Sorry to hear of the failure of your ball shooting. I think Alan is getting good accuracy with his 12 double with RB's. He's using a fairly thick felt wad with a hole in the middle to centre the ball.

Did you try the slightly undersized balls as I did?

The Lyman waisted slug comes in WW at about 506gr., 520gr. in pure lead and in the .680" range, but fits inside a regular field plastic wad. Guys are claiming exceptional accuracy with them.

When I can afford it, I'll buy another 12 bore - maybe a Baikal from tradexcanada.com for chopping and sighting for a camp gun.

Lt.James Forsyth (The Sporting Rifle and it's Projectiles) says if the barrels diverge or converge, to sight for the best barrel and learn where to hold for the other one for the second shot.

Do your barrels merely shoot apart, or do they both put down lousy groups?

The first load I found both barrels to shoot to the sights with, was 5 1/2 drams 2F. This ran around 1,400fps. The 7 dram load also shot well, but in a 7 1/2 pound gun, kind of spun me a bit and also cracked the wrist. After repair and pinning, it held fine, but those big loads sure kicked. I ended up with a smokeless load that also shot well and kicked about 1/2 - I've said 1/3 the recoil in other posts - it feels much nicer to the shoulder is the point. I was easily able to get 1,550fps with smokeless, same as the very heavy BP load.

The main reason I favour the RB's is the ability to shoot hardened lead. You can bust both shoulders of a moose with one and barely mark the ball at all. They also don't deviate from their path, straight-line penetration is most important - Of course, I haven't shot any moose with RB's from a smoothbores here, that's illegal - from a rifle, I have - that's different and they are GREAT! I suspect the game branch feels the rifle, with any charge is more powerful than a smoothbore shooting the same projectile at much increased speeds. What I mean, is you can hunt with a 14 or 12 bore rifle here, with RB and use a pipsqueak load running 300fps, yeah - 300fps and that's OK, but the same ball running 1,550fps isn't powerful enough.

Oh well. I suspect the Lyman Mould with WW balls will penetrate likewise. If they are too soft, merley sit them in an oven at 400F for abotu 2 hours, then quench them in a bucket of tap water. 12 hours later, they'll be double in brinel hardness or more but remain ductile and not shatter on hard stuff like bones.