doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Difference between new/old AA's

Pressures listed for the Nitro 100 loads I use in my Damascus guns are quite a bit higher with the new, HS shells than with the old AAs. Be sure to confirm the loads in a current booklet. ABSOLUTELY DO NOT simply substitute the new HS shells for the old, real AA's without checking.

I was a long time hold out for the old style AA. Still have a couple of thousand of them, and never fail to pick one up. I have come to see the new ones work fine too though. A friend gave me about 75 of the old silver with blue writing old styles last week. They were sure pretty going around my press. in truth though I don't think they live as long as the new type.

I know this was addressed a long time ago. I have the specifics someplace. It actually can be confusng to simply refer to 12g AA hulls as "old style" vs "New style".

The original AA hulls that we geezers grew up with (and loved) were one piece compression formed plastic hulls with Brass (or heavily brass coated metal) rims.
They loaded easily, and many times, before eventually wearing out.
usually the crimps would get weak &/or split &/or melt on the edges after MANY reloads (If you REALLY pushed it).

This is a fairly expensive way to make a hull.

About 10-12 years ago, or so, the bean counters got involved and they beagn playing with "new/improved" plastics but kept the original physical design. I remember that there were 2-3 itterations of this "improved" plastic over the next few years. This was the era of the early light colored "silver bullet" handicap loads and others that had a well desrved reputation for splitting lengthwise down the side as well as other issues affecting reloadability/longevity.

These plastic formala changes, with original one-piece design, would also be called "new style" (or some words best not mentioned in polite company) at the time.

A few years back they switched the design to a less expensive 2 piece plastic hull/base wad. I believe the plastic formula may have evolved a bit too at that time.
The recipes were ESSENTIALLY the same for most loads but might differ slightly dependng on componenets (check the books).

The newer (HS?) 2 piece hulls caused many of us some grief when they would crush and crumble during reloading.
It would happen to me on a VERY regular basis making modest pressure 1oz loads with Win12SL/Claybuster clones. I found that the powder wads would routinely catch the lip between the hull wall and the top of the seperate tapered base wad causing the crunch. I also found that I had to adjust the top/final crimp to try and get a decent non-crunch closing of the shell. It was a REAL PITA to get the press adjusted so that it could load the new 2 piece AA hulls as well as older ones and Remingtons (never completely successful).

Like a lot of people, I have found the new 2 piece AA hull to be a real pain to load with a lot of rejected/crunched ones. I also have been very unhappy with the way that the crimps refuse to stay closed even with the first reload.

I have switched to using Remingtons. The STS/Nitro hulls are great and even the gun club ones load better that AA. They use the same recipes (at least for my purposes) with very slight (usually lower) pressure differences.

Just my personal observations FWIW. (your results may differ).

The new/improved 2 piece hull design has now been adapted to most (all?) of the other AA gauges and designated HS(High strength).

It probably would be best to refer to the one-piece compression formed (original design) and the two-piece HS style (newer design) hulls for the sake of reloading.

JMHO

Like Jim I'm a HS basewad separation skeptic. And I've actually personally experienced basewad separation with Federal Topguns. If you take one apart it's not hard to see how this can happen.

But I've also torn down 12, 20, and .410 versions of the new HS.

I'll start with 12 and 20 ga hulls. Compared to imported polyformed hulls and domestic promotional hulls the HS basewad is far and away more solid, and securely placed.

I have to laugh when someone raises the separation concern (is it "separation anxiety".....) in the context of the HS .410. Apparently, some shooters haven't noticed that both Federal GMs and Rem STSs in .410 are polyformed hulls with separate basewads. If you bother to dissect examples of each you'll learn that the HS basewad is, once again, the most secure by design.

Now I'm not smitten with the 12 and 20 ga HS hulls, but this is simply because I have lifetime supplies of comp formed AAs and don't want to change press settings for crimp, powder charge, etc.

But the .410 HS hull is something special. It is the longest lived reloadable .410 hull we have ever had. Period. Not even the old, beloved comp-formed AA can be reloaded anything close to 14 times.

Sam

The recommended fix for the crumpled HS(horse-s...) shells is found on both the Winchester and MEC sites. The crimp starter should be lowered until the opening in the crimp started shell is smaller than a wooden pencil. The problem is that the shell walls are relatively soft and if the crimp folds are not folded in far enough, the walls will be crumpled in the first crimp station, rather than folding together, as they should.

My press (Hornady Apex) already is. It makes no difference on mine for HS AA results but will affect other hulls that I reload. The powder/shot wad still will catch on the lip of the base wad 10-20% of the time and crunch the shell (even tho the crimp will look better). The crimp refuses to stay down on these regardlss of how much pressure is applied.

For my own work I will stick with the cache of old orginals that I have left and use another maker's procduct that suits my needs better and gives me no problems.

The new/hs 12g AA hulls arern't worth the trouble to pick off the ground.