The UK's Finest Independent Forum for Shooters and Gun Owners. Est 2010.

Now I know barrel length and rifle twist affects fullbore ammo but does barrel length affect shotgun cartridge performance and would it be beneficial to Taylor powder type & load depending on barrel length as we just seem to use the same type of cartridges with whatever barrel length we have, I mean my Benneli M2 has a 24" barrel and over and under has a 32"?

I wonder if our American cousins use different cartridges in some of their home defence/tactical shotguns, how short a barrel can they have over there anyway?

Just got me thinking after seeing some forensic program where a couple of people had been shot with a sawn off shotgun and they survived due to the poor performance of the cartridge in the short barrel and had they been shot at same distance with a full length barrel they would have been killed. So I wonder if there is an optimum barrel length for the standard cartridges available to us.

For normal sporting shotguns barrel length has little effect on performance - the extra-long barrels that became popular with black-powder loads are completely unnecessary (from a ballistics point of view). Really short, less than 14.5 inch barrels, do sacrifice some velocity, however once the all-burnt point is reached, extra barrel length really doesn't assist with velocity. Your 32 inch barrel won't be giving you any ballistic advantage over your 24 inch barrel. They do have an effect on handling, but that's not what you asked.

As for US laws, I believe that it is illegal for a private citizen to possess a sawed-off shotgun (a shotgun with a barrel length shorter than 18 inches (46 cm) or an overall length shorter than 26 inches (66 cm)), without registration from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, requiring a background check and payment of a $200 federal transfer tax. This is coincidentally the same cost to register a machine gun or a silencer.

As above, both a 24" and 32" barrel would've achieved a complete of all the powder in any UK legal cartridge. IIRC the yanks (possibly the FBI) did some testing in the 80's and found that almost all cartridges burned they're powder in 16" of barrel, with some of the silly power bear hunting loads taking 18-20".

Long barrels can help with swing though for clays and recoil reduction

Ok thanks guys, just got me thinking as I reload cartridges for Buck & Slug and whether I should start developing loads for shorter barrels but it doesn't appear to be necessary.

Edited as I appear to have offended someone.

Primer wrote:where a couple of people had been shot with a sawn off shotgun and they survived due to the poor performance of the cartridge in the short barrel and had they been shot at same distance with a full length barrel they would have been killed. ........such as in the Raol Moat case when he shot the police officer in the face and although the officer was blinded the pellets didn't have sufficient energy to penetrate his skull and inflict fatal wounds.

wtfwtf

Way to go and help promote our sport fella. I can't believe you ask such questions...i'm tempted to to direct you to your own tag line !

TJC wrote:
Way to go and help promote our sport fella. I can't believe you ask such questions...i'm tempted to to direct you to your own tag line !

It's nothing to do with our sport, so I'm promoting nothing just trying to get a handle on cartridge performance compared to barrel length which has now been explained to me, the forensics program I was watching was on criminal usage of illegal guns and nothing to do with legally held guns that we use for sport.

Primer wrote:

TJC wrote:
Way to go and help promote our sport fella. I can't believe you ask such questions...i'm tempted to to direct you to your own tag line !

It's nothing to do with our sport, .

Exactly and to a casual observer (read media) it will appear a lot worse than you intended. Either that, or there is some weird stuff going on in your head.

The effect of full energy of the burn not being released in short barrels has been covered above. The second point is that the pellets have not got themselves lined up to exit in a tight string and will be all over the place so the spread can be enormous.