How Shotguns Work

Shotguns first came into use in the early 1600s. The first two-barrel shotgun appeared in 1873,
and the first modern, hammerless, pump-action shotgun was produced in 1904. By the turn of the
century, they were immensely popular. Many military officers loved their personal shotguns so
much that they brought them along instead of sidearms to World War I, earning them the
nickname "trench guns." Since then, they have become a permanent part of the military arsenal
and a part of the everyday lives of many civilians as well.

Photo courtesy Shotgun W orld

Winchester 12-gauge Super X2

Why a shotgun instead of, say, a rifle? Well, to do its job, a projectile must:

· make contact with the target

· hit the target in a critical spot

With a wider stream of potentially deadly projectiles, a shotgun is like using a can of spray paint if
a rifle is like using a felt-tip pen. As long as the target is within its effective range, a shotgun will
give you a much better chance of making critical contact with one pull of the trigger.

The shotgun is the Swiss-army knife of guns. It is an indispensable tool -- on the farm, in combat
and on the hunt. They are just as useful in non-lethal situations, like for scaring away pests or for
opening locked doors in a police or military situation, as they are for big game hunting. In this
article, you'll find out how shotguns work, what different types are out there and about the various
types of ammo a shotgun can accommodate.

The Basics
Whether you're talking about a handgun, a rifle or a shotgun, all modern guns have to do some of
the same things. They have to send ammunition flying out of a long cylinder called a barrel, and
they have to allow for the loading and unloading of new and spent ammunition. When you pull the
trigger, a hammer or firing pin strikes an explosive charge on the back of a cartridge or bullet.
This causes a small explosion that changes the air pressure in the barrel, forcing whatever was in
front of the explosion (such as a bullet or metal pellets) out the other side at an extremely fast
speed.

Target practice
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Shotguns are designed to fire batches of small projectiles instead of single bullets with each
pull of the trigger. These projectiles themselves don't have to be aerodynamic like bullets and
aren't expected to travel long distances. They are designed to cause their worst damage at closer
ranges. Shotgun ammo comes in varying shapes and sizes and includes lead, steel and bismuth
pellets, bean bags, rock salt and rocket-like sabots. Shotguns can also fire individual metal slugs.

Know Your Shotgun Parts

All shotguns have some of the same basic components. Starting from the end nearest to the
shooter, there's often a stock that allows you to steady it against your shoulder muscles. Some
manufacturers put a recoil pad at the end of the stock to help dampen the kick you feel when you
fire it. There are some shotguns, usually "assault" style, that have foldaway stocks or no stock at
all. Moving forward from the stock, you'll find all of the parts associated with firing. This includes
the trigger that connects to the sear and hammer. Some shotguns have a pistol grip that
extends downward below the trigger.

The hammer activates the bolt assembly and firing pin, which rests against the cartridge to be
fired. Now we're at the chamber, where the loading, unloading and firing happens. The chamber
can be accessible from the side or the top. Connecting to the chamber is the barrel, which is the
long tube that the ammo travels through as it leaves the gun. Some shotguns have a magazine
connected to the chamber -- this may take the form of a second, shorter tube below the barrel or
else a drum or rectangular cartridge that snaps into the barrel. There may also be a fore-end (a
sliding handle colloquially known as a pump) attached to the shorter tube, which is used to
partially automate the loading and unloading process. On the top of the barrel, you'll often find a
bump that's used as a crude sight.

Making a Barrel
Creating a long, straight, consistent hollow tube that can stand up
to over 5,000 psi of pressure is one of the hardest parts of making
a shotgun or rifle. First, a gunmaker takes a superstrong chrome
molybdenum or stainless steel bar and uses a specialized gun
drill to hollow it out. Unlike normal drills, most gun drills spin the
steel bar instead of the drill bit. As the bit moves along inside the
tube that guides its path, the machine shoots oil down the tube to
clear the debris, lubricate the path and keep it cool. It takes about
a half hour to drill out one barrel. This gets most of the work done,
but the resul ting hole is usually not large or consistent enough yet.
A second machine reams out the last few thousandths of an inch
and makes the diameter consistent along the whole barrel.

Measuring Up: Gauge vs. Caliber

Shotgun sizes have always been measured in a somewhat roundabout way. You would think that
the "12" in a 12-gauge shotgun corresponds to some linear measurement -- maybe inches or
centimeters. But that's not the case. "12-gauge" means you can make 12 lead balls, each of
equal diameter to the gun barrel, out of 1 pound of lead. This originated in the days when you
would buy lead by the pound to make your own ammo. The gauge told you how many rounds you
could make for the gun from 1 pound of lead.

The smaller the gauge number, the wider the barrel. The largest shotgun is a 4-gauge. The .410
shotgun, the smallest, is an exception to the rule: It's actually a .410-caliber -- it has a .41-inch
barrel diameter.

In general, the smaller the barrel diameter, the less "kick" or recoil the shooter feels from the gun.
Many experts say that a 20-gauge shotgun is a good beginner's gun because it has relatively little
recoil but fires more shot per shell than the smaller-diameter .410-caliber.

Action and Barrel Types

Besides firing, another thing shotguns have to do is set a new cartridge in the chamber and get
rid of what's left over from a cartridge that has just been fired. Over time, shotgun manufacturers
have developed several different technologies to accomplish this. As new innovations have come
along, most of the old designs have stuck around, though. Some of the simplest ways to
accomplish the task are still the most effective and dependable.
 Photo courtesy Integrated Logistics Support Center (ILCS)
12-gauge Winchester model 1200

One way individual shotguns differ in loading and unloading is in their anatomy. The vast majority
of shotguns are either single-barrel, double-barrel side-by-side or double-barrel over-under.

The action, or method a shotgun uses for loading and disposing of cartridges, can be:

· autoloading
· pump action
· break action
· bolt action

In the following sections, we'll examine each of these action types.

Break, Bolt and Pump Actions

Break Action
Break-action shotguns are the most straightforward and the safest, and they're commonly used in
shooting competitions. The gun has a hinged opening where the chamber meets the barrel. By
opening the gun, it is easy to see if it's loaded or not.

Photo courtesy Shotgun W orld

SKB Model 485 break-action shotgun

To load a new cartridge, the shooter breaks open the barrel on its hinge, physically places a
cartridge into the chamber and then closes it. In older model shotguns, the shooter would have to
manually cock the hammer and pull the trigger. In most modern shotguns, there's no need to
cock the hammer before pulling the trigger. In most cases after firing the gun, the shooter then
manually removes spent cartridges from the chamber and repeats the process to fire again.
There are both single-barrel and double-barrel shotguns that are break-action. On modern
double-barrel shotguns, there's only one trigger and an automatic or manual barrel selector (the
selector picks which barrel fires).

Bolt Action
Bolt-action shotguns are not all that common, but they work just like bolt-action rifles. The bolt is a
rod attached to a spring, and there's a handle sticking out of it. To load a bolt-action, the shooter
twists the bolt handle up and then pulls it back. This both exposes the chamber and cocks the
firing mechanism. The shooter then loads a magazine into the chamber and pulls the bolt forward
into place. This strips the top cartridge from the magazine, blocks it off from the magazine and
prepares it for firing. After firing the first shot, each time the shooter pulls the action back and then
forward it ejects the spent cartridge, strips the next cartridge from the magazine and prepares it
for firing.

Pump Action
Pump-action shotguns also have a moving bolt; but instead of a handle, their bolt system is
operated by a wooden or composite slide called the fore-end. In this case, the magazine is a
shorter tube under the barrel. First, the shooter fills the magazine with three or more cartridges.
There's tension in the magazine from a spring, It's a bit like putting D-cell batteries into an old
flashlight. He or she then pulls the fore-end to the rear of the gun. This ejects anything that's in
the chamber, cocks the hammer, and loads a shell in the chamber. Next, the shooter pushes the
slide forward, which pushes the block and firing pin into the firing position against the cartridge.
After each fired shot, the shooter repeats this motion to reload the gun and eject used cartridges.

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An experienced shooter can repeat the motion of firing and then pumping to reload very quickly.
And because the action is all mechanical and linear, it's very simple and unlikely to fail in action.

Autoloading
Autoloaders and semi-automatic shotguns take the pump-action idea one step further, using
similar mechanisms to those employed by machine guns. As the designs get more complex and
have more moving parts, the chances for operator error, misfire and jamming increase
dramatically. Autoloaders are considered less reliable than pump-action and break-action guns.
The animation below, taken from How Machine Guns Work, shows how a recoil-powered loading
system operates. ,

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Click and hold the trigger to see how a recoil-action gun fires. Please note that the gun in the
illustration is a fully-automatic mach ine gun, and appears only as a reference for its loading
system. For simplicity's sake, this animation doesn't show the cartridge-loading, extraction
and ejection mechanisms.
Recoil-operated autoloaders use the force naturally generated by recoil from the firing process to
eject the spent cartridge, get a new one from the magazine and ready it in the chamber. In this
case, the explosion from the cartridge forces both the barrel and the bolt to travel a couple of
inches backwards. This ejects the spent cartridge. The barrel and bolt hit springs that send them
forward again, and the bolt strips a new cartridge into place on the way. The barrel and bolt lock
back into place and are ready to fire again. There are also short-recoil systems that work similarly
but with a greater separation between the movement of the barrel and the movement of the
boltClick and hold the trigger to see how a blowback-action gun fires. Please note that the gun
in the illustration is a fully-automatic machine gun, and appears only as a reference for its
loading system. For simplicity's sake, this animation doesn't show the cartridge-loading,
extraction and ejection mechanisms.

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The gas-powered variety of autoloaders work like assault weapons. For a detailed explanation of
these systems, see How Machine Guns Work: Gas System.

Automatic Shotguns
There are automatic shotguns in limited use in the military, including the USAS-12 and the
Franchi SPAS-15. These are rapid-fire, high-impact weapons, allowing the shooter to fire up to
four shots per second with one pull of the trigger. The USAS-12 uses a drum magazine, and the
SPAS-15 uses a box magazine.

Even more powerful is the Pancor Jackhammer, currently just a concept and prototype weapon.
It's an automatic, drum-loaded shotgun made out of plastic. The Jackhammer is extremely light
and has a remarkably small recoil. Most of the recoil energy is captured and used in loading and
firing the next round. As an interesting additional feature, it is possible to take the drum magazine
off the gun, attach a detonator and use it as an anti-personnel mine that fires all of the
cartridges at once when tripped.