You come to the right place, but right now I don't have the time to elaborate. Ask specific questions and someone here will give your correct answers. There are indeed differences in Gold Medals, cheapo Federals and the two different AAs.

BP

 

AA new vs old you can tell externally the new shells are shiney and slick on the outside. Inside the new are a two piece hull and base wad. The old AA hulls are a one piece tapered hull. They load the same, may need to adjust your loader a bit between the two.

With any hull you can take one apart to see the construction then find the right hull in the loading guide. Many of the promo loads from the Remmington, Federal and Winchester can be re-loaded, but only a limited number of times and may even have 6 point crimps and sometimes heat sealed crimps to make them of little use for reloading.

Best thing to do is find a good source to quality reloadable hulls. Most clubs sell once fired hulls and if you keep your eyes and ears open you can find fellow shooters who don't reload that will give you there once fired hulls.

I'll have to post more later on Federal and Remmington hulls, unless someone else can post before I do.

APEXDUCK

 

Lyman is working on their 5th edition of the Shotshell Reloading Handbook. I'm sure that will be helpful.

I'd read the forums about the new AA hulls. Information I gathered about problems with the new 2 piece hull was enough to make me switch to Remington hulls.

I started to use Remington Nitro's for all my target loads but all the "once fired" hulls I'm getting seem to have an excessive amount corrosion on the brass. I suspect I'll just use the Remington STS hulls. The bad news is that I like to seperate all my loads by hull/color and I already have STS's loaded for pheasant hunting.

 

Bill - For the purpose of simplicity in answering your question, shotgun hulls basically come in two styles: straight walled (Federal Gold Medal) and tapered wall (AA). This is the information you want to scrutinize from the reloading books. These two hull types call for different types of wads - - in order to ensure efficient powder burning, PSI, and consistent velocities. For example, an old style AA hull can achieve "best" results using a wad designed for a tapered wall hull, like the WAA12 or a Claybuster CB01118. But you can find data using a wad designed for a straight wall hull, like a FED12S0 wad, in an old style AA hull. And of course, a wad like a Windjammer has data for both types of hulls readily available.

If you are unsure of whether a particular hull is tapered or straight walled, you can always "see fer yurself" by getting out the hacksaw and cutting the hull in half lengthwise. In fact, for a novice I'd recomend getting the hacksaw out because the difference between the two hull types is very obvious when cut-away (of course there are cut-away pictures in your Lyman #4 to look at).

In the meantime, figure out what kind of hulls you want to load and if you don't find any handy data, search the archives here using the name of that shell or drop another question asking for data on the particular hull.

As a final word, the reloading books are always behind in their data/shell type. The manufacturers are always changing the names of their hulls, creating new plastics to make hulls out of, tampering with the base material in the hulls, changing the crimp styles, changing the brass to steel, creating "one-piece" hulls, ad infinitum. It's called "marketing". And believe me, when AA came out with "new style hulls" two years ago or so, it increased sales for a while because shooters are an odd lot - - always wanting to be the first to talk about "something new" in the shooting world!

 

Hi,
I'm using Remington shurshot field and Remington light magnum shells.
Does anybody know the reloading title of these e.g. unibody sp?
Thanks,
Ciaran

 

Ciaran- Six fold crimp or eight fold crimp? Inside the hull, is the bottom base material paper or plastic? Newer hulls or ten years old?

 

Hi KGB,
the case is totally green inside and out with a high brass.
If you turn it over the the primer sits into plastic not brass which seems to be more common. So it looks like a brass outer ring with a green plastic inner ring and the 209 in the centre.
These are new hulls from Remington Shureshot and light magnums. Does this help
Thanks,
Ciaran.

 

Sounds like a Remington Unibody type of hull, probably a straight tube.

 

I don't know about the magnum hulls, but I've got green Sureshot, Gun Club, and a couple different varriations of both green and black one piece hulls. Both 6 and 8 point crimp. Sport load, Hi-velocity, etc. Remington is very prolific in shotgun shell names. Same hull though, and being a one piece formed hull it is not a straight wall hull. It is slightly tapered just like the STS and Nitro 27s. Same loading data too. If you inded do have older 2 piece hulls, that's a different story altogether. RXPs and the old Primers are slightly different too with the RXPs being a hull all of thier own. Don't see many of them arround any more!

BP

 

Ciaran- The hull you described seems like Rem Unibody. If you have a Lyman Reloading Manual #4, the hull can be found on page 38: Remington Unibody, one piece straight case, no seperate base wad. The reloading data would be "Remington Unibody SP Plastic Cases Fold Crimp". Older style Remington Unibodies were tapered tubes as are Remington RXP, Rem RTL, Win AA, Rem STS, Peters Blue Magic. As I mentioned previously, the manufacturers change the tube frequently and cutting a hull in half will tell you the real story as to what you have in your possession. So, are you loading for ZZ Bird, Olympic Skeet, other clay games, or hunting?

 

For sporting clays I use 18.2 gr. of Promo and the following hulls:
For...
1 oz. of 8's-----Winchester AA Red
1 1/8 of 8's----Winchester AA Gray
1 1/8 of 9's----Federal Top Gun, Winchester Universal or any other red shell.
1 1/8 of 7 1/2's--Any black or green shell

In this way, I can always tell what load I have in my hand by looking at the shell.

Knowing the specifics of the different hull types does't seem to matter as much as the condition of the hull.

18.2 gr. of Promo powder is a very light load, yet it gets the job done. I don't worry about excessive pressure because I am low on all charts. I use a MEC 650 reloader and have had no problems using Claybuster replacement wads WWA12 and WWA12SL.

Most shooters toss away the "cheapies" and there is an abundance of emptys on most courses. Just make sure the hulls are dried out well before reloading.

HOWEVER, I find that this works for me and you should not follow this plan unless you are sure that it is safe.

 

KJB,
Thanks for the info, I was leaning towards the unibody myself but when you look at the Lyman diagrams they not very clear in the book with regards to the primer seat being plastic.
I need to use American hulls to suit the CCI 209 primers, none of the European hulls allow the CCI 209 primer to seat correctly.
Cheddite 209's seem to suit the European hull better.
Ciaran