doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com old paper shells

i picked up some old western super target loads in an antique store.the box was in sad shape but the shells looked good,until i tried to fit them in my lc.they all have apparently swelled up.so my question is ,can they be dried out somehow??or are they more dust collecters for the basement??i dont need to shoot them,just thought they wood be neat to shoot at five stand!!thanks.
tom

That's the reason we old-timers jumped on plastic hulls as soon as they came out - swollen shells are a [censored] to chamber.

I'd suggest putting them in the oven, at 350, for about an hour.
Just kidding, of course!
Seriously, if you have access to a loader with a sizer like the PWs, you could try running them through and resize them.

When paper shells were the only game in town, we used to end every duck season with a 'coot shoot' so as to use up all our duck shells. They (the shells)would not last the spring and summer to the next season down South without swelling. Filets of coot breast were right tasty as I remember...Geo

Just so we're clear, we're talking about empty hulls, right?

They can be dried out quite nicely by standing them on a cookie sheet in the oven at about 200F for an hour or so. The W-W hulls will take on a slightly sweaty appearance as they approach "done." Never could tell if it was moisture or wax, but I'm going to guess it was wax since the Reminton/Peters hulls of the same era didn't do this. All paper hulls have an afinity for moisture, so you don't want to do this way ahead of the time you intend to reload them.

The W-W paper hulls have a circular cardboard gas seal in the bottom. You can feel the lip on it if you stick your pinky down inside. After two or three loads that seal can come loose, and you can feel that with your pinky, also. Folks back then would run a stout wire with a hook on the end into the shell and fish out the loose ring. The ringless hulls loaded well and shot fine.

Hull life was about three or four loads, time-out being called on account of thin mouths or burn-through above the brass. W-W hulls were the best smelling, just nosing out the Remingtons.

As an aside, Remington was using plastic over-powder wads in their target shells even back in the early fifties. That had to have bunched some shorts at W-W.

Actually, Churchill recommended (sort of) heating swelled shells in a warm oven (?!) Tough and brave men those old guys were!

MEC has offered a separate sizing die for their 650 line. I don't know whether they still do, or not. I suspect that such a device might help to bring these shells "to taw".

If nothing else,these shells could be "cut" to retrieve their shot and, maybe, some of their wads. Winchester target shot has been "top shelf" for many years, and Winchester's wads, especially their paper OP wads, have a number of potentially interesting applications.

The French came up with the Darne, just to use up the old paper shells!

no we are talking about loaded shells.maybe they will be salvage shells.i dont think a collet type sizer wood help.

Best use for empty paper shells is as a handwarmer in a duck blind. Take an empty shell, cut the walls dwn to the base, creating about 6 petals. Stand the cut shell on its base, light the petals, and, with the wax in the paper, you get a neat little blue flame for about 5 minutes

The handwarmer application is an old and a good one. (Try THIS with plastic hulls!)

This technique worked best with highly-waxed hulls like Federal's. As I recall, WW hunting hulls were not quite as good at this application and their target loads did even less well. Rem/Peters hulls tended not to be very good for this applicaton at all.

No, a collet sizer most likely would not be of much use for swelled hulls. The sizer I was referring to was a sizing chamber that sized the whole shell.