doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Winchester Super Double-X Shelf Life

Anyone have a book answer on how long Winchester Super Double-X Shelf Life is?

I found several boxes of 16 gauge and I would like to use them if possible. I assume they date from sometime around 1985-8. They were my go to duck load when I was in Alaska in the 1980's. Now they would be excellent pheasant shells.

I'm still shooting 20 gauge Remington Game Loads from the late 70's with no issues

Col., I don't think there is a 'book answer' to your query because folks are still shooting the stuff. I have some old ones I still use for turkeys or squirrels..Geo

While old corrosive primers seem to last forever, non-corrosive ones do seem to eventually die. Back in the late 1990s a buddy of mine scored a mixed case of old pre-WW-II paper shells at a Virginia gun show. In that I had driven that day he gave me a nice box of 12-gauge Winchester Super-Speed #6 chilled, same as the 10- and 16-gauge boxes on the right in this picture --



I took them to Nebraska for Pheasants. First Rooster to get up old "Meat in the Pot" went click, click!! We tried six or eight of the shells in different guns and none would fire.

It is not the primers that concern me it is whether grex fibre cushioning has solidified into rock and i will be shooting slugs?

Why not just cut some open and inspect them?

I have two bottles of Super Grex buffer that were given out as free samples at the NRA Convention in New Orleans in the late 1980s and it is still as light and fluffy as the day it was made.

The only old shells I ever tried to shoot that failed to fire had primers that turned a dark color and everyone of them was a dud. I just cut them up for the shot and dumped the powder in the garden.

I still use XX 4s or 2s from the 80s as 2nd 3rd shots turkey hunting. They still go bang, kill the occasional coyote or groundhog. I have had to throw some away as 870 ejector has chewed all the lip off the brass they've been unloaded so much.

Did not want to waste one if i could get an easier answer

It's been my experience that storage is everything with older ammunition. If it's been stored in cool and dry conditions it will last indefinitely. I've shot 100 year old ammo that was reliable.
Jim

I don't believe Winchester was using grex in pre-WWII shells.

With proper storage ammo shelf life is very long. I heard folks shooting soft iron cased .45ACP loads from WWII (made at same time as copper-less penny I suspect). Years ago I have shot bunch of 20ga paper cased slugs sold by either Sears Roebuck or J.C. Penny. There was no failures and ammo was about 30 years old when I shot it. The problem is just one squib can create an obstruction and if not noticed next discharge will result in bulge or worse.

I hunted with factory loaded, pie-fold paper ammo from the 50's almost exclusively for 15-20 years. I may have had a misfire but I can't recall a single incident. I surely wouldn't have risked wasting a grouse flush if I had doubted the ammo.

By contrast, I found that roll-crimped stuff, no matter how pristine in appearance, was at high risk of duds. Perhaps some of the roll-crimped stuff that was still manufactured post-war would be more reliable...I suspect primer technology may have changed during the war effort. In any event, a simple rule of thumb to avoid roll crimps and embrace pie crimped shells has served me well.

Back in the late 70's, I bought 25 boxes(25 rds. each box) of WW Super X 00 buckshot. The shells had been in a discount store for some years. I had no use for it but they were 25 cents a box, so it seemed like a good idea at the time. By the way, it kicked real hard in my double.

After 15 or so years, the brass in many rounds began to split lengthwise. They were stored in my house, high and dry. If I remember correctly, they were not the Mark V case and had the paper base with fiber wads. As I recall, sometimes the paper bases could get moisture somehow and swell, thus expanding and perhaps causing the splitting.

The Winchester Super XX shells are practically sealed with the way the crimp is made at the factory. Some of the best patterning factory loads ever. I still have four boxes that have been in a controlled climate and look brand new. I would bet my life on them.

Unless they were stored in high humidity, they should shoot great. Double X were great shells. Didn't know they were ever made in 16 ga., or 20 either, for that matter. Talking about the 80's stuff.

Thought they were only made in 10 and 12 ga.
JR

Blackpowder arty rounds from the Civil War still go boom after 150 years of burial on southern battlefields. I have left-over lead shot duck hunting reloads from the early 80's that I'll occasionally shoot to check out a gun's POI/POA. I've kept them in old military metal ammo boxes stored in my house which is low in humidity and year round in the 70's. I would be surprised if your rounds were bad.

The old Double X Mags were made in both 16 and 20ga. I've patterned both back when they were available. Wonderful patterns but a painful experience in a light sxs.

Thank you to all for feedback

I tested them on Prairie Chicken today, they worked well.

Gil,

A friend of mine used to be a serious WBTS artifact collector and once found an unexploded cannonball several feet deep with his high $ metal detector. He got into it somehow and got the blackpowder out, loaded it in his flintlock, and fired it. Said it wasn't black, but Grey in color. Musta been a Confederate cannonball.

SRH

According to info published in Hatcher's Notebook smokeless powder will deteriorate over time. If Black Powder is not exposed to moisture it seems to last forever. Early non-corrosive primers did not have a real long shelf life which is why the Army stayed with the corrosive ones at least throughout WWII. By that point improvements were being made & shortly after that the switch was made, don't recall the exact date offhand.
Fortunately when smokeless does deteriorate it grows weaker, not stronger so the only real danger involved is the possibility of a stuck load, normally a wad in the case of a shotshell.
When firing old load always be aware of this possibility & definitely check the bore if any sounds the least bit abnormal. "SO EASY" to do on a double.

Stan, on the radio last weekend I heard James Dickey's (Deliverance) son, Christopher, being interviewed about his family. He recounted that his uncle, James's brother Tom, was a WBTS relic hunter. He did a documentary about his collecting. Here's a short segment. The segment not shown, but maybe in the program archives, details defusing a shell in Tom's basement. By the time Tom starting pounding on the shell, the camera man and Christopher in a moment of good sense, hauled ass out of the basement and left the camera running on a tripod. Tom's two collector buddies were maimed by an exploding shell while defusing one according to the interview. I remember a few years ago a collector being killed by one up near Rasaca when he attempted to defuse it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWQXodS8oAY

There ya go! What gun did you use?

During the late 70's I shot nothing but shotgun shells stored in a dank basement since the 1930s. Most had lost their markings off the paper hulls. One day I managed to kill a quail with what turned out to be buckshot (a missing head and no other holes were my first clue... I thought I'd just been having a shooting slump prior to that). But they all went "bang"!

My Jules Bury made Louis Christophe 16 SLE. Which is the gun i carry for 90% of my hunting.

I am a one trick pony in that I sold my collection down to a few SLE Christophes and a Greener

I've been using shotgun shells bought 30-40 years ago, stored in cool, dry place, and just opened another good-to-go 700x keg bought 35 years ago. My one-pound red cans of Curtis's and Harvey's black powder are as good as the day I bought them off the shelf 50 years ago.

Never seem to have a had a problem is they have been stored o.k. A couple of years ago I was given a box of World War II Eley airgunner training cartridges. 12 bore with a tracer element. Normally I would have put them away as collector stuff but this lot had been stored badly and the heads were all verdegris and corroded. Out of curiosity I fired them at 25 sporting clays out of an old single. 24 went bang as normal with one failure. At least half still traced as intended and I got 23 kills with only one miss. Quite surprised as I didn't expect much and was just getting rid of them. I have used wartime issue .22rf. stuff and most of that fails with the odd click, then a delay before a bang and then a delay as the bullet strikes low.

A few years ago I bought a case of Hungarian 12 bore 'Nike' tracer cartridges. Great for shooting crows flighting in at dusk. I had three or four boxes left that had been well stored for only a couple of years. I gave a box away and the recipient said they didn't show a tracer. I shot a box and found the things no longer traced as before. Still have the one remaining box left over. No idea what happened to stop them working. The only other odd things were some 10 packs of 16 bore plastic French 'Starlett' cartridges. When I came to handle them the plastic broke up like egg shell. I guess they were of some sort of biodegradable plastic. They had been stored cool and dark. I shot the ones that remained whole and all that came out of the breech end was the brass head. Shot o.k. but totally disintegrated the case. Lagopus.....

I have never had any issues with any Super Double X loads that had the one-piece compression formed hull.

The earlier stuff and even the later 10 ga had a paper basewad and I have had the back of the brass blow completely off some of those.

A little unnerving to say the least.

Will