I'll be in the minority, but I prefer the Gun Club hulls to the STS. The reason is laziness - I shoot a semi-auto and the Gun Clubs are easier to pick up with a magnet stick than the brass headed STS shells.
The STS shells reload with a bit less effort on the downstroke (MEC 9000.) I don't keep track of number of reloads on my shells, just throw away when they start splitting.
The Clay and Field shells are my favorite - easy pick up and smooth like the STS.

 

Your going to get a lot of advice. Mine is they load the same. STS will last a loading or two longer. You'll find Gun Clubs vary in length a little bit but not enough to hurt anything.

 

Around here the GC is king. But only because most HS trap/SC teams shoot them and there is an abundance of once fired hulls just laying around for the taking.

Steve

 

IMHO - For Reloading STS are great, Gun Clubs are very good. Main difference is Gun Clubs have steel bases. That can be a problem in some circumstances.

As factory ammo, STS has harder, more uniform shot. That means they usually pattern tighter than Gun Clubs. Tighter can be better in some applications, e.g. long yardage trap and long shots in sporting, and irrelevant in other applications, e.g. skeet.

I shoot skeet and non-competition sporting. To me STS are not worth paying a premium.

 

i have a mec9000(used to be my grandfathers). Not sure if that matters but will try both the new Win AA HS hulls and Rem STS to see what it likes to eat best. Might try snagging some Rem GC's next time i am out shooting but the garbage cans always seem to be filled with Fiocchi or Federals.

 

I have a MEC 9000... I reload both the old style AA's, new style AA's, and STS. I used to reload GC's, but stopped recently

For me, the MEC 9000 loves those AA's, old style or new style... doesn't matter. Never a hiccup with those with winchester or cheddite primers. Newer style AA's require a little more pre-crimp

With STS's and GC's, I have had an occasional issue seating primers when the remington hull is once fired. One or two out of every 50 once fired ones will not seat the primer fully using the same settings I use for the AA's Second or third time around, easy peasy. Its not bad, but it will bind up the machine on occasion on the once fired ones. There are ways to deal with that up front.

But never had to deal with that seating issue on winchester hulls. Some guys never have this issue, but I will get it sometimes on the first reload.

 

I reloaded GC exclusively for over 3 years. Great shells to reload but can be hard to resize a bit. I now reload STS and love them. Like butter to resize.

 

As you probably already know, the STS is a brass base hull, and the Gun Club is a steel base hull. With a Mec 9000 collet resizer the steel bases are not a problem at all.

I reload both styles and have torture tested both with the recipes that I run.

With STS hulls I can reload them 15 times with almost zero hull failures. With Gun Club hulls that number falls to 10.

If you're willing to cull out failed hulls along the way you certainly can go beyond my numbers with either of them. It's just my preference to use those numbers above, and then toss the entire batch.

 

Thanks for those numbers and I will still inspect the STS hulls as i approach 15 reloads on them. I have an old 15lb powder keg(IMR HI Skor 700x..net weight 12lbs), a 5lb can of IMR HI-Skor 700X and 5lb metal can of IMR SR 7625 (discontinued now) but appears has a lower pressure than the 700x after looking at some old recipes. Have about 750 of the red color WA12R wads(i think i used these for "porch" loads and 500 Western WT12 orange wads for the trap shooting i was doing. 3000 Win 209 primers but zero hulls!!!!...lol(besides the 100 i just shot this past weekend). The Mec 9000 my grandfather had an adjustable/universal charge bar in it so going to try to get it all set up over the next week or two while I stockpile my used hulls after some weekend time at the gun club(as much as allowed by the wife..lol)

 

The STS is the better hull, but GC's are much more common (at least around here) so I end up loading a lot more of them. If I was picking up hulls off the ground I wouldn't skip over a GC and just pick up STS's (or Nitros).

Remember, this is 12 ga we're talking about. Other gauges are different.

 

In my experience I like the remington compression formed hulls of all kinds, green GC, teal GC, the black ones I think may be labeled H/V, the translucent green field and clay and the sts, they all seem to load the same for me, maybe some variation on how the crimp looks but the same otherwise. I use CF Remingtons for my hunting loads and I inherited well over 1000 AACF hulls from my grandpa and his trap shooting days.

 

I believe the STS shells are more consistent with respect to internal volume. I've loaded GCs which were trimmed to length many times yet there were always variation in the crimps with some having a swirl and some having a hole. With untrimmed STS, the crimps were much more consistent so I can assume that the difference is in the internal volume.

for 1oz loads, try the TGT12 wads.

 

STS. Less effort to resize and easier on the collet. The length of GC hulls varies quite a bit. You will have to tolerate an occasional swirl in the crimp. Don't drive yourself crazy trying to adjust swirls out.

 

6 of 1 half dozen of the other, I have them all. If pinned down the 6 point black Remington hulls (gun club) last the longest, I have totes of Premiers and Nitros, just never get around to using them, got thousands of the black, and green GC's.


cdb

 

6 of 1 and half a dozen of the other. Ditto the above comments regarding length variability in the Gun Club hull, but I'd rate durability the same.

 

I've watched the loading cycles on Rem STS, Nitros and Gun Clubs real closely for my 12 gauge clays loads. Agree with the counts of 15 reloads for STS, about 12 for Nitros, and 10 for Gun Clubs. The ribbed walls of the Gun Clubs seem to make the crimp petals a little faster to burn and wear and split. ALL of those wear numbers are double or more than any current production competing hull (Win, Federals (except the HOA, which I don't have enough of to specify a duty cycle except is SHOULD be the same as a Nitro at least), certainly the Euro hulls).

Shooting an O/U and loading with a strong press and strong arm, I never see a practical difference in the two types of head cover metals, except the Gun Clubs will rust in an hour if gotten wet.

good luck, garrisonjoe

 

To short bus it, the Factory STS ammo is all about producing the best patterns and hulls having brass bases, while the Gun club ammo is more about keeping prices down, via cheaper hulls to produce (steel bases), and slightly faster burning gun powder that they can use less of for each round.

As for second time around on the brass, steel base hulls can be harder to size, can stick to the chambers more once fired, but both have the same amount of hull volume, so can be reloaded with the same data.

As for better pattern, really comes down to what your using the ammo for, and if say Skeet in 12 gauge, either of the two over kill to just break a target at that short of a distance. Now is say trap back at the 27 yard line, then the better pattern out of the STS factory loads, does count.

 

Currently I will load any 12 gauge hull. Except Winchester HSAA.

 

Are you seeing base wad separation issues with the 12 gauge AA-HS hulls?

 

I load STS, GC and Nitros all of the time. With a 9000e I don't feel the difference in the steel base and after 10s of thousands or reloads I don't think my machine seems to care if its brass or steel. I will say that the GC plastic seems to pull out of the steel base more especially with a semi-auto gun. I glance at the base to check for separation, super quick overall condition check, stuff it into the machine, make sure its not leaking bb's, box em up and shoot them. Agree don't overthink the swirls. I bought one of those fancy hull trimmers but tossed it in a drawer a long time ago.

 

I used to love GC’s but now days hull length is all over the place.
I can get a gaping hole in one and the next one twisted and swirling like a tornado. Very frustrating.
The 20 gauge GC’s seem to still be great though.
I stick to my stash of STS,Nitro’s and older black Remington Sport loads and leave the GC’s on the ground for others to pick up.

 

I've loaded both STS and Gun Clubs. Same recipes. No problems. As smooth and easy as the STS's and Nitros are to reload and scads of recipes for all three, the garbage cans are overflowing (figuratively, o'course) with GC's that are mostly free for the taking. And IMHO, they're comparable to the others. Oh, did I mention they're free?

 

The main difference is the color of the plastic. The gold Nitros, the greenhead STS the Gun Club and the translucent Field and Clay all load the same but you can color code your different loads with the choice of hull. Other than that, as you probably can tell from the foregoing, it really doesn't matter.

 

Don't forget those purrty burgundy Federal HOA's - they're basically the same thing as an STS/Nitro.

 

Yes they are. But they seem more rare than STS. I have picked up exactly one.
It reloaded perfectly.

 

it doesn’t really matter in the end. I load both.
In the past two weeks, I have as scavenged 700+ once fired GC hulls and about 35 once fired STS hulls. I have also purchased new 4 flats of GC’s, 3 flats of STS’ and a flat of Nitro 27’s.
Put 100 GC hulls on the bench top and look across the top. They’re not very uniform. Probably about .030” deviation.
60% of them will crimp just fine. 30% will have a hole in the crimp less than the size of a # 8 shot pellet, and 10% will have a swirl. This is with no changes to the Reloader.
The STS hulls are statistically longer than the GC’s and the Nitro 27’s, which are about the same length, but the 27’s are more uniform.
The STS’s, and Nitro 27’s are much more expensive new, than the GC’s. In my area, about 40%, to 50% more per flat. I can retail purchase GC’s for less than $100.00 per flat, STS’s and Nitro 27’s will run $40-$60 more per flat.
Whether you buy them new, or pick them up off the ground, or out of the discard muck tub, you will reload more GC’s for the same $$$$, than STS’s, or Nitro 27’s.
You will get more loads per hull from the STS’s, and 27’s, but you’ll pay for it.
Right now GC hulls in my area are free if you’re willing to pick them up. Not so withSTS’s and Nitro 27’s.

 

I found flats of REM STS #8 1 1/8oz 1145fps for $122, so not terrible. The Win AAHS flats are $105-110 for me.

 

I have my 366 presses set up to use the floating primer seater rod. Set to fully seat a primer in even once-fired Remingtons. And that has NEVER left a primer partially seated in the pocket. And those primer seating settings work well with Win AA HS and Federal Gold Medals and Top Guns as well. All is good when you use a primer seater that is designed to give you flexibility as the base wad height in the hulls change between brands.

good luck, garrisonjoe

 

I don't discriminate, both hulls get mixed in a plastic storage tub and I reload both hulls the same. I don't pick or choose, all go into the same box, into the same gun, breaking the same targets. Put the gun barrel where it is supposed to be, the targets won't know the difference.
The Winchester HS hulls are very different now, especially the Winchester Universal hulls of which I will not allow either in my house.
Yes, the old Winchester AAs were a very good choice to reload at 18-L per hull, I have 50-gallon drums full of once fired from the mid 1990s I bought in Arizona.

In more recent years Federal Cartridge Co. made Top Gun, Winchester, and Remington shot shells, but not the same anymore. Federal has been bought up by a foreign owned investment group, need I say more.
Both Top Gun and the HS hulls are thin-wall hulls requiring different wads and load data.
Get used to shooting all foreign made cheap factory shells, that is all that's available to us now days. Get used to the abuse.
Mike