DesmoDucRob
Member
Well... This has been written, and re-written, so hopefully I can contribute at least another variation to the pile. It's deer scouting time again in south Louisiana, and Mr. no-shoulders is out and about. I was poking around the reloading bench, and decided to try my hand at some shot shell loads to carry in my 442. The how-to's been discussed before, so I'll just throw in a few details of the project and then share the results. Hopefully I can contribute to some snake-charming success for a few others 
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I'm aware of the shot capsules that speer sells (probably the "proper" way to load shot for a revolver cartridge), but I tend to enjoy tinkering with projects, rather than taking the easy way out.
As others before me have explained, I used some basic tools, including a hand drill and some sheets of thin but dense cardboard. Although it's not the optimal choice, I salvaged some 7 1/2 shot from a few 12 gauge shells.
In the test loads I found the cardboard from an MRE box to be nearly perfect, with the exception of more thickness than what is necessary. I'm toying around with thinner cardboard that will allow me to include 100 grains of 7 1/2 shot rather than the 80 in these shells. This pic below shows the thinner cardboard from the back of a note pad. In these shells, I've loaded 3.5 grains of bullseye under 80 grains of 7 1/2 shot sandwiched between the cardboard wads sealed with wood glue. The wads were simply cut with a 38 spl case resized, deprimed and de-rimmed by chucking it in a drill and filing off the rim. The case mouth was over-chamfered and de-burred to make it sharp for cutting. Make sure to drill out the primer pocket for poking out the wads, and don't drill more than one wad at a time, if using MRE box. Those little suckers are nearly impossible to poke out if you've got more than one in there. When all was secured together, I smeared a dab of wood glue across the case mouth for good measure (even though it didn't seem to want to go anywhere after crimped).
Results to follow momentarily:
.I'm aware of the shot capsules that speer sells (probably the "proper" way to load shot for a revolver cartridge), but I tend to enjoy tinkering with projects, rather than taking the easy way out.
As others before me have explained, I used some basic tools, including a hand drill and some sheets of thin but dense cardboard. Although it's not the optimal choice, I salvaged some 7 1/2 shot from a few 12 gauge shells.
In the test loads I found the cardboard from an MRE box to be nearly perfect, with the exception of more thickness than what is necessary. I'm toying around with thinner cardboard that will allow me to include 100 grains of 7 1/2 shot rather than the 80 in these shells. This pic below shows the thinner cardboard from the back of a note pad. In these shells, I've loaded 3.5 grains of bullseye under 80 grains of 7 1/2 shot sandwiched between the cardboard wads sealed with wood glue. The wads were simply cut with a 38 spl case resized, deprimed and de-rimmed by chucking it in a drill and filing off the rim. The case mouth was over-chamfered and de-burred to make it sharp for cutting. Make sure to drill out the primer pocket for poking out the wads, and don't drill more than one wad at a time, if using MRE box. Those little suckers are nearly impossible to poke out if you've got more than one in there. When all was secured together, I smeared a dab of wood glue across the case mouth for good measure (even though it didn't seem to want to go anywhere after crimped).
Results to follow momentarily:
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