Lee Loader

I'm still waiting for some shot, found none in my area, and playing with my new toys. I cut a Federal shell apart and saved the shot and tried the put together a load with some Win. AA shells. I used the powder charge and wads directly from my Lyman manual, but got a "bulged" crimp. Cut that one apart. Next I reclaimed some shot from a couple more Fed. shells and used my hulls/wads/powder, and weighed the powder and shot. First one came out "bulged". Then I looked at the press and from what I've read, wad pressure had a lot to do with shotshell reloading, so I placed a washer under the shell in the wad seating station (I didn't find any way to adjust the wad seating). I made sure wads were seated all the way in (I have no way to measure seating pressure) and succeeding rounds got a passable crimp.

One thing I noticed when "disassembling" the Federal shells (1 1/8 oz. #6 shot "Field Loads"); 2 out of 5 rounds the powder came out in one clump, semi-solid formed to the combustion chamber. In my cartridge reloading, this would prolly alert me of some other problem, but shotshell?

mikld wrote:I used the powder charge and wads directly from my Lyman manual, but got a "bulged" crimp. Cut that one apart.

Ahh.. a frog!

mikld wrote:Next I reclaimed some shot from a couple more Fed. shells and used my hulls/wads/powder, and weighed the powder and shot. First one came out "bulged". Then I looked at the press and from what I've read, wad pressure had a lot to do with shotshell reloading, so I placed a washer under the shell in the wad seating station (I didn't find any way to adjust the wad seating). I made sure wads were seated all the way in (I have no way to measure seating pressure) and succeeding rounds got a passable crimp.

The only source of shotshell loading technique I've read through has been the Deluxe Lee Loader instructions and the material offered in Lee's Reloading Handbook First Edition and their Modern Reloading First and Second Editions. The earlier writing, about the time modern pressure wads are appearing, is to not compress them.

All my shotgun reloading to this point has been with projectiles, I haven't started my BB loads yet, but I've decided not to put anything under compression. What I have noticed with pressure wads is that they will make an attempt to return to no compression so you come back to your loaded hulls later and the star crimp is giving way if you depended on the compression to get them closed.

My MEC Slugger has a compression indicator, but if it moves, the slug load is a loss. I verified that with MEC's Slugger guy. That has been my shooting experience as well. If loading has started compression of the pressure wad, it is a wasted effort as far as what is going to happen downrange.

None of this is probably relevant to the conversation you were hoping for, but this stuff just floats around in my head and needs to come out.