Smokeless in Brass Shotshells

[Prof. A. Wickwire]

Howdy All,

Does anyone have (or have a link to) reloading data for using smokeless powder in brass shotgun shells?

All of the data that I have been able to find is for black powder.  At this time I am not ready to transition over to black powder, but would like to use brass shotshells.  I am also not brave (or foolish) enough to reload them by trial and error.

Thanks for your help.

Sincerely,

Prof. A. Wickwire

[Driftwood Johnson]

Howdy

I don't think you will find any reliable published data for loading Smokeless into brass shotshells.

Smokeless powder is much less forgiving in a shotshell than Black Powder is. Basically, you cannot put enough Black Powder into a gun in good shape to hurt it. That is not the case with Smokeless. The makers of Smokeless Powders go through great effort developing specific recipes for various combinations of hulls, primers, powder, wad, and shot. They run all these loads through pressure barrels to verify the pressures are within safe limits. The nature of Smokeless shotshell reloading is such that randomly substituting any one component in a specific recipe can have unknown effects on pressure.

Frankly, I don't think the market for brass shotshells is big enough that the powder manufacturers want to bother coming up with recipes for brass shotshells. Without being tested in pressure barrels, I would be very leery of any data that I happened to come across. I would not trust anything that the powder manufacturers themselves had not actually tested in a pressure barrel, and I do not think they are interested in developing loads for Smokeless in brass shotshells.

[St. George]

I've shot a lot of all-brass shotshells - but they were all OO Buck, as loaded for our Ithacas, and were considered a combat load.

The data was identical for both paper and all-brass: 26 grains of dense smokeless propellant - equal to a 3 3/4 dram equivalent of bulk powder.

DuPont MX was used, as well, since it was a multi-based powder.

Unfortunately - that's not going to do you an awful lot of good, unless you essentially mimic the standard commercial OO Buck load of today, and that's for a modern firearm in good condition.

Using an equivalent load in something older could prove disasterous.

Best to continue researching.

Good Luck.

Vaya,

Scouts Out!

[BlaiseNSaddles]

I know that Hammerdouble brass shotshells say they are good for smokeless and the company will provide loading data if you write.

Also they print this on their site:

Load data from any reputable powder manufactures manual is fine with any of our shells; just replace the suggested wad column with Hammer Double™ wads (wads are included free with our shells).