Reloading for Shotgunners. Rick Sapp
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Название: Reloading for Shotgunners
Автор: Rick Sapp
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Спорт, фитнес
isbn: 9781440224652
isbn:
Proper shell resizing is important with today’s close gun tolerances. The Super Sizer from MEC is a heavy-duty shell-sizer that is built-in to all new generation MEC presses.
At the base of the shell is the brass cup that stabilizes the hull and other components. Curiously, this “brass” cup is often not brass at all, but a lightweight steel alloy that is colored to look like brass.
Shotgunners obviously prefer that their shell bases look like brass, though. Why this is so would involve some cultural analysis, but a few years ago, the now-defunct shotshell manufacturer Activ tried aggressively to market a no-brass plastic case. This case was entirely functional and suitable for reloading as well. It incorporated a small metal ring molded into the base to grip the primer. Nevertheless, sales results were not pretty. Perhaps Activ’s hulls were perceived to be as not as strong as shells with visible metal bases, but from all reports, they were, and they did not require resizing in a reloading press, either.
When I bought my first shotgun, about 25 years ago, I learned that there were two kinds of shells, high base and low base. This referred to the height of the brass base. It was generally understood that low base equated with low power and high base with high power. Consequently, my buddies and I purchased high base shells for pheasants and waterfowl, and low base for grouse and woodcock. What a surprise it was to learn that there is no essential relationship between the height of the base and the power of the load! But myths die hard, so today we still have high-brass magnum loads and low-brass dove loads.
The height of the brass base on a shotshell is not an indicator of its contents or power. A high base shell does not necessarily contain a heavier load or greater charge of powder than a low base shell.
The metal visible up the side of the hull is designed to stiffen the shell, to give the extractors a firm shelf to grip and, especially with paper hulls, to provide a firm base of support for the load’s components. During the first half of the twentieth century, the size of the brass on a shell varied as manufacturers experimented with new paper and plastic hulls, new base wad materials and heights, new progressive powders and various configurations for consolidating the elements of particular loads. A sneaky difficulty with new hull materials was finding combinations that would best contain gas pressure from the burning powder without leakage around the seal or the base wad.
Today’s hull makers vary the height of the brass for the same reason that they use differently colored hulls. Different sizes help them and their customers distinguish between different types and sizes of shells in their line.
A sturdier hull base, one wrapped in metal, albeit lightweight and relatively soft as metals go, may have advantages when shot through gas-guns and pump-actions which tend to extract shells with greater force than over/unders or side-by-sides. For gas and pump guns, you need a shell rim to be made of a reasonably strong material and firmly attached.
Ray “Hap” Fling, a former All American Trap shooter from Ohio who now lives in Gainesville, Florida occasionally shot trap with the inventor of the plastic wad/shotcup in the ‘50s. The original, red plastic wad is marked “Pat. Pend.” on the powder side. On the shot side, it has an interior, six-pointed star-shaped structure, perhaps to help offset the shock of setback on lead pellets. The 12-gauge wad has four petals and measures 1-1/2 inches long.
There are two fundamental designs of plastic hull in use today: a two-piece, straight-sided hull and a one-piece, injection-molded, compression-formed hull. The straight hull has a removable base wad of paper or plastic that separates the powder from the metal of the base. This shell is typically the thinner of the two designs and is frequently the hull of choice for building powerful hunting loads where every micromillimeter is packed with powder and shot. PMC offers a straight-wall hull in its HP Competition load, however. These high-end target shells have a six-star fold and the hard shot contains 5-percent antimony.
The injection-molded or compression-formed hull uses an integral base wad, which is the wall itself tapering to the bottom toward the primer hole so that the thickening curvature of the hull itself is what separates the powder from the base metal. Winchester’s popular AA hulls are a good example of the more common compression-formed tapered hull. (They show a cut-away of the loaded hull in some of their recent advertising.) Typically, the thicker, injection-molded shells are the choice of hull for competition loads.
At the base of a straight-sided hull is the interior base wad. It is somewhat rare that this is a loose paper wad as in days past. Subjected to the intense flash of heat when the primer explodes and ignites the powder, a paper base wad can easily detach and fall out, deteriorate or blow into and stick inside the barrel. Reloading a hull without inspecting the fiber (or plastic, for that matter) base for adhesion is careless and unacceptable.
Today, many of these base wads are plastic and look like washers. Their functions are to separate the powder from the base, to elevate the powder to the top of the primer and to help seal the bottom of the shell. You do not want a gas leak anywhere, but it can be especially disturbing around the base of the hull.
By varying the thickness of the plastic base wad, a huge variety of load combinations is possible without mandating extreme measures in component adjustments. Instead of adjusting component height, ammunition manufacturers logically utilize various thickness base wads to facilitate many different load types. This allows them to get by with few part changes in the hull’s construction.
At the opposite end of the hull from the base is the crimp and no matter whether the hull is paper or plastic it needs to be positively crimped. One purpose of the crimp is to seal the end of the shell to prevent the shot from falling out and keep dirt from entering. The crimp holds everything in order inside the hull. It also keeps the powder and shot properly packed for that micro-second when the primer ignites the powder and pressure begins to build. The crimp is a patterned fold and it is essential for proper powder ignition and controlling the burn rate. Varying the depth of the crimp or otherwise changing a pre-established fold can quickly and surprisingly affect the pressure.
Beautiful, 6-fold factory crimps on Federal #6 12-gauge and #6 20-gauge shells, and a Wolf #8 12-gauge. You can build crimps just as good looking and, indeed, to be effective you must make this part of the reloading exercise a priority.
On many ranges, the rule is that if a shell hits the ground, it belongs to the range … and you can purchase your own shells from the club. This odd rule makes it tough on reloaders who shoot semi-automatics and pump guns, especially pumps like the Ithaca Model 37 High Grade that ejects hot shells straight down from the chamber, rather than out to the right or left side. For clay shooting, a double-barrel over/under with ejectors modified to hand extract shells might be easier on the back and give you cleaner shells to reload.
A few years ago, two types of crimps were common, the roll crimp and the star fold. The roll crimp dates from black powder days. Black powder was bulky, at least compared to today’s progressive powders, and it needed all the room it could get inside a shell. Everything was packed in tightly and a small over-shot СКАЧАТЬ