PAPER HULLS

[OLDNAVYMCPO]

In my teenage years, one of my bigger challenges was being able to finance my shooting and hunting. I earned minimum wage ($1.10) or less at various part-time jobs. There was the expense of hunting license ($4.00), gas ($.25/gal) for my hunting buddy's '51 Ford, and ammo. Shotgun shells were $1.50 to $2.50 a box, .22 LR was about $.50 a box of 50 and we bought .38 S&W for 10 cents each.

I had an unwed uncle who was eat up on quail hunting. He was president of the local quail hunting association ( southern thing), raised and trained American Pointers and hunted almost every day during quail season. Off season, he planted feed plots and improved quail habitat.

My uncle's favorite quail gun was a Browning A5 auto-loader. Shotshells back then were made of paper hulls with paper or organic fiber wads. During wet weather ( common in the south), they would absorb moisture and swell. Often they would become so swollen that they wouldn't feed through a pump or auto-loading shotgun. When those paper hulls wouldn't feed through his A5, my uncle would toss them in a big cardboard box and forget them.

I had a side by side shotgun that I could force feed those swollen paper hulls into. There's no telling how many hundreds of swollen paper hulls my side by side consumed.

Its raining here today and my Cowboy Action Shoot was cancelled. As I unloaded my truck and hauled guns and ammo back into the house, I got to looking at my shell holder of plastic hull shotshells and the memories came flooding back, memories of my paper hulled youth.

 

[tops]

Federal still makes paper hulls and if I could afford them that's all I would shoot because they smell so good. Some people joke about how good certain solvents smell but nothing can beat a paper Federal shell. Larry

 

[DWalt]

Remington once made a line of shotshells for wet weather hunters back in the paper case days. They were lacquered, and very shiny. Most paper case shells were parrafin-coated, and I guess that helped. The military for awhile insisted on using brass-cased shotshells, as they wouldn't swell when they got wet. Plastic shells are far better than paper. I don't know if Federal still makes paper cases or not. They continued making paper shells for a long time after plastic became the norm because some competitive trap and skeet shooters insisted on paper case shells. I guess they felt that they got higher scores with paper shells. I have read that paper shotshells continue in use in extremely cold climates, such as Russia, Finland, the Scandanavian countries, etc., as plastic shells will fracture in intense cold, and paper will not.

 

[TOM BECKWITH]

Shot and reloaded many of the old paper shells. Dove hunting (Central Florida) good reloads, but duck hunting (wet) forget it. Shot #6 for everything. Recently picked up some 410s from an estate - plastic fine, paper - needed a hammer to chamber them (well almost).

 

[DWalt]

The problem with reloading paper cases is that the crimp gets tattered very quickly, and burn-thru occurs at the juncture of the metal base and the paper shell. Max life is maybe 4 or 5 reloadings, may vary with brand. Some were worse. I once has some S&B paper-case shells and they could be reloaded a lot more times than Winchester or Federal. I may still have some of them around. By far, the best reloading case lifespan I ever experienced with plastic shells was Fiocchi. You could not wear those shells out from reloading. They were a light purple color.

 

[sunnyd]

Makes me remember, when I was in high school in the 60's, I used to shoot rabbits and quail with my 12 ga 870. I would drop them off at the local fire station where the fireman loved to cook them up. They would always give me a box of federal paper shells to go get some more. Great trade, everybody was happy. I wonder if a kid would, or could, even do that today? Probably kid and firemen would all be on the news and in a lot of trouble.

 

[Mike SC Hunter]

Makes me remember, when I was in high school in the 60's, I used to shoot rabbits and quail with my 12 ga 870. I would drop them off at the local fire station where the fireman loved to cook them up. They would always give me a box of federal paper shells to go get some more. Great trade, everybody was happy. I wonder if a kid would, or could, even do that today? Probably kid and firemen would all be on the news and in a lot of trouble.

When I was a kid I did the same thing with the town barber. He loved squirrels. I'd shoot "em" clean "em" and trade them to him for 20 ga. shells.

 

[Mike SC Hunter]

Federal still makes paper hulls and if I could afford them that's all I would shoot because they smell so good. Some people joke about how good certain solvents smell but nothing can beat a paper Federal shell. Larry

I too miss the smell of gun smoke from a paper shell...Nuttin like it.

 

[Coldshooter]

My dad reloaded paper shells for our 16 ga. I was allowed to reload some and I would reef down on the handle like the end of the world. We would take a new box of Western Xpert for quail $2.99 per box at Montgomery Wards. We would trust reloads for rabbits. I still have the Browning Sweet 16 and the Remington 11-48. For some reason I have a sudden urge to shoot off a few paper shells to remember the good days in the Indiana corn fields.

 

[2152hq]

Federal still sells 12ga paper shells AFAIK.
I still have some left over from my early reloading days and from when ever I see them cast aside at the range.

They load nicely with a smooth tight crimp on my MEC 9000. I run them thru with the plastics as a they appear in the emptys box while I'm loading a couple hundred or so.
They get the same 'load' as everything else does,,I'm not picky. The wad is for a 1 piece hull and not the straight walled hull w/a base wad like the paper Federal is, but they work fine.
I run a few paper Winchesters and Remingtons thru too when I find them. The latter two are usually the high brass editions but they seem to have about the same capacity.

They hold up fairly well,,5 or 6 loadings before the crimp gives it up.
I'm careful in repeaters to check for stuck base wads. Mostly I use them in single and SxSs where it's easy to check the bores.
I've never in 50yrs of loading them found a separated base wad stuck in the bbl, but there's always a first time.

Loading them with BP or BP sub,,the Fed paper hulls last 2,,maybe 3 loadings if you're lucky. Pinhole punctures appear quickly just above the brass head. The crimps get raggety fast too.

If you find a supply of older paper shells,,from the 50's and before,,they may be sized for #57 primers and not #209.
#57 was a Remington standard and is a few .000"larger in dia than the #209. CCI & others made the #57 primer also for reloaders.
#209s will slip right in and drop back out of these shells easily.

 

[Jim R]

#57 was a Remington standard and is a few .000"larger in dia than the #209. CCI & others made the #57 primer also for reloaders.
#209s will slip right in and drop back out of these shells easily.[/QUOTE]

The quote above is wrong.

The #57 was the smaller of the two popular primers. The #57 Remington primer was .230" and the Winchester 209 has always been .245". The allowable variance on both of these was/is .002".

As for the paper hulls, I still reload them. I have a shell waxer and it takes about a half an hour to re-wax a couple hundred paper hulls. By re-waxing them you can get maybe 6 or 7 loading's as long as you don't use a fast burning powder like Red Dot or 700X. I have used 7625 powder for years but now it is going out of production so I will try to work up a good load with Green Dot or Universal Clays.

There are a couple company's besides Federal that are still making paper hulls but they are $$$$$, the last Federal papers I bought were right at $100.00 a flat.

 

[DWalt]

Indeed, the Remington #57 primer has a slightly smaller diameter than the 209, so they are not interchangeable - sort of. However, a Remington or Peters case could be used with 209 primers. All that was necessary was to force a fired 209 primer into the primer hole in the base, then deprime it. After doing that, just use 209 primers as the hole has been enlarged to use them. I loaded thousands of Remington shells with 209 primers by doing that. Eventually, Remington started using 209 primers, like everyone else. I guess they figured out that reloaders were doing that anyway.

By the way, plastic had pretty well replaced paper by the late 1960s. I remember that Winchester and Western shells in the early to mid-1960s were still paper. I think the first W-W plastic shells were their AA trap and skeet loads. I bought several cases of paper shells about 1967 cheaply at closeout prices.

 

[Ivan the Butcher]

About 10 years ago or so, Federal loaded a batch of paper hulled. They were 7/8 oz. of #8 @ 1275fps. These were packaged in a old style box. They were their only entry into Cowboy shooting, and only one year. They shot great in my Winchester 97 (made in 1904). I found that Federal plastic hulls extract better in the old pump guns too, their rims are the same thickness as the paper Hulls, the Winchester AA hulls' rim thickness is the same thickness as the all brass hulls out of Brazil (Mag-tec, I believe). They work in my old SxS shotguns, but getting over the shot cards to stay in place was such a pain! I finally got a tip from a friend. I seal over the card with Clear gutter seam sealer. This needs about 3 weeks to cure or you spend hours scrubbing gunk out of your barrels!

The Black Powder shells ( Brass, paper, or plastic) are a blast to shoot! Clean-up isn't that difficult, just very necessary very soon! The biggest problem shooting BP shells at a vintage shoot is, people are so fascinated with the cloud, that the score keepers don't watch the birds! Ivan

 

[2152hq]

Yea,,I got the 57 and 209 sizes backwards,,sorry about that being wrong.
Thanks for the corrections.

Still have a couple bricks of 57's.
I 've been using them up in odd berdan primed rifle brass. I drill out the berdan primer, a slight countersink,, and seat a #57 shotshell primer.
A RedDot load makes a nice easy plinking load under a cast or jacketed bullet.
Makes all the steel 7.62Russian brass easily reloadable.
Steel cases size and load just the same as brass.

 

[DWalt]

"I 've been using them up in odd berdan primed rifle brass. I drill out the berdan primer, a slight countersink,, and seat a #57 shotshell primer."

I thought I was the only one doing that. I do the same with 8mm Kropatschek, except I use 209 primers. I had to grind a drill bit to the proper diameter for the .209 primers. Just chuck the Kropatschek cases in my lathe and drill. I use Pyrodex and standard 8mm bullets, which are supposedly about .005" undersize. But they seem to shoot reasonably well regardless. The Kropatschek is more a noisemaker than anything else anyway.

What the old-timers used for sealing cardboard top wads in brass shotshell cases was "Water Glass" (Sodium Silicate). It was formerly used to coat eggs to keep them from spoiling, back in the days before electric refrigerators. No idea where you could find it today - maybe on eBay. You can find anything there.

 

[chief38]

I still have a few laying around and might use them in the upcoming weeks for the "Pheasant Brothers". Most of my Shells that I hunt with (since my Dad passed away 4 years ago) are from the 1960's and 70's. He left them to me and I get great pleasure out of using his ammo that is 50 years old to hunt with. I do have modern shells but I have had no failures what so ever and might as well use the old stuff since it's not worth a whole lot.

YES.... the old ammo smells terrific - especially the first shot of the morning!

 

[Grayfox]

Tops, my daddy was a big quail hunter and I used to tag along as a young boy. I remember that smell all so well. Thanks for bringing up some fine old memories.

 

[EQGuy]

Walmart had Federal 12 GA plastic Dove and Game loads on sale at $4.57 per box. This is cheaper than I can reload them so I bought 10 flats. They have a paper base wad and they have the smell I remember from shooting all paper cases in the old days. It is almost like perfume. Yes Federal still sells paper cases in their line of Gold Medal target loads.

 

[Abbynormal]

When I used to trap shoot 20 odd years ago, the old timers used the Fed papers when available. They always said that the paper "shot softer, but hit as hard as plastic". Maybe I influenced by their opinion, but I also felt the recoil wasn't as strong. Maybe a little lighter, but longer and easier on you when you shoot 6 or 7 rounds an evening or afternoon,

 

[YogiBear]

Aloha,

Not a shotgun guy,

what's a "flat" of shells?