Shotgun shell reloading

Discuss all things reloading...
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Please remember, reloading can be very dangerous if done improperly. All advice found here is from peer members, not official reloading manuals. Reload at your own risk.
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Bturbo14
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Shotgun shell reloading

Post by Bturbo14 » Tue Mar 21, 2017 1:49 pm

Hey guys,

I am just starting to get into reloading shotgun shells for shooting trap. Grabbed a Ponsness Warren duomatic 375. I am just curious on where you guys get all your powder, shot, primers, wads, etc for the cheapest. Also do you guys have any tips or recipes for light target loads?

Thanks!

Brennan 8-)
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Re: Shotgun shell reloading

Post by Call Turner » Tue Mar 21, 2017 3:41 pm

For most of your shotgun needs the White Elephant or Sportsman's Warehouse will take care of you. If you belong to the Spokane Rifle Club you can occasionally buy reclaimed shot from them for half price . They also have excellent trap shooting as well as rifle and pistol areas.
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Re: Shotgun shell reloading

Post by Call Turner » Tue Mar 21, 2017 3:44 pm

And as far as loads are, get a good reloading manual such as Lymans Shotshell Reloading Manual.
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Re: Shotgun shell reloading

Post by garand » Tue Mar 21, 2017 6:26 pm

Loading trap shot shells is difficult to do and save money. The most expensive part is the shot itself, then the powder. Loading a one ounce shell, you will get 16 boxes out of one 25 pound bag of shot. If you consider new shot averages about $47.00 with tax, you are now paying nearly $3.00 per box of shells just for the shot. Wads will run about $10.00 for 500, so you have .50 for wads, .75 for primers if you can get them at $30.00 per 1000 and, as an example, .84 for powder if you use something like 700x and load light with 14.5 grains and get 8 pounds of it for $130. This gives you a total of $5.09 per box of shells. You can purchase 100 rounds of Federal from Walmart for under $21.74 plus tax, and these shells work excellently. This is not to discourage you, as I load a lot of shot shells every year. The trick to it is every penny adds up to a lot for trap shooting, especially with shot and powder.

When the clubs have reclaimed shot, I get as much of it as I possibly can afford because they sell it for $20-25 a bag. At $25 per bag, your cost is now down to $1.56 for shot. Big savings, especially when you consider at 14.5 of 700x, you will get 3860 rounds, or 154 boxes and change from an 8 pound keg. AT $1.44 per box of savings, that 154 boxes really starts to add up. So look for shot where ever you can find it but don't pay too much as you won't save enough to make it worth your while. Not to sound like a cheep jerk, cause I know what new shot costs, anything over $32.00 per bag and the savings really starts to dwindle. Loading shotgun takes time, so make it worth your time. There are places out there where you can order reclaimed for about $29.00 per bag, but you are going to have to order a pallet, and that is a lot of shot. Note, I am not endorsing 700X, as I have never used it, but I am strongly considering giving it a "shot" when I need to purchase powder again as it is very economical

Now, where do I get my stuff. The White E and Sportsmans Warehouse do have powder in stock, and a lot of it here recently, but you will pay more. Bill Johnson, with Best Buy Shooting Supply will have the best prices locally. This is not Best Buy Surplus on Sprague. Both are great companies but Shooting Supply deals with powder, wads and primers and they carry a large selection. You can pick up the supplies from the Cheveron station on Wellesley & Alberta. They are shooters and very nice and friendly people. I have purchased a fair amount of powder from them the last couple of years, especially when I can't get it from Brownells. To save money on this, you really need to purchase in 8 pound kegs. 700x in 14 oz bottle is 16.99, or 19.42 a pound. That translates into 155.33 for 8 pounds as opposed to roughly $130 for a single 8 pounder.

I purchase most of my reloading powder and primers from Brownells.com, but I wait for sales and discounts and purchase in bulk. Brownells now has a $19.95 haz mat fee per order, (not per box, they are allowed only to ship 3000 primers per box or 16 pounds of powder per container and so $19.95 per box would become cost prohibitive) and you can often get free shipping discount codes or discount codes for $35.00 off orders of $300 plus free shipping. Holidays, like St Patrick's Day or the 4th, will be the best time to find discount codes. Look often though and sign up for e-mail notification. Since I use Federal 209A, 5000 primers is $153.99. Purchase two of these at $308, subtract $35 and add the 19.95 for haz mat, and you have $293, or, $29.30 per 1000 primers. What I don't figure I will use, I take and resell to the club members where I shoot at cost and they are able to save as well. Trap reloaders are quick to gobble up 209 primers at anything under $32 per 1000. Winchester primers are even less at Brownells whereas you typically find Win or Fed primers at $40.00 plus tax per 1000 here locally.

Wads are going to run in the ball park of $10.00 plus tax per 500 in the Clay Busters or Nothing But Dust (NBD) brands. Winchester or Remington wads are going to cost more, usually by $3-4 more per 500. http://www.gamaliel.com has probably the best price on wads at a little under $10.00 per 500 with shipping but you will need to purchase 5000 to save anything over purchasing locally. I have purchased several from Sportsmans Warehouse since they moved back to Spokane, especially when I can get a coupon code. Try RMEF17 if ordering on line. SW will not custom order in store on supplies. At least that is what they told me. Corporate orders for the individual stores. The codes are usually for $15.00 off purchase of $150 so you will have to purchase a lot of wads, or add something else in there, to get that discount. I haven't priced wads with Mr. Johnson, but he should be in the ball park too.

Reloading data is free and easy to access from Hodgdon.com or Alliantpowder.com. They both have the most up to date loading info for most any cartridge and any 12 gauge shot shell from 3/4 oz on up. Free to print and far more data than any loading manual for shot shells I have seen. The manual, however, is going to have very useful information on crimps, crimp depth, wad pressure and other information you won't find on the web sites. Highly recommended to use both. Call Turner recommends the Lyman Shotshell book. This is an excellent book.

Shot shell pressures are much lower than what you will find with metallic cartridges. For this reason, I encourage you to stick with the recipe. Don't substitute casings, primers or wads as pressure in shotgun rises very quickly and the casing will not give you indications like metallic cartridges will. If your load calls for a Winchester 12SL wad, use the 12SL wad or the equivalent from NBD or Claybusters. Some load data will give you different loadings for the equivalent wad from CB or NBD. A Remington or Federal wad may cause you a lot of headache if you substitute it in the recipe. Federal 209A primers are hot in comparison to the other brands and the other brands do not necessarily burn similar either. CCI is vastly different and they have 209 and 209 Magnum. 12000 PSI in shotguns is dangerous and it's not hard to get there by loading well under max and swapping a primer or wad. Not every casing is the same either. Winchester and Remington cases tend to have a taper where the Federal and Estate are a straighter wall case. A wad for one will probably not react the same way in a different case. Do a search on the subject. Eye opening information out there.

As far as I know, Remington Gun Club and STS is the only manufacturer of a quality one piece casing. The new Winchester AA hulls are a two piece with a base wad and more similar to the Federal cases. Wads will seat differently in these. Most of the shooters I know who reload, reload the Winchester and Federal hulls once and toss them. The fear is the base wad will come loose and lodge in the barrel of the gun if loaded more than once.

Hope this is helpful and welcome to the dark side of the game of shot shell reloading and trap shooting.

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Re: Shotgun shell reloading

Post by Bturbo14 » Tue Mar 21, 2017 8:26 pm

Thanks call turner for the info! Thank you garand for the tremendous amount of very helpful information. I appreciate it! I know of Bill Johnson, his wife, and son. Good people. What club do you shoot at?
If you put out the fire, you won’t have to jump out of the window.
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If you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck.
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Re: Shotgun shell reloading

Post by garand » Wed Mar 22, 2017 9:44 am

I shoot mostly at Spokane Rifle Club. Periodically at Spokane Gun Club in the valley.

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Re: Shotgun shell reloading

Post by jime444 » Fri May 05, 2017 8:08 pm

Excellent post by Garand......I shoot moderate shotgun, mostly 20 ga. probably 80-100 boxes per year, between occasional trap and cowboy action........once I did a work up on cost and found material cost in the $4/box range if I was prudent,. If I counted any of my time to mfg plus time to run down components, I found I was making about $2/hr in savings vs buying them outright plus could always sell the hulls................not a good use of my time and it's mostly free nowadays.........now, if I need a specialty load or something different, it would be time to crank up the reloader.........but, for most light target loads it's a real loser unless you shoot hundreds of boxes per year........and even then, you better have plenty of time, good equipment and find a cheap source of shot.........I've always been surprised at the margins in shotgun shells......only wish .22LR and .223 and .308 had similar..............

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Re: Shotgun shell reloading

Post by Northerner » Wed May 10, 2017 8:19 pm

As already stated the only way to make shot shell reloading pay is to buy in bulk. I buy powder 8 - 16 lbs at a time, wads and primers 5000 at a time. Bill Johnson has the best prices I have found this side of the state on case quantities. The 5000 count case quantities will lower primer and wad costs substantially, but you have to be able to afford case quantities. I use the Fiocchi primers as they are quite a bit less than Winchester, etc. and have worked flawlessly for me. I have used over 20,000 Fiocchi shotshell primers with zero failures. I like the claybuster wads as they are copies of the name brands and work just as well. Shot is definitely the killer. I have found reclaimed shot to work just fine or 16yd trap and skeet, but have had very poor results from the 20 yd line or farther back. If you get to the I-5 side of the state check out Conniescomponents.com they have good prices as well on cases of wads, primers and competitive shot pricing. I see Connies has Cheddite primers for $150 delivered for a case of 5000. If you are on that side I think they will take the Hazmat fee off making a case of primers about $120 dollars or $24/1000. I don't load anything more than 1oz of shot and use 7/8oz for a good portion of my shooting to save on reload costs. I have patterned both and 7/8oz will break just as many birds as 1 or 1 1/8oz if your are pointing the gun in the right direction. I have loaded tens of thousands of shot shells over the past 20 years but have to admit that recently I have been shooting more factory loads. I shoot a lot of the Herter's shotshells from Cabelas when they go on sale. Since I live 1.5 hours from Post Falls I have actually picked up cases of these shells on free shipping and 10% off deals putting the price of a case at $50 or less. Just last week I purchased a case of Remington Field and Clay shells on sale for at Cabelas for $65, free shipping and a Remington rebate of $2/box making the case cost me $45 less an envelope and stamp for the rebate. At $4.5-5 per box for factory loads I can't justify sitting in front of my reloader much. It is a shame and I do like my reloads better than the cheap factory ammo mainly from a recoil side, but I also don't seem to have much time to reload and the savings is not what it use to be when shot was so much cheaper. Connies has shot at $33/bag if you buy 40 bags. My old job had me in Centralia often and I would take orders from as many reloaders as I could find to buy shot in quantity and allow all of us to buy shot much cheaper than in local sporting goods stores. I don't get that way anymore, so it has been a few years since I have been to Connies, but at $33/bag and case quantities on primers and wads you can still save money reloading, it just takes a large up front investment.

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Re: Shotgun shell reloading

Post by ktmrocks » Sun Sep 09, 2018 9:40 pm

All good advice. However, all of this assumes you are reloading 12ga. 2-3/4” target shells. If you reload hunting rounds in lead or steel, you start seeing more substantial savings - again buying in bulk helps.

When it comes to the less common gauges like 16, 28, and .410, the savings can be profound, no matter what type of loads you’re making. For instance, a box of 2-1/2” factory skeet loads for my .410 costs $12 for the junky ones. I can reload ‘em for under $4 a box.

Also, I can make exactly the load I want and tailor it for my shooting style and application. For instance, I like to load 2-1/2” .410’s with #5 shot for one area where I hunt grouse. There are plenty of quail in the area and the occasional hare. The #5 shot carries well for moderate distance shots and gets good, lethal penetration on larger grouse whilst the lighter shot load of the 2-1/2” doesn’t gut the quail like the 3” shells tend to. Now, you might be able to buy 2-1/2” .410’s in #5, but I’ve never seen ‘em.

Bottom line: you are going to save a little to a lot reloading. You are going to learn a whole lot. If it’s something you enjoy doing, it is well worth it.
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Re: Shotgun shell reloading

Post by Call Turner » Sun Sep 16, 2018 7:48 pm

Lyman shotshell manual should take you where you want load wise to start. Locally, White elephant or Sportsmans warehouse for supplies . More advanced things can be gotten from Ballistic products or RSI.
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