Pattern Plates – The Afterlife

I came home this afternoon to discover a large number of my discarded pattern plates spread out across the floor of our lounge, with my boy on top of them, painting his latest creation – a car, apparently. My wife seemed very pleased with herself and mentioned something along the lines of “if you’re going to pay £13 for expensive paper only to shoot at it, we might as well get some more use out of it before you throw it away”.

The Hedgewalker’s son puts discarded shotgun patterns to good use: as a floor covering for large-scale painting jobs, which keeps the carpet clean and mummy very happy…

Kudos to her.

Before they all got covered in paint, I took a few more photographs of some of the old .410 patterns, which I’ve added to the relevant pattern test pages for reference. I’ve also got a picture of probably the worst pattern (I use the word advisedly) I’ve shot so far, which doesn’t justify inclusion on those pages but which I post here for comparison for anyone who’s interested. This is the (hopefully anomalous) Fiocchi “Magnum” at 40 yards, through a ½ choke:

40-yard pattern shot through the ½ choke of the Yildiz .410 using the Fiocchi “Magnum” 19g/#7½ (Italian) shell.