it with the same degree of caution I apply when loading handgun or rifle rounds. As an instructor for Personal Protection in Minnesota, I have heard of the liablity concern over and over again. I would be most grateful if someone could provide me with a reference where this has in fact ever come up as an issue in a legal environment, of any sort. When it comes to ammunition for personal protection purposes, I will place my faith in my handloads before I will with factory ammo. I have indeed had failures of all sorts with factory ammunition and won't even consider using it any longer for hunting big game. I have found I can get better results with handloads.

Once again, thank you gentlemen and ladies for your thoughts. The inputs are most welcome, especially the ones regarding powder procurement.

[Seismic Sam]

SS: Thank you for your response and concern. Yes, I do plan on using reloads for home defense. While I do not claim to be the master of reloading, I have been reloading shotshells for over 25 years. I would certainly be open to any inputs anyone has, always ready to learn etc. Please advise what your concerns are? Reliability? I don't remember having a misfire with a shotshell. Failure to perform? This particular load is one I found from Hodgdson's website and am following it to a "t" if I can get the powder. It will have more than 3 1/2 times the lead of the average handgun round with an equivilant velocity so I don't think performance should be a major concern. One of the concerns I do have is recoil. Factory ammo, 3" mag, OO buckshot has way more recoil than is tolerable in one of the shotguns in which I intend to load for. My daughter won't be able to use it with the factory ammo currently available.

Sigfan: You are most correct. Reloading shotshells is not rocket science but I regard it with the same degree of caution I apply when loading handgun or rifle rounds. As an instructor for Personal Protection in Minnesota, I have heard of the liablity concern over and over again. I would be most grateful if someone could provide me with a reference where this has in fact ever come up as an issue in a legal environment, of any sort. When it comes to ammunition for personal protection purposes, I will place my faith in my handloads before I will with factory ammo. I have indeed had failures of all sorts with factory ammunition and won't even consider using it any longer for hunting big game. I have found I can get better results with handloads.

Once again, thank you gentlemen and ladies for your thoughts. The inputs are most welcome, especially the ones regarding powder procurement.

Thank you for your courteous response, aviator, and the comments I made were with NO knowledge of how much experience you had, and obviously in here we get a lot of posts from people who have no idea what they are doing, so one can only assume the worst case and NOT be a Pollyana and assume that everything is okay and nothing bad will come of this. If you've been reloading shotshells for 25 years, you know how to do it, and while I knew it wasn't rocket science, I did NOT know enough to make that assumption based on decades of experience.

There has been this hypothetical bugaboo running around since this we all were still on Joel's website over using handloaded ammo for self defense, and yet to date no one has been able to bring forward a single case where this has ever come up. And I will confess that my carry ammo for my 50GI is handloaded, but there are a variety of mitigating circumstances. My carry ammo is made with the same dies Alex Zimmerman uses (probably on a Dillon 1050), using the same cases, same bullet, and the same amount of the same powder, crimp, and OAL. Even provided the fact somehow became known that this wasn't factory ammo (and who would want to bring that up to begin with??), someone would be VERY hard pressed to prove it wasn't. As far as the argument of making the round more deadly, I would like to point out that this is a BIG, EFFEN "ultimate evil" 50 caliber handgun, so that argument is about as groundless as you can get.

So good luck with your loads, and about the only thing I would do if you haven't already, and I suspect you may have, is to check if the pellets make it through two layers of sheetrock so you will know if it can get into the next room of your house or not.

[crbutler]

HS6 and Win 540 are about the same thing (I was told by a Hodgdon rep that they are the same...) so if you can't find one, the other will work.

Its my understanding that they were talking about discontinuing HS6, but I did not hear that "officially." I did see some at Ahlman's in Morristown this spring, but have not looked for it since then. It might be worth giving them a call- its not terribly popular, so while its hard to find, it may be because people didn't have much stock to start with.

Having said that, reloading buckshot is quite different than loading even big birdshot. Like you, I have done a lot of shotgun reloading, and load pretty much all my shotshells and hunting ammo, mainly because I can make what I want. I did reload some buckshot for 3 gun shooting for a while. The crimps are difficult to get right and getting wad pressure consistent can be difficult. I did reduced recoil buckshot, and it was pretty inconsistent, with some low velocities. (the low velocities did not mean that the shell didn't fire, but rather it did cause issues with point of impact.) I was using Hogdon's data as well. Buffering helps the patterns (make sure you have the load that is right for that), but they just don't seem to pattern as well as the factory loads that the company can use their specialty wadding and vary the shell basewad height to insure it all works correctly.

While making a load that is not available is a good reason to load for yourself, with buckshot, and home defense, you are better off with using factory loads. Get the law enforcement reduced recoil 2.75" rounds and they will work just fine for the recoil challenged members of the household. There is no need to use 3" mag buckshot, and remember that every shot you fire, you "own" all those pellets. I tried some 3" factory buck, and it does not pattern at all well compared to 2.75" so that is not a good thing either. If you were talking hunting it would not be a different answer. You just don't use enough buckshot ammo to make the time and aggravation pay off, and at least in my experience, its just not worthwhile.

[aviator]

Gentlemen: I am most grateful for all your responses and will put some of your thoughts to use. SS: No worries. Interestingly, this is the second time in two weeks I've heard the comment about two sheets of sheet rock. Must be the latest thing and I'm out of the loop. I plan on following the powder manufacturers direction closely. I think there may be less latitude with shotshells for reducing powder charges. With pistol and rifle it seems that there is a fairly wide range within which to achieve a given objective. I can only assume that with shotshells there is a concern with too light a powder charge causing stuck wads (an occurance I've been witness to with factory shotshell ammo) and also enough recoil to operate semi auto shotgun actions sucessfully.

crbutler: Hodgdon's website states that HS-6 and Winchester 540 are identical and that the Winchester 540 has been discontinued. This is useful information as I may be able to expand my search to include the Winchester 540, although I don't know how long it's been discontinued. I did check with Ahlman's to see what they had. Nothing. Also, thank you for the heads up on the Law Enforcement reduced recoil shotshells. I will check into that as well. Now of course the curiosity bug has me firmly and I will continue my mission to handload some defensive shotshells and compare pattern and recoil to factory ammo when I find a powder. One last comment and that is I did not find any provision for utilizing a buffering compound in the load I intend to produce. It seems the recipie doesn't call for it and the buckshot manual I have been using doesn't seem to feel it is necessary for #4 buckshot especially with a 6% antimony content in it.

Regards, Hank

[oldhunter]

Why not use Universal as Hodgdons lists the same components for both powders. Universal will be easier to find.

[crbutler]

Hank,

There are various recipes out there for buckshot and some do have buffering recommended. All the premium buck loads that I brought had buffering, and that was with high antimony copper plated shot. In my experience, high antimony shot, copper plating and buffering are all additive for patterning, but using high grade components will not make a poor patterning gun and load combination work well.

Look at Ballistic products or precision reloading for data on buffered buck loads. Waaaay back when, we would use #4 lead buck and 10 gauge guns for goose shooting near Laq que Parle. Buffered loads did seem to improve the kill rate, but those were very stiff loads. Full choke did not help at all for buck loads...

You do have the right mindset in trying it out, but I would be very wary of #4 buck in a reduced load setting as far as terminal effectiveness. I know a guy who has a gun stock from a police shooting where the #4 buck did not penetrate the stock, and those were full house loads. If you are going to try reduced recoil #4, try shooting something at the expected distance to insure penetration. The LE OO buck loads do not have the full charge loads penetration ( a friend used LE OO buck on a Georgia deer hunt and did not report any satisfaction with the killing power on deer... went back to Federal premium.)

[aviator]

Old Hunter: Astute observation. Yes you can get Universal all most anywhere. I had considered that and will certainly use that as a fallback option. The only thing keeping me from doing it out of hand is that the breech pressure utilizing Universal is 10,400 psi as opposed to the 9000 psi when using HS-6 with equivilent velocities. Would anyone have any thoughts as to whether the increased breech pressures using Universal vs. HS-6 would result in an equivilent increase in recoil?

cr: It may be that for the short term I may not be able to run any comparison tests. LEO low recoil buckshot is not available at this time. Big surprize, right? I had not considered the inertial value of 00 buck vs. #4 buckshot. Great point. I wil initiate SS's recomendation with layers of sheet rock to see what results. Sounds like fun, blowing holes in sheetrock anyway. I will look again to see if the buffering agent can be used somehow. If there is no negative aspect to using it such as increased breech pressures, I am certainly open to trying it and seeing if it enhances patterning.

You guys are great bringing up all these issues to consider. I am very interested in trying out your ideas when I get some powder. I have everything else I need I think.

[crbutler]

Pressure in and of itself will not have much to do with recoil. Mass and velocity of the ejecta and mass of the firearm are the force components, but stock fit will play a major role in perceived recoil.

Don't put buffer in a load unless it specifically says to. It will raise pressure.

A faster powder will seem to have less recoil because there is less of it being used. Look at your reloading data and pick one. If you can find a load using the same powder you use for light target loads, that should work well, and you will have it on hand.

[SIGP240]

HS-6 easy to find. I have a new one pound bottle. I went back to bullseye and unique. This one is for sale

[aviator]

Ha! Easy for you to say. I'll PM you.