doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Holland & Holland 67mm vs RST 2.5in shells

Cant say for 12ga, but I just went through it with 20ga shells, they are too long for my 2.5 inch chambers.

what shotgun did you use? how did you know they were to long?

2�"= 63.5mm; 2 9/16" = 65.09; 2 5/8" = 66.68"; 2 3/4" = 69.85mm
As long as the gun has a forcing cone of at least 3/8" rather than a Step there should be no problem shooting 67mm shells as long as the pressure is proper for the gun. Do not shoot shells loaded to higher pressures than the gun was designed for, regardless of the length.

according to some threads the flues ithica is 8200psi. im not sure what the psi of the holland loads are. they say lite load. i have krupp steel barrels. no pitting. it is in excellent condition. ive shot polywad vintager no issues. about 25x i,m thinking about staying with rst and polywad. now what to do with these holland shells

Last week I was in Wales shooting driven birds. Our group of 8 guns had various old and modern guns with damascus and steel barrels and shot 65 and 67 mm cartridges interchangeably because CIP says you can - read the last line at the bottom of page 1 of the linked document.

http://www.cip-bobp.org/homologation/en/tdcc_public?page=1&cartridge_type_id=7

65 and 67 mm British #6's of 7/8 ounce in 20 bore and 1 ounce in 12 bore are very effective on pheasants, mallards and red-leg partridges.

A side note - a Purdey representative loaned me a Beesley action Purdey demonstrator for the last drive of the trip. I killed 15 high pheasants on the drive and enjoyed shooting a VERY nice gun.

I have a Stevens 345, there is a link to the post I wrote in this post that Drew included, you can clearly see the open crimp is pinched and deformed with the 67mm loads from H&H.

The H&H shells will likely work in a Flues . . . but you might not like them in comparison to RST 2 1/2". Most British shells we can get in this country are field loads. As such, they can be a bit on the "hot" side if you're shooting a lot--at targets, for example. The RST shells are both true 2 1/2" and usually at a more moderate velocity than the British shells we can get here.

The typical problem with 67-67.5MM shells in a 2 1/2" gun comes with old (pre-1900) doubles that don't really have a forcing cone, but rather just a "step" from the chamber into the barrel. In those cases, you'll get blown ends and likely sharp recoil from the longer hulls.

Never assure short case or CIP rating means low pressure. English make good shot shells, but Flues would mandate low pressure shells be used. For low pressure requirements I would first shop at RST.

Yes, I agree. I tried to obtain pressure information for the H&H shells was not successful. RST will provide pressure data for all their shells. In the absence of information for the H&H shells, I'm going to stick with RST. Plus, they are very nice folks and these shells are made here in the USA...