Should I keep my once fired slug hulls?

[Russel Nash]

Hi all,

I haven't started reloading anything for shotgun yet.

I have shot plenty of the 12 gauge Remington reduced recoil (high brass) slugs and some of the Winchester Win-Lite 12 gauge slugs. They both were originally roll crimped.

I also have plenty of Winchester AA hulls that have the "star style" crimp.

I haven't bought any moulds yet to cast slugs or buck yet.

I was doing some spring cleaning, and I'm about to pitch those freakishly long green and grey hulls.


What say you?

[x101airborne]

I would keep em. There is a re-conditioning tool you can use to re-open the mouth for reloading. They should be good strong hulls, although I have not personally used the Remingtons.

[TRG3]

I've loaded new 12 gauge Fiocchi hulls with deer slugs from Lee and Lyman molds as well as roundballs, roll crimping the final product. Then, in the once-fired hull, I rotated a pair of needle nosed pliers to open up the mouth in order to reloaded them a second time. While it takes a little effort to coax the wad into the mouth of the once-fired hull, they do go and by re-roll crimping, the reloads shot just as good as the first-loads. From my limited experience, I would think that getting the wad into the used hull would be the main challenge of reloading.

FYI...I tried loading slugs with a fold crimp, but could never get it to stay closed for any length of time, always creeping open a tiny bit. While the slugs shot okay, they just never looked cosmetically correct. In addition, by roll crimping I never had to worry about grabbing a shell loaded with bird shot thinking it was a slug. With roll crimping, no more writing "Slug" on the side of the hull.

[9.3X62AL]

I've not yet reloaded a slug into a shotshell, so this may be a dumb question.......but don't the wad guide/fingers assist in starting and seating a wad column, just as with a shotload? Could the wad guide be used or modified to guide the slug into place?

[Russel Nash]

@ TR3, what have your results been like with the round balls?

I mean accuracy wise???
What size are these round balls?


Thanks!

[Russel Nash]

By the way, I went to my trash can and dug those hulls out of there.

[flounderman]

never throw anything away that is reloadable

[Russel Nash]

Yeah, i had this gut feeling. So I googled something like "how to reload shotgun shells" last night. So I stumbled across a youtube video with some heavily german accented dude. He used some sort of hand cranked vise contraption which i guess spun against the plastic hull and heated it enough to do the roll crimp.

[TRG3]

Russell...Concerning roundball accuracy, I've been getting three shot groups of around 1" at 50 yards off the bench in my 12 gauge Ultra Slug Hunter using .690 roundballs. Here's what has worked for me, as follows:

Fiocchi 2 3/4" new hull
27.0 grains Herco
over shot/powder thin card
Federal S3 wad (place a 20 gauge .125 hard card in the bottom of the wad for the
roundball to rest on
.690 pure lead roundball which had been rolled to remove remainder of sprue
roll crimp

Of course, YMMV depending on your firearm. I have under .50 cents in components with this load since I get my lead free from plumbers who run across it in older homes. This is a mild load compared with factory slug loads. I took a couple of does with it last season, both being under 50 yards and it easily did the job. One hint that you need to know is that when pouring larger roundballs like the .690, you need to keep pouring melted lead in the mold for a bit longer compared with smaller roundballs, like .45 or .50. If you don't, you'll get a hollow spot right where the sprue is. Also, Lee offers a .690 roundball mold for under $20 plus shipping. Best of luck in your loading.