doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com History of 10 ga. magnum load

Researcher;
The Rem-UMC shell, may well have been cut down from a longer hull, but with the proper top wad it would appear most likely to have been a factory job.
For the Selby load as I understand it Selby who was located on the west cost, California I believe, ordered out primed empties or sometimes loaded with powder charge & wads & then loaded or added shot from a California tower in order to save heavy shipping charges for the lead.
This hull, particularlly given the long length of the brass head was no doubt cut down from a longer one. The fact that these exist though would seem to indicatethere was a market for at least a certain amount of 10ga shells shorter than 2 7/8".
I highly suspect the HeyDay of the shorter 10 was from the emergence of breech loaders in the late 1860s until perhaps into the 1880s. At this point in time many 10ga guns saw use as general purpose upland guns & were not considered strictly as waterfowl guns. Thus lighter weight guns using lighter loads were available. Gradually I suppose it sunk in that a ten gague using 1oz-1�oz loads offered no advantage over a 12ga with the same shot charge so they sort of faded into oblivion.
An 1895/96 Clabrough Golcher & Co catalog lists a line of Selby shells. 10 gauge black powder loads are listed with 1, 1 1/8, & 1�oz of sot. The 1oz loads have 3 3/4 or 4 drams of powder while both the 1 1/8 & 1� oz loads are available with 4, 4� & 4� drams of powder. Smokeless loads are listed with 3� or 3 3/4 DE with 1 1/8oz shot or 4 DE with 1�oz. Two lines of "Target" loads are then given which state 56 grs Smokeless powder with 1 3/8oz of shot. This is the 42 gr bulk smokeless which would make this a 4DE load. No length is listed for any of these.
UMC trap, UMC Smokeless, UMC Waldsrode & Winchester Blue Rival shells are all listed as 2 7/8" length with no load given. Club, Nitro Club & Climax shells are stated as available at same prices but no data given. All these are paper shells.

Any idea what the velocity was with those 4, 4 1/4, and 4 1/2 drams were?

No, but with the high quality black powder of the day I would assume they were quite fast. I recall reading some where many years back, "American Rifleman" I think, that black powder reached its zenith at about this point in time.

Well we have wandered away from the original subject of this post, the 3 1/2 inch Magnum-Ten!!

To continue with what was posted above, I have a 1903 Shreve & Barber Co., San Francisco, Cal. catalogue which has two pages dedicated to their Selby factory loaded shells, but they don't mention case length on any of their shells. Excelsior was their black powder shell and the 10-gauge load offered was 4 drams and 1 1/8 ounces of shot at $2.20 per hundred. Superior was their lower priced smokeless powder shell and again their 10-gauge load offered was 4 drams of bulk smokeless (E.C., Schultze, Dupont or Hazard) or the equivalent in dense smokeless powder (Ballistite or Laflin & Rand) and 1 1/8 ounces of shot, for $3.00 per hundred. Their best shell was the Challenge and again the load offered was the 4 dram 1 1/8 ounce at $3.40 per hundred. For 1/8 ounce more shot add 10 cents per hundred and for chilled shot add 20 cents per hundred.

Their NPE offerings in 10-gauge brass shells were 2 5/8, 2 3/4, 2 7/8 and 3 inch lengths. In paper hulls for black powder 2 5/8 or 2 7/8 inch. In nitro powder 10-gauge paper hulls they offered 2 3/4, 2 7/8, 3, and 3 1/4 inch lengths.