Conditioning paper hulls

[HWooldridge]

I ran some paper Federal hulls through my crimp straightening process yesterday. It consists of putting a homemade flare tool in my drill press, then heating that with my hot air gun, set to 650F. Spin up the flare tool and push on the hull - hold for a count of 3 and you have an "ironed" hull that can be reloaded pretty easily. See pics for graphics of before and after.

[W.R.Buchanan]

My refurbish process is very similar but I find that directly heating the hull as it rotates with the mandrel works better.

With paper hulls all you are doing is reheating the wax in the paper. No need to over heat the wax.

Randy

[HWooldridge]

My refurbish process is very similar but I find that directly heating the hull as it rotates with the mandrel works better.

With paper hulls all you are doing is reheating the wax in the paper. No need to over heat the wax.

Randy

So you are letting the hull rotate with the mandrel, which in turn simply acts as a form?

[swamp]

My refurbish process is very similar but I find that directly heating the hull as it rotates with the mandrel works better.

With paper hulls all you are doing is reheating the wax in the paper. No need to over heat the wax.

Randy

I also use this method. Except I have the hull mouth down to get the wax to the mouth. Works well for me.
swamp

[stubshaft]

I usually do not iron out the hulls until the third firing.

[megasupermagnum]

Those look like the new Federal gold medal paper hulls. I've been doing a fair amount of shooting with them this year. I have yet to have a crimp fail on me. Every single one, 100% fails at the base where the tube meets the brass. It depends, but most fail at 4-5 loads. I don't think I've had any make it past 6. I even had some fall in the water duck hunting which I immediately shook off and put in my pocket. That did not shorten their life at all.

I appreciate you taking the time to show this method, but I just don't see what the purpose is if you are loading on a machine. The deprime punch opens the case mouth all that it needs to. I don't have a long history of loading paper hulls, so I've been pleasantly surprised to find that loading paper hulls is no big deal. If anything they are easier, they crimp like a dream. Sure the life is slightly shorter than some plastic cases, maybe half that of an STS, I'm fine with that. They aren't that horribly expensive. They actually seem to be better with blackpowder. I still get 4-5 loads from them, where blackpowder in a plastic hull fails at about half that.

[HWooldridge]

Those look like the new Federal gold medal paper hulls. I've been doing a fair amount of shooting with them this year. I have yet to have a crimp fail on me. Every single one, 100% fails at the base where the tube meets the brass. It depends, but most fail at 4-5 loads. I don't think I've had any make it past 6. I even had some fall in the water duck hunting which I immediately shook off and put in my pocket. That did not shorten their life at all.

I appreciate you taking the time to show this method, but I just don't see what the purpose is if you are loading on a machine. The deprime punch opens the case mouth all that it needs to. I don't have a long history of loading paper hulls, so I've been pleasantly surprised to find that loading paper hulls is no big deal. If anything they are easier, they crimp like a dream. Sure the life is slightly shorter than some plastic cases, maybe half that of an STS, I'm fine with that. They aren't that horribly expensive. They actually seem to be better with blackpowder. I still get 4-5 loads from them, where blackpowder in a plastic hull fails at about half that.

I spun these so I could get rid of the star crimps and switch over to roll crimp - but I discovered that they worked better for rolling if I trimmed away the bulk of the folds. I am going to load black powder in some of these paper hulls but haven't done so yet.

The main reason I use paper in the field is because I can lose them and not worry about recovery. They degrade pretty quickly, which the farmers like. Plastic hulls seem to last forever - or at least many years.

[W.R.Buchanan]

So you are letting the hull rotate with the mandrel, which in turn simply acts as a form?

Yes and you push the hull onto the mandrel as it turns and heats up. It is good to wear a glove on your hand as the hulls and mandrel do get hot. Once the hull gets close to the chuck you pull it back off and all evidence of a Previous Roll Crimp is gone. It will also remove fold crimps on plastic hulls, but you can see some residual evidence of the previous crimp.

Randy

[megasupermagnum]

That's one thing I really like. I try to pick up all my shells but there's no such thing as getting them all. You will always loose some. A paper hull will be gone by spring. I regularly find plastic hulls in farm fields that resurface about 20-30 years old. I don't think I've ever found one over 30 years old, but they don't degrade for a LONG time. With no real drawbacks I've found, I'm loving paper hulls.

[Walstr]

Hmmm, nice lookin' red hulls thar. Think I see my thumb print thar?

[HWooldridge]

Hmmm, nice lookin' red hulls thar. Think I see my thumb print thar?

Perhaps…