Jcon72, Yep, I use wads for 2 1/2” 410. I was concerned about the shot “changing direction”
in the brake, but, apparently the plastic wad column contains the shot until leaving the bore/brake. Though, I think that the wad column imparts spin/rotation on the shot, as the groups open pretty quickly! Beyond 20 feet or so, there are getting to be some pretty big holes in the shot pattern!
Loading them is a little tedious, requiring several more steps than conventional loading. But, it’s not like I shoot a lot of them! memtb
I do the same in my 460 - shortened (slightly) 444 Marlin brass, .410 shot cups, and I use an RCBS 45 Auto Shotshell seater die to crimp the case mouth over a thin card wad (I cut the cards from primer boxes).
In my experience, the pattern can vary a lot with the load, and pushing them too fast generally blew the patterns up.
I do not remember if this pattern below was from 7 or 10 yards (it's been a couple years at least, but I do mean 20-30 feet) but it was somewhere in that range, and looks like maybe 2 shots on paper? Although it could be just one shot, I forget. Regardless, this is the best shotshell load I've come up with for any handgun. Part of that is simply because the 460 can hold so much shot.
Here are the loaded shot shells. The case mouths require annealing every shot to avoid splits because of that deep forming process from the RCBS die. As you can see I've shortened the 444 brass more than memtb, but the results speak for themselves. Using any sort of heavier wad or gas check over the shot blew up the patterns a lot more in my loads.