Shotgun Hulls

[Olin Broke]

What's your favorite hull for BP?  AA, STS, FED, Brass?

[Arcey]

Been usin' red AAs since I started loadin' shells.  Fad smokeless and now Holy Black.  Great luck with 'em 'n nuff folks use 'em from the factory 'n throw the hulls away it ain't difficult to keep a supply of empty stuff.

I do go after the STS hulls as well as the dark gray AAs I see every now 'n again.  Don't see much difference for whut I'm doin' between the STS 'n the AA.  With the difference in color it's easy to keep the heavy loadin's 'n the regular loadin's straight.

[Sir Charles deMouton-Black]

I like all kinds of Remington & Peters, no matter what age.  In my old Russian hammer SxS with plated bores, it seems they are the only ones that will shuck right out with a bit of a jerk.  That is if they havn't been stepped on before I picked them up!

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[sundance44`s]

Gotta say my magna tech brass hulls .. doesn`t get any easyer to load than these with the black stuff . and the style points for the boom is great .

[Cuts Crooked]

AAs!

[Paladin UK]

Cant go wrong with MAGTECH


Paladin (What lurvs the Holy Black ) UK

[Dakota Widowmaker]

Brass Magtech hulls.

I have been playing with Large Magnum Rifle primers and getting them as flush seating as possbile.

Its possible, but, you gotta be careful!!! Reaming the pocket would help, but, I don't know how much to not take off.

I wish there was a REALLY POWERFUL large pistol primer that worked as well as rifle primers. CCI 450 and WLP appear to be as "hot" as I can find.

Opening up the flash hole is next on my agenda...

75gr or there abouts of 777 FFg
1 1/8oz #8 shot

And lately, I have been annealing the top 1/2" of the hulls and giving them a slight roll crimp via my antique Lee Loader for 12g tool.
[Roll crimping and then sealing the ends makes these about as reliable as could be expected from a pump gun]

[Dick Dastardly]

Been loadin' new Cheddite hulls for my 16ga, but they don't re-load very often before they start to get hard to dump out of my 311 SxS.  I pick up once fired AAs and STS 20ga at matches that pards discard and they load up pretty good once.  My lil 20ga 311 seems to do well with them.

I'm thinkn that my crimps are a mite too tight and that the hulls get stressed pretty bad.  I use a good tight roll crimp.  I've been findin' that my chipmunk gun, a lil Iver Johnson .410 shoots the ends rite off most of the hulls.  It plumb tears the crimp end rite off unless the hull gives up at the top of the brass.  If that happens I gotta go get a brush and poke it inside the piece of hull and pull it back out.  Usually it ends up a few inches beyond the chamber and only the brass ejects.

Still tho, I like the nice tight roll crimps.  I'm findin' that I'm gettin very consistant velocitys and nice even patterns and short shot strings.  All signs of good loads.

Lately, AA hulls have been of poorer quality.  I'm startin' to look for more and more STS hulls.  My 12ga 311 was slicked up rite good before I bought it.  It shucks out empties real good.  Onlyist thing is, it's butt ugly.  The wood looks like popple with a painted finish and the barrels are shortened.  No grace whutsomever.  It's my "loaner" gun cuz I can't stand it's looks.  Maybe I should get a nice chunk of burrel walnut and whittle new stocks for it?

DD-DLoS

[Driftwood Johnson]

I switched from Win AA to Rem STS a few years ago. They are slicker and eject from my SXS better. Winchester was messing around with the plastic formula a few years ago, and I don't like what they did with it. Plus STS are still a one piece injection molded shell. The AA is now a two piece hull. STS are better, in This Cowboy's Humble Opinion.

[Abilene]

For Brass, I have a few Rocky Mountain Cartridge shells (very heavy duty, 209 primers), a few old Rem-UMC and Winchester shells (thin, use large pistol primers), and a bunch of Alcan (heavy duty, use CCI-157 "Remington Size" primers, kind of hard to find).  Those brass hulls were all bought used with unknown usage history, and I've loaded them up to 40 times each without losing any.

For plastic, I like the gold-colored STS.  They look sorta like brass, and I can usually get about 4 good loadings out of a hull.  I saw someone once that had clear plastic hulls with a roll crimp.  You could see all the innards, it was cool.

[clehfeldt]

I used to use STS Remington exclusively but I bought some Remington "Sport Loads" at Walmart awhile back to try them out. They are a ribbed unibody hull but shuck easily from my double so I use them now. After I use them in smokeless shooting I reload them with Pyrodex, they work just fine and are cheaper than the STS Remmies.
Carlos EL Hombre

[Dakota Widowmaker]

Just a quick update.

Opening up the flash hole to 3/32" appears to have helped. The FFg 777 likes the bigger hole as much as using magnum rifle primers.

[Tommy tornado]

I have about 60 hulls I got from Ballistic Products with about 86 grains of 1fg powder.  These are ribbed hulls, so do I need to fear the hulls getting stuck more than Winny Red AA or Remy STS hulls?

[Grapeshot]

Brass Magtech hulls.

I have been playing with Large Magnum Rifle primers and getting them as flush seating as possbile.

Its possible, but, you gotta be careful!!! Reaming the pocket would help, but, I don't know how much to not take off.

I wish there was a REALLY POWERFUL large pistol primer that worked as well as rifle primers. CCI 450 and WLP appear to be as "hot" as I can find.

Opening up the flash hole is next on my agenda...

75gr or there abouts of 777 FFg
1 1/8oz #8 shot

And lately, I have been annealing the top 1/2" of the hulls and giving them a slight roll crimp via my antique Lee Loader for 12g tool.
[Roll crimping and then sealing the ends makes these about as reliable as could be expected from a pump gun]

Hey Dakota Widowmaker,

Awhile back, a long while back, I ordered a set of primer pocket scrapers out of an add in Handloader Magazine, (Wolfe's Publishing).  One was a primer pocke scraper that was for large Rifle Primer Pockets.  It was a tool steel device that you pushed into the primer pocket and twisted.  It took out crud and made the primer pockets a uniform depth.

I've been using that to deepen the pockets on MagTech Brass Hulls and it seems to work very well.  Especially after I opened the primer flash hole to 3/32nds inch.

As to what my favorite hull for BP is?  Well I'd have to say it's my Russian Copper Plated Steel 12 gage 2 3/4 inch hulls.

Next after that would be my high brass Light Field hulls that started out in life as Slug Loads.  They have the capacity for a full 5cc's worth of powder and a 1 1/8 oz of #8 shot.

I also have been known to use Remington and Winchester High Brass Hulls that had been used as slug loads before I got my hands on them.

The Federal Gold Medal Paper Hulls are really great, and have a lot of style points.   The first firearm shells I ever colected as a kid were some 12 gage paper hulls back in the late fifties.  Guess that's why I collect the Paper ones and shoot all the rest.

[Virgil Ray Hality]

Hey Pards, what wads work best in the Remington Nitro 27 (gold) hulls?   With BP that is....

[Cuts Crooked]

Hey Pards, what wads work best in the Remington Nitro 27 (gold) hulls?   With BP that is....

Believe it or not, it depends on the shotgun more than the shells! If you are shooting an older, pre 60s gun with short forcing cones, then the card & cushion was will probably work best. New guns with thier long forcing cones will do better with plastic shot cups. I've also found that a combination of card wads and plastic shot cups often works wonders in the newer guns, allowing good patterns while at the same time cutting down on the plastic buildup in yer bore.

[Sir Charles deMouton-Black]

Virgil;   I like those gold coloured Nitro 27s as well.  You can load any R-P or Peters shell about the same.  Traditionally, the ideal is a "square load".  Often thought of as equal VOLUME of powder and shot, older references also specify a column of shot or powder with a height the same as the diameter of the bore.  For 12 gauge this is about 1 1/8 oz of shot and about 70 grains of powder.  I've noted that for CAS loads, some shooters use less powder, which is OK.

With a star crimped shell, the load, with the wad column, has to fill the shell properly to have a good crimp.  This takes a bit of cut & try to get enough wadding in to top up the load.

I've tried cutting the crimp off a shell when it is burnt & split and tried to load it like a brass case.  It works, but doesn't seal very well.  There doesn't seem to be a point unless you have an old gun with short chambers.  You can load these without a press, if you are caught short!

All R-P or Peters shells seem to shuck out of my Russian long-eared double without honed chambers better than anything else.

[Dick Dastardly]

Howdy Sir Charles deMoutonBlack,

Yer close on the shortened shells.  When ya loads 'em, try usin' a roll crimp.  I've found that a nice roll crimp is easy on shortened shells and has a cool old timey look.  They shoot great too.

There's a number of outfits sellin' the roll crimp tools that fit hand held electric drill motors.  Ballistic products lists 'em and here's another. .http://precisionreloading.com/Rollcrimpers.htm

So, if ya want some nice tight crimps on most any ol hull, give the roll crimp a go.  Ya can't go wrong doin' it like grandpa did. . .

DD-DLoS

[Grizzle Bear]

I also prefer the Magtech brass hulls, and mine are the old ones, that use Berdan primers. Loading shotgun shells just can't get any easier than with the brass, and they look great as well.   AA's work good, but after a few loadings with black powder, the inside gets rough, presumably the plastic is melting a little bit when fired.

My favorite load with either is 90 grains of FFg, a fiber wad dipped in melted lube but not soaked, and 1 oz of shot.  In the brass shells, a 10 gauge card wad pressed in with a dowel seals it just fine.  No glue or anything else.  They make a lovely boom, and the shot gets out there fast enough to occasionally allow me to break a clay bird or two.  Wing shooting is not one of my best skills!

Grizzle Bear

P.S. In the days of muzzleloaders, the old-timers said, "Lotta powder, little lead, shoots far, kills dead."

[Wills Point Pete]

 One more for the Mag Techs. I've lost a couple, or mayhap someone begged me out of a pair, but I'm still shooting the original 23 out of that first box, plus four new boxes. Every fifth loading I fire up my lead furnace, turn the heat way up and wait until my thermometer shows 760 degrees and then I anneal them. I wonder if the mouths will ever crack?