has any one used an RCBS 12 GA. COWBOY BRASS RELOADING DIE? is it worth the price and does one need it to load brass hulls?
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has any one used an RCBS 12 GA. COWBOY BRASS RELOADING DIE? is it worth the price and does one need it to load brass hulls?
You don't need it or want it, it will work your brass around mouth and cases won't last. I loaded those cases for years and they never expanded enough to worry about, used BP and card wads which needed to be almost 10 ga. size. Hot glue or some such to seal it all up, not having to crimp at all.
MT Chambers, thanks for the advise. that is what I was looking for. i'll save $90.00 for something I rely need. for a while I thought no one was going to respond to my query.12 gauge brass hulls are not cheep, so getting all the miles you can get out of them is paramount! is TRACK OF THE WOLF the best place to get 10 gauge size wads for the brass hulls, or is there a less expensive source? thanks.
I've been loading BP in paper shells and now I'm going to start loading the mag tec 12 ga from what understand you use 11 ga wads, nitro cards, top cards. I also load 10 ga and I have got my wads and everything from Midway and graf and sons.
boomer, thanks for the info. the two sources that you mentioned are where i am going to purchase my cards and felt wads. BTW, where do you find paper hulls in this day and age? and what is the 12 gauge load you use, black powder and oz. of shot? in 10 gauge also, i also have a dbl. 10 bore. thanks, best, later.
12 ga are fed trap cases they made a run of these few years back,you still can find them 10.00 a box. I got a 5 gal bucket from a friend and cut them back to 2 1/2 for chamber 70 grs black by vol dipped 125 thick nito card hand compressed dowel rod, 3/8 fiber wad,.070 mini nitro card,1 oz shot ,top card roll crimped. 2 7/8 chamber10 ga 100 grs black 125 n card 3/8 wad .030 card 1 7/8 shot, top card roll crimped. 10 ga I've used plastic and paper and the plastic is purdy much junk after 1 loading ,paper 3 loadings junk, putting a roll crimp on them gets tuff.
Do you need to FL size the brass shotshell? I'd be fine with no crimping, as noted above, but have wondered about the sizing of the shell body.
boommer, thanks again man! i rely needed the info on 10 bore loads. i to will use used plastic, can't afford brass hulls.
I have the C-H die and use it on steel 12ga. hulls I bought years ago.
Grapeshot, i have never heard of steel 12 gauge hulls. what do they use them in and on? brass, paper and aluminium hulls i have used.
Ever a get a line on a deal that was too good to pass up? Yeah, me to, mine was back in the mid 1990’s. I was working at Gunpowder Indoor Range, in Bel Air, MD and was perusing one of our trade flyers from Century Arms and found a deal on a case of Russian Bi-Metal 12 Gauge Shotgun Shells.Quote:
Originally Posted by toot
My co-worker and I bought a case and split it up. The shells worked great in my Rossi side-by-side, but wouldn’t function in his Mossberg pump. The nomenclature indicated that they were 2.75 inches shells and they did fit in both my Rossi’s three inch chambers and my 2.75 inch chambers of my Baikel SxS. They did have a serious drawback. Sometimes the primers were duds. These I would disassemble and put aside.
I used my metal hulls competing in Cowboy Action Shooting and collected lots of style points but they weren’t reloadable being Berdan primed, so I found the right size drill bit, fifteen-sixty fourths of an inch, and drilled out the old Berdan Primers, counter sunk the hole to insure that the # 209 shotgun primer would fit flush and reloaded several to see how they’d work.
I wasn’t impressed with the performance of my reloaded metal hulls. I did use Circle Fly wads and was able to snag a five gallon bucket of Alcan 12 gauge fiber wads, but I lost interest and put both the empties and loaded rounds in storage in my reloading shed.
Fast forward to 2000. I had decided to switch my shooting discipline from Traditional to Frontier Cartridge. I bought an 1866 “Yellowboy” from one of my shooting partners who had upgraded to a ’73, and started to reload my .45 Colt, .44WCF cartridges and Plastic 12 gauge hulls with Black Powder, Pyrodex, or 777 and more recently with Goex Pinnacle.
Then I remembered my stash of Russian shells. I disassembled all the Russian shells and separated the shot, wadding, and smokeless powder into separate containers. I was surprised to see the powder was a square flake and a pale green in color.
The shells that still had live primers I charged with 4.3cc’s of Pyrodex and reinstalled the heavy felt wads and replaced the #5 shot with 1.5 ounces of #7.5 shot. The Russians used a plastic cup that fit tight in the mouth of the hull that held the shot in place. I used those until I found about using white glue or Duco Cement to hold the over shot wad firmly in the hull.
Typical Black Powder clean-up procedures work well with these cases, but the copper plating does darken up very fast and green corrosion sometimes formed around the hull and had to be cleaned off before you could load or shoot them. I did try to shoot a few that had this verdigris around the case mouth and had to resort to using a cleaning rod to punch them out of the chambers of my double barreled shotgun. So from that point on I coated the hulls with Brasso, let them dry and threw them into my tumbler. They came out nice and shiny.
Out of all of this, I found that any #209 shot shell primer works with Black Powder or the subs.
So what does all this have to do with modifying these Russian hulls for use in repeaters? Well you had to get the background so you can see how much work I went thru to bring this information to my fellow shooters.
I’ve had a lot of time on my hands since I returned from Iraq and started hunting for a job, so as I was getting ready for the next Cowboy Shoot I thought I’d see what I could do with this stash of metal hulls because I wanted to use them in my IAC Lever Action 1887 12 gauge Shotgun..
In the above picture, the shells on the far left and far right are unmodified Berdan primed hulls. The one in the middle has a #209 primer seated in the hull replacing the original primers. Note the headstamp markings. The center one tells us that it was manufactured in December of 1992. December 1993 is the date on the outboard hulls. Also note the icon that tells the shooter that the hull has a Berdan type primer.
In this photo you can see the original length of 2.75 inches of the Russian hulls and the tarnish that covers them. On the right are the modified hulls that were shortened to 60mm and cleaned up with Brasso. Above the hulls are the rings that were cut from the front of long hulls. I used a tube cutter which causes a slightly crimped look to the mouth of the shortened hulls. The next time I start shortening any more hulls, I plan to get a small chop saw from Harbor Freight.
Once I had 25 hulls shortened, I tried to see how well they fed thru my 1887 lever action shotgun. All but eight chambered. I attributed this to old hulls that were fired using smokeless powder and the pressure expanded the hulls so they only fit in my double barreled SG. I had to go through my stash and find eight that would chamber freely in my 1887.
Once I had all the hulls shortened, polished, and ready to be reloaded, I retreated to my reloading shed. I did not have the disposable funds to get the Chop Saw, so I bought an eighteen inch length of three-quarter inch PVC tubing and measured and cut a 60mm length off of it to act as a case length gage and used a hack saw to score a ring around the circumference of the hull and then used the pipe cutter to shorten the hull to the proper length.
Once I had my old Lee Loader, pin block and wooden mallet out I proceeded to punch out the old primers. Once that was done I began re-priming using Fiocchi 209 primers. Again, the Lee Loader and some antique reloading tools I picked up some years ago came in handy.
The antique tools seen here are great for reloading brass hulls, but they did not work all that well with the Russian Steel hulls. I was real leery using the priming tool with the 209 primers, so I went with the Lee Loader’s priming tool/wad seater and the wooden mallet.
Once the primers were seated in the hulls, I used a Lee 4.0cc dipper to charge the hull with Goex Pinnacle 3Fg. I then seated a Circle Fly 11 gauge .125 inch over powder wad and applied pressure to compress the powder. I then seated a Circle Fly one half inch thick, 11 gauge fiber wad.
I then seated the shot cup I cut off from a smokeless12 gauge Federal wad. I then added a one and one-eighth ounce charge of #7.5 shot dropped from the dipper included in the Lee Loader Kit. After the shot was dumped into the hull I used a Circle Fly 10 gauge over shot card wad to secure the shot in the hull and put a bead of white glue around the inner perimeter of the hull to seal and secure the card in place.
The picture below shows all I needed to reload my Russian hulls once I have re-primed the hulls.
I normally use either Federal paper hulls, or any of the various plastic hulls I pick up at the matches I go to for my Black Powder shot shell loadings. I wanted to try something else and since I did not have any brass hulls I decided to experiment with the old Russian hulls I had. I can see a sizing die in my future to bring these hulls down to the correct diameter and circumference so they will feed easy in my particular shotgun.
I do have a MEC collet sizer, but it does not size the full length of the case so I haven’t been able to get more of these hulls to chamber in the 1887 SG. I’m known to do things the hard way, but I don’t look at it like that. I see a problem that needs a solution. A quick call to CH 4D Tool and Die and I had a 12 Gauge sizing die in a few days.
Again I retreated to the reloading shed and, with a little effort, I removed the screw in bushing from my RCBS Rock Chucker and installed the 12 Gauge Sizing Die and an RCBS 12 Gauge shell holder in the press and ram. I removed the de-capping stem from the die body as it wouldn’t remove the No. 209 primers from the hulls.
After coating the hulls with RCBS’s case sizing lubricant I ran them up into the sizing die. Some were hard to push up into the die and some weren’t, but after a trip through the die then just dropped into the chamber of my 1887 shotgun. But not all of them would allow the breach block to fully close. It seems that the rims are not uniform in thickness on these hulls. So I had to take a needle file and take metal off the forward edge of the rim until the hull allowed the breach block to close completely. This would have been easy if I had a small hobby lathe, but it was time consuming having to file a bit, check the fit, and file some more until it fit, and was able to chamber, locking the breach, and eject using the lever and extractors…….. This is so much fun.
(I noticed some closing problems with my Double Barrel but chalked that up to the hulls needed to be resized.) This project was becoming a real chore. I can only offer this conjecture; the Russians make their shotguns with sloppy specs to match their ammunition’s sloppy specs.
Here are the first batch of shells, all loaded and waiting for the glue to dry over the over shot wad.
I plan to have fun with this setup and really put both my Shotgun and new pistols through their paces.
IAC Reproduction Cowboy 1887 12 Gauge Lever Action Shotgun.
SPECIFICATIONS
SERIES: COWBOY
MODEL: 87W-1
GAUGE: 12 GA 2-3/4” CHAMBER
ACTION: LEVER ACTION, SPLIT LEVER
BARREL 20” WITH FIXED CYLINDER CHOKE
STOCK: HAND RUBBED AMERICAN WALNUT
MAGAZINE: 5 ROUNDS
SIGHTS: FRONT BEAD
FEATURES: LEATHER-WRAPPED SPLIT LEVER
MSRP $559.95
Cimarron’s 1887 Lever Action Shotgun
SPECIFICATIONS
SERIES: 1887 “Terminator” Lever Action Shotgun 22”
MODEL: AS1887SG-22
GAUGE: 12 GA 2-3/4” CHAMBER
ACTION: LEVER ACTION
BARREL 22” WITH FIXED CYLINDER CHOKE
STOCK: HAND RUBBED AMERICAN WALNUT
MAGAZINE: 5 ROUNDS
SIGHTS: FRONT BEAD
FEATURES: Color Case Hardened Frame
FINISH: Standard Blue
MSRP $1398.60
Lee Precision
4275 County Road U
Hartford, WI 53027
CH Tool $ Die 4D Die Co.
PO Box 889
Mount Vernon, OH 43050-0886
Circle Fly Wads
P.O. BOX 36
AIRVILLE, PA. 17302
P/F: 717.862.3600
Powder Inc.
1861 North College Ave.
Clarksville, AR 72830
Cimarron Firearms Co. Inc.
105 Winding Oak Road
Fredericksburg, TX 78624
Taylor's & Company, Inc.
304 Lenoir Drive
Winchester, VA 22603
Huntington Die Specialties (RCBS)
601 Oro Dam Blvd. East
Oroville, CA 95965, USA
Century Arms, International
430 South Congress Ave. Suite 1
Delray Beach, FL 33445
Madis, George (1977). “The Winchester Book”, Dallas: Taylor Publishing.
Grapeshot, that is a great treatise that you shared with us guys, i am going to put it in my save file. the reference to photos, none of them came up in your reply. could you send them to me in an E-MAIL would be great in seeing the rest of the story? the finished product. thanking you, toot.