Brass Shotgun Shells

[Hardcase]

I've been meaning to ask this question for a long time, but I guess I suffer from CRS, so it always slips my mind. But today, by golly, I'm on the ball!

When I load up my brass 12 gauge shells with Pyrodex RS and 7.5 shot, I end up with a fair amount of distance from the top of the shot card to the end of the shell. I've just left it that way and put glue around the edge of the card and called it good.

Can I just stack wads between the overpowder card and the shot until the card is at the top of the shell? Right now, I use Track of the Wolf cards and wads - 11 gauge overpowder card, 11 gauge .5" thick lubricated fiber wad and 10 gauge overshot card. Can I use multiple fiber wads to fill 'er up?

The old side by side seems to shoot OK with the shells just as they are, but they just look a little funny to me.

[Hawg]

You can do that. It might raise recoil a little tho. There should be some space with glued cards because original shells were roll crimped. Also Pyro compresses more than black and that could be why you have more space. I use cut off plastic shells and roll crimp but they're only good for one shot.

[Fingers McGee]

Originally Posted by hardcase

Can I just stack wads between the overpowder card and the shot until the card is at the top of the shell? Right now, I use Track of the Wolf cards and wads - 11 gauge overpowder card, 11 gauge .5" thick lubricated fiber wad and 10 gauge overshot card. Can I use multiple fiber wads to fill 'er up?

That's what I do. My BP load is 50 gr ffg and 7/8 oz of 7 1/2 or 8 shot so I use 3/4 inch of cushion wad (one 1/2 inch lubed wad & half of a 1/2 inch fiber wad) to get my loads up to the top of the case. Been doing it for years with no problems.

[Hardcase]

Thanks fellas! I'll be loading up another batch to freak out the boys at the skeet range on Thursday. I don't hit a whole lot (the old smokewagon has full chokes), but smoke and flame factor more than makes up for it.

[Hawg]

That's a pretty light load Fingers.

[noelf2]

That's a pretty light load Fingers.

I concur. For a 12 gauge I'm thinking 80gr FFg and 1 1/8 oz shot unless you are shooting out of an old damascus barrel shotgun...

[Tanker6]

Fingers, like me, shoots SASS (got to meet him at a shoot earlier this year), so we're shooting for speed. Hence, "as long as it knocks the target down" that's about all you want. My daughter, who also shoots SASS with me, is addicted to the WinLite Low Recoil, Low Noise shells, so when I started reloading shotgun, I had to recreate that load (thanks Winchester, for posting the recipe). To me, they're like shooting nothing at all (something like 980 fps, I think), but they knock the targets down, so they're "good enough."

[Hardcase]

This old gun of mine has damascus barrels, so I also keep the load down. Fingers' load is a little lighter than mine, but not by much, which is enough to hit the clays if they don't get too far away.

[Fingers McGee]

Yep, it's a light load; but, I'm not hunting geese, so all I need is something to take out those pesky steel knockdown targets and the occasional flying bird or running rabbit. This load takes care of those situations with bb's to spare. I used to use a 70 gr ffg load with 1 1/8 oz of shot; but found out I was wasting resources. The Scotsman in me doesn't like to waste resources, and, no one can tell I'm not shooting a heavier load. 50 grains booms and smokes just as much as 70 grains IME.

[Hardcase]

Just thought I'd let you guys know that it works just peachy. I loaded up a one ounce square load with two 1/8" nitro cards, two 1/2" fiber wads and an overshot card. Plenty of smoke and fire and I even managed to hit a clay or two.

The gang was sufficiently shocked and awed.



BTW, I used an RCBS die set to decap, size and crimp. A bit of Elmer's glue around the edge of the overshot card holds everything together just fine.

[Jbar4Ranch]

Skip the crimp and just glue the overshot card in - your brass will last longer. I bought a cheap 13/16" arch punch off eBay to punch out plain ol' corrugated cardboard overshot cards for my 10 gauges and have never had one break loose and dump the shot out.

There's a lot of room left in these too, but they've still got 100-110 grains of BP and 1 1/4 oz shot. I gotta put together some real popper stompers one of these days... maybe 2 oz of shot... great for those pesky aerial targets too... A couple of these I purchased last year had almost three ounces of .36 cal round balls - four layers of four balls each! Some crumbling newspaper wadding inside dated them to 1897.

[Gunn Smithy]

Hardcase; My loads use only Ballistic Products stuff save the Pyrodex and homemade lube cookie, but I load a square load for one ounce of shot. First the powder then a BP plastic orbitrator wad with my lube cookie on top. Two 1/2" fiber wads and two .125 nitro wads, then shot a hard plastic overshot wad and a card overshot wad, marked with the load. That usually works fine, but sometimes comes up a little short in the column height department. If so, I simply add one or two, sometimes three of those same hard plastic overshot wads on top to see how many it would take to level the load.

If the answer was three, I pour the shot component portion of the shell out into a small bowl, put the three plastic "overshot wads" back into the shell, then the shot and then the regular overshot cards as normal and crimp the load as normal. Those plastic wads weigh next to nothing and since they are now behind the shot, they won't affect the pattern and they are dirt cheap! It works like a champ. Smithy.

[Andy Griffith]

I know that most people say not to put a roll crimp on the brass, but at least for me, it's almost impossible to get them to feed in a pump without that slight roll.
Perhaps it's me too, but I find it a bit easier to "find" the chambers on a single shot too much more quickly if I'm in a hurry with that slight roll.

The problem is- some of the time the roll isn't blown back out straight when the shell is shot. Time too spend more money on an expander die...

Isn't the answer to every reloading question more equipment???

On a side note, I have loaded the .410 brass and crimped the end of it with a blank crimping die which makes them look like .22LR crimped shot- definitely a way to make them feed well in repeating firearms (works good in my 1100) and be certain that the shot load will not come out no matter what. I do anneal the mouth before doing this, and the few I've shot I've reloaded three times and it still held the crimp. The fourth time most of the pieces of the crimp broke off. I wonder if I had annealed it each time if they would have lasted longer.

I'd like to have a die that makes the same kind of crimp on 12 gauge hulls so they too would look like the .22 crimped shot- but it would be very expensive I imagine, but might be a bit faster and more reliable in a pump or semi-auto and the brass wouldn't last long at all. Other than "looking good" I suppose it would be a exercise in futility.

[Hardcase]

I crimped the shell for exactly the same reason as Andy Griffith. My '97 needs a crimp or it won't feed - and tears up the shell if I try. And the RCBS dies have an expander. I figure that if the crimp crumbles, I'll just trim the mouth down and use one less nitro card

Gunn, I use Ballistic Products stuff as well, just no plastic.

[Hawg]

IMHO plastic and bp don't mix.

[darkgael]

Your RCBS 12 ga. die set has an expander? Mine doesn't. Gotta pic of the expander part?
About wanting to crimp so that the result is like the old .22 shotshells....Get one of the old steel pre-crimp dies from a MEC press. That'll do it. Anneal or not, though, you are gonna wear the brass out sooner; that's a lot of bending and straightening.
Y'know....if you take proper case of brass hulls, they last pretty much forever. You can leave them to your grandkids.
Square loads.....I have always understood a "Square Load" to be one in which the shot charge is as tall as it is wide. (12 ga. would be about .715" wide and .715" tall. Don't know what that would weigh.).
I take the meaning here to be equal volumes of powder and shot.
Pete

[Hawg]

I take the meaning here to be equal volumes of powder and shot.

That works pretty well. In cylinder bores more powder than shot will open up a pattern. More shot than powder will tighten a pattern.

[Hardcase]

Gotta pic of the expander part?

It's the part that the decap pin sits in. If you go here: http://www.rcbs.com/downloads/instru...tShell_Die.pdf and look at the parts diagram, it's part number 8, "Expander Ball".

[Andy Griffith]

About wanting to crimp so that the result is like the old .22 shotshells....Get one of the old steel pre-crimp dies from a MEC press. That'll do it. Anneal or not, though, you are gonna wear the brass out sooner; that's a lot of bending and straightening.

Some pump shotguns seem to do a number on brass hulls anyway.
I think my Marlin 1898 is a bit easier on them than my 1897 for some reason.

Fortunately, I only use the cheap Magtechs that are Berdan primed- they are far cheaper than the new Boxer primed ones. I guess those not "in the know" avoid the Berdan ones.

I got to thinking...I don't think the old, original 12ga dies that RCBS used to make that fit in regular reloading presses have the expander in them, as these dies were meant for plastic and paper hulls.

[DG45]

Crimp my RMC lathed brass shells? Surely you jest.

I use Triple Seven loose powder so I can't use a perfectly square load because it's about 15% more powerful than holy black. I have an old single barrel 12 gauge with an unchoked 26" cylinder barrel. I load one oz of shot and about 85% of that volume of Triple Seven powder. It's a light load maybe, but a year or so ago I ran a test on pattern and power using one oz of #7 1/2 shot, and at about 15 yards it completely peppered a 3'x3' target. I'd fixed an empty Coke can in the midddle of the target to check the loads power. I forget exactly how many pellets hit the can but it was about 12 or 13 as I recall and all but one completely penetrated both sides of the can. The one that didn't penetrate hit flush on the cans built-up rim and made a huge dent in the rim. That's a pretty good bird load I think.

I use Ballistic Products prelubed fiber wads over my nitro card and use them fill the hulls of my lathed brass shells to the point where, when my over wad card is added, there's no more than 1/16th of an inch between it and the shell's lip. I really pack those fiber wads in too using a tamp. All these components fit so perfectly and tight in my RMC lathed brass shells that I don't really need to glue them in (but I do anyway, using green tube DUCO cement.)

I don't think my lathed brass shells would have any problem in a pump gun because the Ballistic Product components fit so tight and are tamped in so well, and with the DUCO cement...well, they ain't coming loose. I don't need to crimp. I can't say thats true of all brass shells or all components though.

The cheap 12 gauge extruded brass shells that I've seen are so thin-walled that 12 guage components don't fit perfectly in them. The components are just too loose. I think that's why you see people crimping them. I've never fired an extruded brass shell in anything but a single barrel gun and I think they are ok for that, but I'd be cautious using them in a pumpgun, autoloader or even a double barrel, afraid that the recoil would shake the components and powder loose into the chamber or barrel. I realize you can buy larger size components and jerry-rig a tighter fit that way, for example 11 gauge wads in a 12 gauge extruded brass shell, and that may work ok, I don't know, but I hate bastardizing things and not being sure its going to be exactly right. I say spend a few bucks and get yourself some lathed brass shells.

[Hawg]

I don't think my lathed brass shells would have any problem in a pump gun because the Ballistic Product components fit so tight and are tamped in so well, and with the DUCO cement...well, they ain't coming loose. I don't need to crimp.

It's not a matter of components getting loose. The problem is the edge of an uncrimped shell wont let it chamber.

[Andy Griffith]

That is the problem...uncrimped shells just don't feed reliably, since they seem to hang up on the sides of the chamber. If you pump the gun very quickly, the chance is good that the brass will get crumpled if it isn't crimped.

[darkgael]

my RMC lathed brass shells?

Now those are the berries. They probably will last forever (they ought to at six dollars a pop). I have ten of them that I use in my older SXSs upland.
Pete

[Jbar4Ranch]

HA! $6.50 - $9.00 per for 12g, depending on the length... and that's before shipping.

[Hardcase]

The cheap 12 gauge extruded brass shells that I've seen are so thin-walled that 12 guage components don't fit perfectly in them.

But 11 and 10 gauge components do! Voila!