Advice on powder for 12 gauge brass shells

[bigpete]

Big balls hanging out always look sexy

[bladeracer]

This has been an interesting thread, but Idiot question. What is the advantage of brass shells over plastic. Is it just longivity?

I think my only interest is because I can reload them with a simple set of dies rather than have to have another press just for shotshells. If anybody knows of a set of dies for shotshells that I can use in a standard press definitely let me know. Even something like a LeeLoader would be awesome for the small amount of use I might want from it. Birdshot ammo is cheap enough that I doubt it's worth reloading, but I always have shot on hand as I use it to cast bullets and it'd be simple to cast my own slugs and buck when required.

[bigpete]

Mate I don't even used a set of dies, just a press to seat the bullet. It's even easier making shot loads,you just need glue to hold the over shot card in place and its done ! I'll post a series of photos on how I load these soon

[bigpete]

Oh and RCBS sells cowboy action dies that will fit in a Lee press with the quick change set up , but they're pretty expensive

[bladeracer]

Mate I don't even used a set of dies, just a press to seat the bullet. It's even easier making shot loads,you just need glue to hold the over shot card in place and its done ! I'll post a series of photos on how I load these soon

Yep, the same as people reloaded them for decades in the bush, dead easy

[bladeracer]

Oh and RCBS sells cowboy action dies that will fit in a Lee press with the quick change set up , but they're pretty expensive

Yes, those are the only dies I've found so far, but they only work with brass hulls (according to RCBS at least). I'd go with these if I can source the brass hulls. With no resizing and shotgun chamber pressures I'm guessing they'd last forever.

[bigpete]

I personally wouldn't even bother getting any even for loading the brass shells. The only thing I'd find handy would be the shell holder for seating primers but its not entirely necessary. As for loading slugs into target shells,I just cut the crimp off,dump the bird shot, pull the wad and cut the petals off,reseat the was with my homemade slug on top,then dribble hot candle wax on top of that to hold it in. Crude but it works. Making wax slugs works pretty well too but I've never shot any animals with them.

[bladeracer]

I personally wouldn't even bother getting any even for loading the brass shells. The only thing I'd find handy would be the shell holder for seating primers but its not entirely necessary. As for loading slugs into target shells,I just cut the crimp off,dump the bird shot, pull the wad and cut the petals off,reseat the was with my homemade slug on top,then dribble hot candle wax on top of that to hold it in. Crude but it works. Making wax slugs works pretty well too but I've never shot any animals with them.

Yep, I'll get some shells first and then decide whether I need or want the dies.

[bigpete]

But that's out of my gun with no chokes and built like a brick s**t house. Other options would be to dump the powder and take say 10% away and reload with the rest or use field loads with a heavier charge of shot than your slug. My homemade slug weighs in at 510gn whereas a 28 gram target load weighs ~437gn so I actually loaded them using 22gn Trailboss instead of the original powder and they were very mild to shoot. The wax slugs are even easier to get right and shoot surprisingly accurate. We were shooting at targets out past 200m with them out of my old IAC and once we got the drop nutted out we were hitting a target 18" high by about 6" wide pretty regularly.

[bladeracer]

But that's out of my gun with no chokes and built like a brick s**t house. Other options would be to dump the powder and take say 10% away and reload with the rest or use field loads with a heavier charge of shot than your slug. My homemade slug weighs in at 510gn whereas a 28 gram target load weighs ~437gn so I actually loaded them using 22gn Trailboss instead of the original powder and they were very mild to shoot. The wax slugs are even easier to get right and shoot surprisingly accurate. We were shooting at targets out past 200m with them out of my old IAC and once we got the drop nutted out we were hitting a target 18" high by about 6" wide pretty regularly.

I love Trailboss too
I also want to try firing shot out of my .45 calibre muzzle loading rifle.
I'm expecting it to be pretty much like a .410 shotgun.

[bigpete]

I'd expect so. I've made shot shells for my 44 mag using old 303 brass and Trailboss and they are very effective out to 15m with size 8 shot on pigeons but beyond that the rifling spreads the pattern too much. I've even shot a crow with them ! But the only rabbit I shot got down its hole after being shot in the head at 10m so its safe to say they're really only good up to pigeon size critters.

[bladeracer]

I'd expect so. I've made shot shells for my 44 mag using old 303 brass and Trailboss and they are very effective out to 15m with size 8 shot on pigeons but beyond that the rifling spreads the pattern too much. I've even shot a crow with them ! But the only rabbit I shot got down its hole after being shot in the head at 10m so its safe to say they're really only good up to pigeon size critters.

These will just be for fun. I have a good selection of rifles for when I want to kill something cleanly. I shot thousands of birds with the shotgun when I was a kid and one-shot kills were not common. Nowadays, with a shotgun I won't use anything smaller than buckshot for hunting.

[bigpete]

Unfortunately you can't use a rifle in the vineyard sheds for pest control even a modern air rifle tends to put holes in the roof if you miss