Remington UMC brass 16 ga best

Discussion in 'Reloading' started by Ranger6, Jun 10, 2021.

  1. Ranger6

    Ranger6 Administrator Staff Member Administrator Global Moderator Forum Moderator

    Had a chance to finally play with the Remington brass. These were fired brass hulls when I received them with the old fired primer still in the primer pocket. They were corroded really bad. These take the 2 1/2 large pistol primer. I ended up using a good punch to remove the old primers. I stayed with the red dot at 16.5 grains( 1 grain lighter) and everything else the same as the valmet brass. I used a lee primer unit to prime the resized and tumbled brass. See notes for things learned.

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  2. Ranger6

    Ranger6 Administrator Staff Member Administrator Global Moderator Forum Moderator

    The things I have learned with loading brass shell
    1) they are multiple fires without resize if shot in same chamber
    2) get a good sizing die( ch4d) period. They are about $300 but will last a life time
    3) use good case lube
    4) don’t buy the lee priming unit($8)
    5) when resizing your brass make sure your primer punch isn’t installed in the die( it breaks)
    6) ring wax your fiber wads
    7) seat wads, over powder card and over shot card with 50-60 lbs of pressure.
    8) brass case will have bulge if powder charge is to heavy.
    9) if you wanna drill out old primers for 209 then use 15/64 bit
    10) use 1/2 bit( pictured at bottom) to do the bevel

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  3. Ranger6

    Ranger6 Administrator Staff Member Administrator Global Moderator Forum Moderator

    11) to glue in your over shot card, do not use water glass. It will leave a ring inside the shell that you will spend a lot of time removing for the next load.
    12) use elmer’s wood glue to glue in overshot card.
    13) use dropper with glue, washes out with hot water

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  4. Ranger6

    Ranger6 Administrator Staff Member Administrator Global Moderator Forum Moderator

    14) you will need to use 14 ga over powder card, wads and over shot cards. The BP overshot cards are thicker then others. This is for umc and valmet brass
    15) you can do anything with a fiber wad load that you can do with a plastic wad with lead.
    16) brass is way cooler then plastic shells, it takes a little longer to load, but once you get it down it’s pretty fast.
    17) shooting brass shells in an old hammer gun is priceless.
    Last edited: Jun 10, 2021
  5. Ranger6

    Ranger6 Administrator Staff Member Administrator Global Moderator Forum Moderator

    Last thing I have leaned. The bulge in the valmet brass I believe was due to to much powder in the brass case. The UMC brass has no sign of any bulge. The valmet brass is about .021 thick and the UMC brass is around .011 thick. To prove my theory I have loaded another valmet case with 16.0 grains of red dot. The other possibility is cheap valmet brass, or the 209 primer. I will know more tomorrow and report my findings. The valmet brass was loaded with 16 grains of red dot and no bulge this time. I will load 15 grains next and report back.
    Last edited: Jun 12, 2021
  6. win7stw

    win7stw .30-06

    Great post Rob. I really need to get to the bench and load something. I’m not sure I would have the patience for brass
  7. Ranger6

    Ranger6 Administrator Staff Member Administrator Global Moderator Forum Moderator

    It’s not really to bad once you get a system down. I think I may start to like them better then plastic. No crimps to worry about, no adjustments to the press. You don’t have to worry about stack height. No seeing if wad holds 7/8 or 1 oz of shot.
  8. Auzzie

    Auzzie 20g

    Ranger so couple of questions never having seen this sort of thing done before and finding very interesting. With the fibre wad I remember you talking of cooking them in a wax? Or are you gluing an over and undercard with pva wood glue each side to make a sandwich. Second is this what happened in old days when you hear they use a felt punched wad or horse hair in a cardboard. Did they get stewed up in wax? Or did they use a sandwich setup?
  9. Ranger6

    Ranger6 Administrator Staff Member Administrator Global Moderator Forum Moderator

    Auzzie: yes sir, In the old days they made ring waxed cards, a big one was Alcon, they made them in lots of gauges. You can find some of them still, mostly 12 and 16. And I have tons of both and they work get in 16 gauge, paper or plastic. The problem with the old brass and even mag tech is you have to use over size. So like in the UMC and Valmet I use 14 gauge fiber wads. Some of the 14 gauge wads are lubed now but mostly used for muzzle loader. If you shoot non waxed wads it will work, you just won’t be able to see what your shooting, cause the confetti is so bad. So to stop that, I ring wax my wads in tallow. That’s just fat in fancy words. It works and stops all the confetti.
    Now I have memories of my grandfather using bees wax or a mixture of the two. I have bees wax on the counter and will try that just as an alternative.
    The process is easy. I use a double broiler ( pan with water in it, with another pan in the water that you put your tallow in. The boiling water heats the bottom of the other pan and melts the tallow. It stinks but……. So then when it’s melted I scoop some out and put in a shallow dish. Then just roll the edges thru it. It’s soaks in fast, so no messing around with it. Then I let them dry for several days on an old cookie sheet. With a little practice you can get the tallow on the edges and you will have a small circle in the center of the wad that is a different color. That’s the tallow not soaking all the way through.
    Little test today with bees wax and ring waxing my fiber wads. It don’t work. It dries up too fast, and when it does dry on the wad it puts a coating on the wad that’s way to thick. When it dries in the pan it’s either re- heat or scape it out. O well I wasted 1 wad.

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    Last edited: Jun 15, 2021
  10. Ranger6

    Ranger6 Administrator Staff Member Administrator Global Moderator Forum Moderator

    So on to loading, I clean, size the case and prime it. Then I put powder in. Then comes the nitro card. It serves two things. One it compresses the powder for good ignition, and second is a barrier between the powder and waxed card, the tallow will seep out and contamination will happen. Then comes the number of fiber wads you need for stack height. For 2 1/2 two works great. The key to fiber wads is you have to compress it all to get good burn and pattern. So I use 50-60 lbs of pressure on each. So nitro card( 50 lbs) add fiber wad( 50 lbs) etc.
    Then when you stack height is good minus the shot, you add your shot. I use 1 oz. then stick an over shot card(14gauge) on top of the shot. Then another 50lbs of pressure. Then I use elmers wood glue to put a ring around the overshot card. Let it dry over night. The wood glue comes out upon firing.
  11. Ranger6

    Ranger6 Administrator Staff Member Administrator Global Moderator Forum Moderator

    So in the old days there was only black powder. It’s very dirty and so the lube would keep things moving and it was easier to clean. Now if you ever shot black powder you know there is lots of smoke. However, it still works today. I will do a post someday on black powder loads. I need another one that I can (or will) shoot black powder in. The old stuffers are cool but take to long on today’s skeet field. The old Parker’s were made for black powder, but the stuff is very corrosive and will pit the bores pretty fast.
  12. Ranger6

    Ranger6 Administrator Staff Member Administrator Global Moderator Forum Moderator

    Since I’m here, update on the valmet brass. 15 grains of red dot is what I have settled on. Nice load with soft recoil and bust clays no problem.
  13. Ranger6

    Ranger6 Administrator Staff Member Administrator Global Moderator Forum Moderator

    Auzzie: and on the glue. It’s just on the top edge of the overshot card. All it does is keep the card stuck in place so your shot don’t fall out. My cards are pretty snug but if you shake them or carry them, the card could come lose and then you have a pocket full of shot.
  14. Ranger6

    Ranger6 Administrator Staff Member Administrator Global Moderator Forum Moderator

    I also have some Alcon zinc 12 gauge shells that I will be loading some day in the future. They recommend a slight crimp on the end of them to hold the overshot card in place. They take a maxfire primer. The problem with crimping brass is that it wears the cases out so much faster. With an overshot card there is no need to resize if you shoot the same shell in the same chamber, and yes some guns have a slightly different chamber. So you would have to keep up with that, I just resize if shooting in my LC cause it’s chambers are slightly different.
    Way back when, before our time, there were actually guns with chamber A and B, don’t remember now but one was for brass and one was for paper and you couldn’t switch. Some of those old ones are still around, but I have only seen one. It was from like the 1800’s
  15. Auzzie

    Auzzie 20g

    Now who said you can’t learn something interesting and new every day. That pretty good knowledge obviously grandfather passed on the the good stuff Slugnut the metallic solid freak has loaded us some black powder using dry felt off old Annie Oakley recipe of the day for our fun events on charity days etc. It uses fff in a straight wall , felt wad and 1 oz of of the finest birdshot shot. They break Clays just fine. Makes you appreciate with the smoke and flash theatrics just how good the old timers really were in what scores they put up and equipment of the day betting in the Bird ring or clay arena. Seeing your really into your reloading look up Powders I Have Used. It’s a turn of century DuPont publication. You will enjoy
  16. Ranger6

    Ranger6 Administrator Staff Member Administrator Global Moderator Forum Moderator

    Auzzie, sure wish I could be there for that shoot. Sounds like a hoot. Yes I like my reloading, not only cause it brings me closer to the shotgun sport, but the more you do the more you understand and way to often these youngsters would just buy things instead of fixing or making. It also brings back fond memories of my grandfather. I often wondered as a kid how he knew things about everything, Lots of things he knew was passed down from his dad, and it was the unspoken code to pass it on to me.
  17. Ranger6

    Ranger6 Administrator Staff Member Administrator Global Moderator Forum Moderator

    Little story about range day today. Showed up to shoot skeet and I put my 525 and single barrel 16 in the rack. I had loaded one of the brass shells and wanted to shoot it, so I just set it up on the gun rack and was gonna wait till station 3 to shoot it. A young man about 18 walked up and placed his in the rack and looked around to see what other guns were on the rack. He spotted the single 16, and I could tell by the look on his face, he was like, who shoots that? I kept watching him until his eyes made it up to the brass shell, he looked so strange at it. He went to his tippy toes so he could see inside the brass shell without touching. At about that time, I ask do you know what that is? He replied” no sir, never seen anything like that”. So I explained a little about it, and he said you gonna shoot that? I replied yes sir on station 3. So he watched me go thru the stations without a miss and then at 3. I was getting ready to call pull, and he said that sure would suck, if you missed with that funny looking shell. Before he could finish the clay turned into dust. I turned and said “ what was that buddy”. He looked at me and said” aww man that was awesome”. Needless to say he tagged along with lots of questions.
    I like to see the young people get involved, I’m guessing that brass shell was the topic of discussion with his dad on the way home.
  18. Auzzie

    Auzzie 20g

    Cool story at the range. That would have been gold to hear that conversation in the car. Hope you told him you were from Tennessee and that the hillybilly way of doing things.
    Reminds of when my kid chambered couple of black powders at station 4 on charity shoot day without saying and let loose at a pair. The button pusher hit the deck, the scorer jumped out his umpire chair with rocket propulsion and couple of the squad hit the deck hugging their kreighoffs. Nobody was of vintage to have ever seen black powder used on Clays before. Needless to say they got educated real fast and kid nailed his pair no worries might add.
    Somebody told him the gun would just plain blow up. His Mk 10 Miroku which is identical to your 525 is way more than adequate for any pressure Black powder load is likely to make.
    He told them some B S , Dad said you can’t get never get enough In a shell now days and we just scrape them off level before we crimp them up. They all looked in disbelief. I had to actually go out calm the farm and assure them everything was regulated and under control and he was kidding them!!!

    Pretty funny what people say, believe and react when they have absolutely no idea how ammo works or what your putting in and for why. Hence what backs up exactly what you said above.
    At the end of the day there were people lined up 10 deep to try and we had good old fashion smoke plume happening over the skeet layout.
  19. Ranger6

    Ranger6 Administrator Staff Member Administrator Global Moderator Forum Moderator

    Sure is funny. Some of the people that shoot at our local range would have done the same thing. What's even better is your son, and what he told them. Good play for that young man.
  20. Auzzie

    Auzzie 20g

    This has been an excellent post and I have learned plenty yet again. Seeing we have our own hives and plenty of wax will give that treatment to our felts. Your doing a good service to this section and certainly populating it with interesting subjects. Look forward to the next one.
    Ranger6 likes this.

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