Thank you. That's a real compliment. I hope you got something out of it that was specifically helpful.

You are welcome. Thank you for saying so.

Thank you. It feels good to know this helped someone. I have a lot of ugly shells from learning that keep turning up. I don't shoot iffy shells when I have friends around, and I definitely don't let friends shoot them. So the few boxes of mistakes keep turning up.

Agreed!

Glad to help. You almost can't have your pre-crimp too tight so long as you aren't buckling the hulls.

@Travis Thacker I've tried several presses but none of them had variable crimp angle. Merely variable crimp depth. Changing the angle would certainly change with the outside corner of the crimp lies... Thank you for giving your perspective and explanation. I think we may be getting it the same thing from a slightly different methods, clearly both of us are being detailed. A bus understand what it takes to have the various aspects of the crimp at the height and depth they need to be in order to fully seat and lock in.

Now this is an achievement, and a compliment with impact.

FortuneCookie45L

Welcome. It can be counterintuitive.

Thank you.

Welcome. Thanks for the feedback. I hope it continues to help people for a long time.

Good on you. However you really should fill that gap. It makes for inconsistent ammo. You could use cornmeal buffer.

@@GunFunZS I agree, but my component choices are still limited. A 20 ga. 1/16 nitro card would do the job, but I don't have any yet.

Thanks. I hope to do some more shotgun videos this summer.

Thank you

Yes. But don't try to use the one on the other.

The plastic part is too big diameter, or the metal head? If you mean the metal case a ring type or collect sizer will do the job. However collet sizers won't size most of the plastic. Ring sizers go full length. If someone had been firing the shells from an extremely loose chamber, they could be ruining the shells too. What kind of press are you using?

Just the top 1/8" or so.

I'll have to think about this.

I would check a couple things, but this all tells me that the one way or another your column is shorter. My guess would be that the wad changed, or you are not dropping a full load of shot. If the wad got a deeper cup lowering the top of the pile of shot, or longet petals holding the start of the crimp up higher.

Another answer could be that your drop tube that seats the wad shifted down and is compressing the wad by an extra 1/8" or so. Try moving it up an eighth and see what happens.

Glad to help. Thanks for subscribing too. I'm always honored when I see those notices, and a little surprised.

Which bit was helpful to you?

Was good to see all of it being my first time loading, my main problem was the crimp dishing in and loosing shot

That's complicated. Probably you actually need to increase your wad pressure, so that it seats the wad down about 1mm deeper. Then when you are doing your final crimp, it is just pushing the crimp, and not the crimp and the wad at the same time. The thing is, that ring forms by too much vertical pressure being put into the side walls. This mostly happens at the final crimp stage, but is amplified by making the final crimp push on internal components which add friction to the downward pressure. I've come to prefer other hulls because of this. AA is a nice hull, but it's fussy. Once dialed in, it makes for a very smooth and consistent hull. Inevitably though it takes messing a few up to dial in any time you change up a load.

The base of the wad is always in contact with the powder and compressing it slightly. When I'm talking about WaD seating depth, I'm basically talking about how much you squish the top of it down. each one has a certain range of flex they can do before you would need to switch to a different wad. Unfortunately not all loads in the manuals actually fit in the space inside the shell.

Probably a combo of more pre crimp and setting the wad 1/8" lower. But follow the order of operations shown here. I can't see what you see. You can see how much shell is left over your shot. I can't. Go through each step in order and you will find your problem(s). Also some book loads don't really fit well in the space available.

It can be, but usually it's more about putting too much vertical force on the hulls at once. That's what I was trying to explain. The AA HS style hulls are strong, but when they fail, they fail at the weakest point. That ring is the usual spot. Odds are, if you see the ring, you are trying to do too many vertical squish operations at the same time. The force adds up too much. If you can do some of those operations a little more thoroughly in early steps, they aren't all happening together as you apply the final crimp. So squishing powder and wad into place takes a bit of force, but not much of that goes into the shell wall. As it gets tighter, there's more friction, so more of it goes into the shell wall. Pre crimp doesn't do very much downward force into the shell wall, but there is a little. Final crimp (and roll over on presses set up to have a roll over/ taper) are the most downward force. If the wad and shot and powder are being compressed a bit while the crimp is being finalized, that's adding a lot of force all at once. If you are getting the ring, first thing to do is to try squishing your shot cup down about 1/8" /2mm down and see if the ring goes away. If not, go a little further. If you are squishing the shot column as much as reasonably possible, or it is just springing back to the same height, then your next step is to back out the final crimp die and the taper die (if seperate) and incriment downward until you have a good crimp. If you can't get a good crimp at that point without ring buckling shells regularly, then you've learned that the shot column is just too tall for that hull. Pick a different set of load data that takes up less space. This is part of why I'm not a huge fan of the AA style wads. They each have fairly tall leg sections that can only handle a little squish before they collapse. If the knees on the legs are buckling, you pretty much need to squish them all the way down or your loads will be erratic. You want the "knees" either all fully compressed, or all fully extended. Being on the threshold makes for bad ammo. Some will collapse and some won't. Other wad designs are progressive springs, like federal, or accordions (downrange IIRC?), or have stages of rigidish compression, like the remington figure 8. I prefer all of those. Does this explanation help?

@@GunFunZS Thank you for the response. I put less pressure on station 2 when I press in the wad. It was at 60 lbs and now at 25 and no rings. They look great now. Thanks for all your help!

Glad you got a positive result. One of the biggest lessons I wish people could pick up on. Is to ditch the mentality of trying to use premium holes and use them for tons and tons of reloadings. The quality of the cheapest halls such as Remington gun club and even now the Winchester universal or whatever federal calls their book back equivalent, are very high now. And almost any time you go to a range you will find a place where somebody has fired a hundred or two of them in one spot all in a neat pile or perhaps if they are tidier cleaned up and in the trash can. You get far better crimp quality and therefore shell quality to use these one to four times then to use an AA or a STS or a gold medal 8 or 10 or 20 times. I'm not saying the premium holes aren't a little better. They are. But a twice used gun club is better than a five times used STS. And it's free. There's literally no reason to overuse hulls.

You can also heat up the folds of the Hull before Crimping.. I tried this recently and my Crimps looked better and stayed in place well , I used a portable hair dryer on Hi for just a few seconds

JohnnyQuid71 no I haven't. I wish I could help with your question.

Actually, thinking about it, the process would be the same. Get the final height of the wad and shot after spring break dialed in. Then make the pre crimp hole such that the shank of a 3/16" drill bit just drags. Then adjust final crimp to leave a level top. I can't remember whether the grand gives a final taper/roll,but set that last.

If you do the above and get sunken or domed crimps, adjust the wad depth, and see what happens.

Hi. KZfaq is terrible lately. I didn't get any notification about your comments. It depends on what you mean by "over crimped"... Do you have swirls? Is your crimp caving in? If the latter, it probably means a few things, that you have to assess in order. The first step would be to seat the wad just to contact and see if the problem is solved. The markings I described on the other video make it so you can gauge how deeply you are setting the wad, and make it repeatable. If it isn't, the next step is to try getting your pre-crimp tighter, and check again. The final thing is to adjust your final crimp up higher. This is set by the final crimp die. I think I saw another comment from you saying you were using a Lee press. The markings help for each of these steps. Pre crimp to the same line. Final crimp to the same line. Usually the Lee press won't let you final crimp deeply enough. If it were going too deeply, you could use something like a nickel as a bump stop for the final crimp die.

Could be your column height is not high enough. Try using a 1/8 inch nitro card under your shot or slug.

It's one of my videos with top views. Just search my channel with "Lee"

Yep

Correct. If you're doing slugs you genuinely want the name brand not a knock off. The slug won't sit flat in the shot cup of the clones. Now clay busters has a few watts specifically made for slugs and also versions of the WAA 12 with a tail piece fitted for straight wall hulls. I couldn't tell you what the part numbers are off the top of my head but they might be worth checking out too.

Can't change it all these years later. I hope the technical info was helpful.

Don't worry, the shell was unharmed, and my pocket knife is the pointer I always have on my person. Unfortunately I have harmed many a shotshell, and will doubtless ruin many more. The good news is that they are free. Bring a leaf rake to the public range and a bunch of trash bags. Then you can toss the bulk of them for one reason or another, and have a good supply of those that are worth using. Treat them like consumables.

I was learning. It's an old video. Still a lot of people say it's helped them. It would take a lot of time to redo the same video for small improvements, and probably all the traffic would still go to this one because it is popular. That's what's happened when I made updated or revised videos in the past. No one saw the improved video, because the old one had high ratings.

HOW TO INTERACT WITH OTHER HUMANS! perhaps you could learn that

Don't worry I'm pretty sure you're safe on the other side of the monitor.

goatheadone k safety police

I hope it helped. I tried to make a video of the information I needed, that took me work and research to find.

Welcome. I always ruin a few when I switch back to AAs from another hull type. My suggestion would be to standardize on the green gun club hulls, and the black equivalent. They use basically the same data as the Remington Nitro/STS hulls and are very comparable in type to the AAs with the advantage of being available by the bushel any time you go to the range.

+msdotfrank I've thought of doing that. It basically is the case any time you change hulls or radically change your load. I tend to munch a few hulls finding the sweet spot every time I switch between AAs for birdshot and gun club or STS for slugs and buckshot respectively. The problem is most people have about a 5 minute attention span for a video. It would take me probably 6-7 hours to ~script, shoot and edit a video and I would probably get about 20 views for the trouble. I might do one soon.

+Bob Jackson Thanks for saying so. It doesn't seem to be very popular, but it did take a fair amount of work to make.

+GunFun ZS Yea, I thought 20 'Likes' for 2700 views is low, especially for a two year old video. Sure doesn't give much incentive to make any more. :(

Bob Jackson I already know going into it with tech videos that the few who need them will value them a lot, but they will bore the pants off of casual browsers. -- At least that's best case, if I do a good job of showing and explaining the information, and the information is useful. I try to only make vids of topics that I don't find better videos on. Especially things I had to figure out on my own because good explanations weren't around. This one amalgamates my own tinkering with tips I found in a lot of places.

GunFun ZS Indeed. And tech videos that are a niche in a niche are interesting to such a small group, guys like you are a saint to even contemplate making them. So....I, for one, do appreciate seeing and learning from them. Thank you.

Bob Jackson Welcome. The flattery is not necessary.

My answer is going to be boring. Basically they are the same. I prefer 8 because they are a little smoother. As a rule of thumb, some manufacturers use 6 fold to distinguish buckshot, but they aren't consistent. For example, most of Remington's birdshot is 8 fold and most of their buckshot is 6. However, the black hulled gun club and tall steel game loads are sometimes 6 fold. Just often enough that I will be doing a run and get an ugly crimp and realize a 6 fold hull got mixed in. I try to weed those out and have a bag of just them for oddball batches or loads I am going to gift.

That's nifty info. will look for the brochure. Bottom line though, I have seen plenty of commercial crimps deeper than that. The point is your load must be keyed to whatever crimp you use, and they should be consistent.

That right there is why I load my shotshells at the lower end of the recommended powder charges for a given shot charge/hull/primer. It keeps somewhat higher pressures much closer to safe levels, it's easier on the shoulder, and it gets more loads out of the hulls.