doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Shotshell Construction

I have a few different types of shot shells but not sure of their construction to see if they are substitutable with other types of shells. I'm wondering if anyone has put together a list of the different types of shotshells and what other types they can be substituted for. As an example the Winchester Compression AA has been copied by others but exactly who I'm not sure, the same with straight walled shells.

Remington Gun Club, Nitro 27, STS, High Velocity and Premier, pllus the old style Winchester Double AAs all have a tapered hull. And I believe the new Winchester super handicap do too....... Federal, Estate, Rio, Fiocci I believe have a straight hole. And maybe the new AAs. If you get a new reloading book you can just go by the recipes.

Make life easier for yourself. Figure out what powder you can find and the go to the powdder website for loads. Right now Alliant Powders are hard to find and way over priced. So look for Hodgdon or Winchester Powders. Then go to the website and look to see what hulls work best. Hulls are easy to find. Powder, primers and wads will take a bit of effort.

The first copy of the compression formed AA was the Peters Blue Magic. They didn't get it quite right, those blue shells were known for burn through and separation in the chamber area after a few reloads. The AA served very well for decades until WW in their infinite wisdom discontinued it and started putting a 2-piece hull in the AA boxes with a snazzy new 'high strength' moniker as if the old hull was somehow inferior. Pure corporate bullshit.

The early AA HS got a bad reputation for basewad separation when loaded in some reloading machines that did not support the inside of the shell when repriming. It was blamed for several barrel bursts fairly or not. Winchester did fix that and I'm not aware of any recent safety problems with the AA HS. It does have less interior volume than the old AA in spite of the reloading manuals that claim the 2 cases can be loaded with the same data. Winchester was too lazy and cheap to reshoot all the data and simply claim 'close enough'. The pressures can't possibly be identical. The AA HS is a pain in the ass to load because they are all different lengths depending on when and where they were made.

As far as wads, Jimmy has it right except that the AA HS takes a taper hull wad. The reloading books have all kinds of recipes that are anywhere from impractical, impossible to load due to stack height, or just plain silly. You will find the manuals ignore the bit about taper or straight wall to a large extent and encourage you to use the wrong wads. They are wrong because of powder migration issues and case bulging when seating. As an example, the 12S0 is inappropriate for the AA HS but loads are published so it must be OK right? Just because you can get five shells assembled in the lab to run through a pressure gun does not make a load usable to a shooter.

My basic rule is use a taper hull wad (AA or clone, Remington STS or clone) in the AA and Remington hulls. Use a Federal style wad in the Federal hulls or euro hulls or the US made promo load hulls. Note the stupid new Federal High Overall is simply a rebadged STS. See how easy this is to keep track of?

FYI: A 'Reifenhauser' tube is just another name for a straight wall hull. It's named after the guy who figured out how to work harden plastic thus making plastic shotshells possible.

Hulls might be easy to find for you but I prefer to start with 3" then cut down to 2.5". The 3" are hard to find and I usually keep my own from waterfowl hunting and 2.5" are impossible to find here. I don't have any guns that are 2.75" chambered.

In my experience, 12 and 20 gauge Remington hulls load way better than Winchester hulls. The old AA hulls were great. The new HS type not so much. When you reloaded the old AA hulls there was no hole in the middle of the crimp. I've tried many times to adjust my machine to load the HS hulls but still get a hole in the middle most of the time and the case sometime collapses at the bottom. Fiocchi hulls are pretty decent but being straight walled they require more powder to maintain velocity. I'll stick to Remington as long as I can find them. There are lots of once fired AA HS hulls in the buckets where I shoot. Most of us just pass them by when we see them on the ground. If you are talking 28 and .410 then The Winchester AA's are superior.

In that case, it's certainly simple enough to tell. If you can't see a basewad visually then take a small flat blade screwdriver and feel the interior to the bottom. It there's a bump a short distance from the bottom that's the edge of the basewad.

I bet you find very few that are one piece construction these days. Most will have a very thin straight wall tube and a cupped basewad. They will be best served by a wad intended for a straight wall hull.

That makes sense. The HS hulls being a tapered hull have slightly less capacity than a straight walled hull of the same length so loading the exact same load will be a tad taller load column making the amount of plastic available for the crimp short leaving a hole in the middle. You should find the opposite issue going the other way. If you have a load that loads perfect in a tapered hull and try to use that in a straight walled hull, you SHOULD see a swirl in your crimp as there is too much plastic to crimp since the load column is slightly shorter. A faster powder to reduce the powder charge or a slightly smaller shot charge should eliminate the hole in the centre by shortening the load column.

The problem with the hole in the closure is more likely due to shell length. A session with a caliper and you will find the Remington shells and compression formed AA average about 69mm, the AA HS about 68mm. They all vary slightly. The basewad in the AA HS takes up sufficient extra room so that the overall capacity of the HS is slightly less than the old style AA or the current Remingtons and being on average a millimeter shorter doesn't help. Thus, the pain in the ass part.

The easiest way to control stack height within reason is with wad pressure.

I don't let free AA HS hulls get away. They are useful especially for older repeaters that like brass headed shells. You just have to master your equipment to produce good loads.