doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Star crimp origin?

Larry;
Burard did not say that 2 3/4" shells did not exist prior to the star crimp.
You are reading something in which was not stated. What he stated was that "In England" the load which had previously been loaded in the nominal 2�" roll crimp hull (most often actually 2 9/16" to 2 5/8") was put up in the longer hull when star crimped. This gave the loaded shell the same approximate length.
He makes no mention of the same practise being applied to other lengths of shells. The "Nominaly" 2�" 12 gauge game gun was the Standard shotgun in England. All the different lengths of available shells & when they became a standard was not even being discussed other than their relation to a star crimp.
Burrard was certainly fully aware that 2 3/4" shells had been loaded for years in both England & the US. He in fact strongly warned against using "Standard" 2 3/4" American shells in Brit 2�" guns, not because of the longer hull, but the heavier load.

My VL&D catalog of 1930 offered 2 3/4" and 3" shells on request. They most likely were roll crimped.

Remington introduced their new star crimp in early 1939, with all the different loads being phased in completely by 1947.

Per my 1936 A&F catalog, target loads averaged a bit over $1/box.

Got to remember, the prices you see in many of these old catalogues is the list price. The actual net selling price was often quite a bit less. However, it does appear that us Baby Boomers came up through a time of the lowest price shotgun shells. I shot lots of Doves with those $1.69 Federal Monarks, and I bought many cases, not flats, of the early compression formed AAs for $39.95.

I don't see any mention of star crimps in my 1939 Stoeger catalogue, but in the 1941 the Winchester Ranger and the Western Xpert Super-Skeet and Super-Trap have them. I found the review of the "New Remington Crimp" in the Shotgun Dope section of the September 1939, The American Rifleman, page 19. They said it gave slightly better patterns in regular barrels but could see no difference with a Cutts Compensator.

Well then, is it reasonable to assume that the star crimp is an innovation of Remington? Probably created in house?

Researcher, is there anyway you could post the review of the Remington crimp that you mentioned?

Two Piper, my post was in response to the above quote. American gun and ammo makers had arrived at the 2 3/4" case length (and chamber length) as standard for 12-16-20ga over a decade prior to that, although there were a few holdouts (like Hunter, sticking with the short 16). And of course the old, short factory shells remained readily available for some time even after 2 3/4 became "standard" in the States.

There were other holdouts as well. Browning, for one, kept chambering the 16 ga. A5 for 2 9/16" shells up to about WWII. Don't know the exact date they went to 2 3/4" standardized chambers.

SRH

At the present time the scanner portion of my printer/faxer/copier/scanner is not working, so I can't scan in that 1939 review of the Remington crimp.

Generally the only one of the "short shells" to be made for some time after WW-II was the 2 9/16" 16-gauge shells, which lasted up to the early 1960s. Probably because of all those 2 9/16 inch chambered Browning A5s.

The 8th and 9th Editions of the Western Ammunition Handbook, while undated, show the post-War style Super-X and Xpert boxes and still offer 2 5/8 inch 12-gauge, 2 9/16 inch 16-gauge and 2 1/2 inch 20- and 28-gauge Xpert Shells. I don't have a 10th edition, but by the 11th Edition, Western Ammunition Handbook, April 1947, the only short Xpert or Super-X shells offered were 2 9/16 inch 16-gauges.

In the early 1920s, in both 1 1/4 ounce 12-gauge and 1 ounce 20-gauge, the "modern" progressive burning powder shotgun shells were introduced in 2 3/4 inch cases. When the 16-gauge 1 1/8 ounce load was added the next year it was put up in the old 2 9/16 inch case. When Remington Arms Co., Inc. introduced their 5-shot Model 11 and 3-shot The Sportsman autoloaders in 16-gauge in 1931, they were chambered for 2 3/4 inch shells, and Remington brought out a special shell the Auto-Express in a 2 3/4 inch case, still with 1 1/8 ounce of shot, but with a quarter dram equiv. more progressive burning powder.



When Winchester/Western added this 2 3/4 inch load to their 16-gauge Super-Speed/Super-X offerings about 1938, they list it a a Mag!! Not to be confused with the 16-gauge 2 3/4 inch Magnum shell with 1 1/4 ounces of shot which came out in 1955, along with the 1 1/2 ounce 12-gauge and 1 1/8 ounce 20-gauge 2 3/4 inch Magnums.

Interesting how quickly the old, short shells disappeared. Doesn't take more than a glance at the list of shells available from American ammo makers in my 1940 "Shooter's Bible" to see that there were far more "shorties" out there than the "new" 2 3/4" standard. In one respect, it's too bad they disappeared from the market so quickly. One of the results was a whole lot of chamber-lengthening on older American shotguns (some of which weren't that much "older" at the time)--as well as on a lot of European shotguns. The problem with that being that the old guns weren't built to handle the new (often heavier, often higher pressure) loads.