[ Y-Man, our resident Nigerian shotgunner, continues his series of guest articles about his quest to build the perfect shotgun. Being one of the lucky few in Africa to legally own a gun, he has to fabricate many parts and ammunition himself because supplies of gun parts are so limited. You can read Part 6 here. ]

Hi y’all, long time no see, as we say here! I have been regaling you with stories of my adventures with my shotgun, and my stock, sight, and ammunition improvisations. This is another update, I hope you enjoy it.

I got really frustrated with the slug designs I had been working on and using because accuracy degenerated terribly. I think I finally know why the accuracy of my original slugs, and all the different versions I came up with too over the last few months, went downhill.

The authors now-broken Turkish EFE Magnum Semi-Auto Shotgun

I cast those slugs at about .660”. They were Foster style slugs, slotted into the shotcups and they worked reasonably well: groups of 2″ at 35-40 yards.

I fired them out of my Turkish EFE Magnum Semi-Auto Shotgun. Good shotgun, but it had substandard parts. Sadly, within a year, the firing pin broke. I discovered the shotgun was a discontinued model and manufactured by a small company in Turkey so ordering the replacement was out. I thought of repairing but the restrictions we have here stopped me from trying to locally fix it. So I dumped it.

But I was able to use part of the barrel to improvise a “Bore-size” Slug mould.

Then I got my Mossberg 500A, it cost almost $3,000 (Three thousand dollars!)

I started firing my slugs out of that and noticed accuracy going downhill! I was using the “Bore-size” Slug mould from the Turkish gun’s barrel.

I recently got some brass balls of exactly .729″. I did some experimenting, and discovered that while the balls would slide easily (Loosely) down the bore of the Mossberg, when I tried sliding the same ball down the barrel of the Turkish shotgun: it would not go in at all.

Obviously that Turkish gun was choked, while the Mossberg is straight cylinder (No choke). No wonder I was getting the kind of accuracy I was getting from the Turkish gun.
I got really frustrated with the lack of accuracy on the slugs, I went through so many designs without luck or success, so I did some more research, and decided to go the round ball route (basically with smooth round ball slugs to fire out of smoothbore shotguns). Round balls are known to be reliable and consistent out to 50 yards. I did a LOT of research.

Firstly, I improvised a round ball mould, by drilling out 2 half-spheres in steel pieces, then aligning them.

1.Y-man’s Locally fabricated Round Ball Mould

It worked, but produced a rough ball, which I then needed to file down to shape. (more…)