John, how do you "rewax" a shell? Paul

Rewaxing a shell
 

Paul - I am doing 16 gauge paper hulls. I determined that the interior of the 16 gauge is roughly 5/8". I finally found an appropriate 5/8" woman's electric curling iron from Wal-mart's online catalog and ordered one. About $10 shipped to the local store. The curling iron is a tubular unit with a concave finger that is operated with a thumb lever. I use common candle wax or paraffin that melt at 140 - 145 F.

Preheat the curling iron. Put the hull over the 5/8" heater and release the thumb opener for the metal finger. The exterior metal finger holds the hull against the heated iron. Hold the end of the candle or piece of paraffin wax against the heated iron and let the wax flow to the hull. It will flow along the heater part and the outer finger and coat both inside and outside the hull as you roll the hull around the heated curling iron. A pretty simple task.

Being a scrounger of many years, I found a plastic thingy with 27 tubes that would accept the 16 gauge hulls. I drop the hulls into the tubes, put a small metal tray over them, invert the tray and put the thingy with the hulls in the oven that was preheated to 170 F.

The wax will melt at 140 F. Leaving the hulls in the oven for 20 minutes, base down, distributes the wax down the hull. Remove them to the kitchen table to cool and you are done. Any excess wax on the outside of the hull will scrape off if you run the hull through a full length resizer. You want to make sure the hulls will chamber after you reload them, so try them in your gun after they cool so you won't be screwing around later. If you find there is too much wax after the oven treatment, just wipe the exterior off with a paper towel when they are still warm.

Send me a pm with your e mail address and I can send you a photo of the plastic thingy that I use to hold the hulls while in the oven. I think a plastic shell box for 12 gauge would also work for the oven warming since the plastic won't deteriorate at 140 F for the short time it is in the oven. JF

Thanks, I have it now. Paul

Charlie have you tried putting a bit of lubrication such as Vaseline on the case mouth before you try to roll crimp the case? I put a touch of lube on every second or third case and it sure smooths out the crimp.

Fishtale you can use the same load data in your roll crimped shells but you may have to cut down the hull a bit. Try trimming your 12 gauge hulls to 2 5/8th inches and your 16 and 20 gauge hulls to 2 9/16th inches. If you don't want to mess with trimming your hulls and your gun has 2 3/4 inch chambers just put 4 - 5 grains of puffed wheat or rice on top of your shot to act as a filler.

steve i have not greased the hull but i will try it...but i do seem to be getting better at it..... thanks for the tip charlie

Charlie, I have only loaded plastic hulls with my old roll crimp tools, and have had pretty good results. The gentleman I got the tools from advised me to put a little dab of paste wax in the crimping head every couple hundred rounds or so. I use a Qtip and just a tiny amount of Johnsons paste wax...hope this will help. The hulls that I am reloading are either new or roll crimped that have been reconditioned. Skived or unskived dosen't seem to make much difference. My wife also wonders where those little round balls come from rolling around on the floor.

geoge those women have better eyes than us men..my wife also wants to know where those little balls come from...i will use the johnsons wax trick....dont know why but the kitchen seems to be reloaders hangout... charlie

Italian hand crank roll crimpers
 

A thread on the 16 gauge society site referred to a supplier of the hand crank crimpers. I contacted them asking if they ship from Italy or from an office in the US. They inform they "cannot ship to USA because of law". Whatever that means. They have these tools for all gauges but not available to US buyers according to Guiseppe at SIARM. JF

checked it out I'm amazed they still produce these. I still like my old one though. Looks the same as theirs. I think if we get enough people together bugging them we might get them to open a business here and sell to US here in the States.

I have found with my roll crimping if I take a hair dryer and run it over the mouth of the hull with the heat it really helps give it a clean crimp. then I set them in the window to cool off after rolling and they stay tightly rolled.

Italian roll crimper
 

Unless they decide to sell their complete line of products to someone like BPI or Reloading Specialties I don't see them having an impact here. And they would have to crunch the numbers to make the products reasonably priced. Certainly, they could not wholesale a roll crimper (as an example) here at the 27 Euro price ($39 USD) and have BPI mark them up 30% to $51 and expect to sell a lot. The same goes for all their other stuff. In terms of marketing the roll crimpers, the potential buyer numbers are so small I would be surprised if even BPI would inventory a full line of the product. Nostalgia also has a cost limit to it. JF