QUIGLEY SHOOTING ASSOCIATION NEWS
Loading the black-powder shotshell – Part 1
As the title suggests, this article is primarily concerned with loading the shotgun cartridge, in this first part I am going to look at the many ways available to achieve this, using modern, vintage and home made tools.
When you look at the process of reloading the shotshell it soon becomes apparent that it is a relatively simple task, one that can be accomplished, to varying degrees, with very simple hand tools. Put in its simplest form, we need to take a fired shotshell, remove the old primer and insert a new one (this stage can be omitted by using new and primed cases) next,
Modern tools, designed to load shotshells with nitro propellants are readily available in various price ranges but, to be honest, the budget equipment is more than adequate for our purpose. In around 1972 or 1973 I purchased a Lee Load-All in 12g and this is still in regular use, it came with spare feed fingers as these are deemed fragile and I still have them unused to date - good value or what? Lee still sells this press, with a few improvements, at around £45 but you don’t even have to spend that much!
From around 1880, and for the next hundred years or so, the British, Continental and American farmers and hunters have loaded their ammunition at home with whatever tools were available. Because of ammunition and gauge standardisation, many manufacturers seized the opportunity to supply purpose made tools and so produced and exported reloading tools which could be used virtually anywhere in the world, the mail order catalogues were full of them. Some of the rarer and more desirable machines are now becoming very expensive to collect, however the ‘common or garden’ variety can still be picked up for a few pounds from antique shops and arms fairs and occasionally on the internet auction sites.
put in a suitable blackpowder charge, add a card wad, then a felt wad, another card wad followed by the charge of lead shot, which is covered by another card and the case is finally sealed. The seal is determined by the tools we have at our disposal. Modern tools will let us crimp the case with a star crimp and vintage tools a roll crimp but, with home made tools, we will have to seal the case with paste or glue. (More on this in a later article).
I am assuming that the majority of readers are familiar with modern reloading equipment and so I intend to concentrate on vintage and hand made tools. Typical examples of de-capping and capping tools are seen in the illustrations, along with an in-expensive powder / shot measure and roll crimp closer. In the next article I will show how I use some of these tools to load the 12g blackpowder shotshell cartridge.
Questions and comments please to;
khall6548@aol.com
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