Reloading cost - 12 and 28 ga.

Kirk,

The other thing you can do when you reload is customize the load. My daughter shot trap and I loaded a low-recoil load for her. She could empty shells a lot faster than I could load them!

A lot of the younger kids at the gun club shot cut-down 12 gauges with light loads. The kick was less than the 20 ga. Just something to think about.

Tom
 
Stay away from the Fiochi brand hulls if you have an 870 28 ga. I had to end up giving away several boxes to a friend because the rims would tear out on ejection, almost half would tear. They work fine in a double gun so I just quite using them. BTW the big guy for Fiochi (don't know his name) was here at Balistic Products and had a look at some of my wrecked hulls and had no good advice. So I buy factory HS AAs at Wally World for about $10.00/ box and load them till they cry.
 
Funny thing is..............I know what you're talking about!

Tom, the most common failure mode I have seen on the 28 ga. AAHS hulls is a half inch split at about the location of the wad post (below the shot cup). This happens way before the crimps would have given out and may start as early as reload 6-7. Make sure you do a quick-spin inspection. Most of the time I can feel the roughed up plastic next to the split before I even see it. Never seen a split failure as consistent as this one in any other gauge.

I am currently on the tail end of about 300 hulls that I started loading around 2 years ago. Not to worry though as I have 4 cases of new plus 8 cases of once fired that I can start on when these are kaput.
 
Hi Kirk,

Since you can buy 12 ga. target loads so cheap in my opinion you are wasting time reloading for them, same with the 20. 28 and 410 is a different story. Leave the Lee alone. I once had one for 16 Ga. and what a pain in the wazoo it was to use. Get a single stage MEC and some good books on relaoding shotshells. One of the best and most helpful I ever read was by Don Zutz. Dave Fackler at Ballistics Products is also a wealth of good recipes. You can also get a lot of freebee reloading recipes where components are sold.

Be super careful handling lead and try to breathe as little lead dust as possible. Actually wearing examination gloves and wearing a dust mask that meets the NIOSH 95 standard or better is not being too careful.

JMO,
Harry
 
Yeah Wiz,
It can be and no lead should be in our blood. 1n 1990 the average body burden in the US was 2.6 mg/dl, so even an infintesimally small amount can have negative effects. Google lead poisoning. We used to tell folks that a sweet and low sized packet of lead dust could contaminate an entire house. If you reload much you will (I did) spill some lead shot. The real danger is if you have small children in the house. Having said that, most childhood lead poisoning results from deteriorated lead based paint.

As with anything else involving shooting, be careful.
Best,
Harry
 
Its hard to beat a mec. I reload my 12 with 20 loads there are some guys I shoot skeet with that shoot 3/4 ounce loads.The AAhs cases dont last as long as the older 28 cases did. The 28 is a nice shooting gun though.
 
I agree the AA hulls in 28 Ga. don't reload or hold up as well as other cases. I used to have trouble crimping even once fired AA's. The best hulls for me to load back then (we are talking 15 yrs ago) was the Remington/Peters and even they burned through faster than 12 or 20 Ga. hulls. Never tried Federals, but they do have more capacity. Don't know about Fiocchi, Estate or others of the more recent shells on the market.
Harry
 
I have some 28 guage estate hulls and they last longer than any of the others I have tried. They have ridges in the hull, I have found that thoose usually last longer than smooth hulls. John
 
I had some trouble crimping the AAHSs until I got one of Balistic Products brass crimp starter. It is worth it, my failed crimps almost went away. I have used one on the larger gauges for quite a while but for the 28 it made a HUGE difference. Good Luck.
 
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