Adapting 8g MEC Presses to Load the "Short 8"

[Mike of the Mountain]

This will be in Parker Pages for those that don't visit this forum.

There are a lot of nice new 8g hulls out there to be had. Some guys got their hands on factory new Winchester Industrial hulls and cut off the crimps to remove the components for use in other shells. That left a lot of 8g hulls that are 3” just looking for a new home. I bought 500 of them as did at least one other PGCA member who is jumping into the 8g shooting and reloading world in a big way. These hulls are usable and definitely affordable. Here’s what you need to know-

I am going to address the “conversion” to a MEC press. P-W presses are a totally different animal. Since the existing 8g presses have already been “converted” or “customized”, all it takes are a few minor adaptations. I had Bruce Ducksworth send me his resize/decap die system and press brace. The brace gives the press stability, much more than the original design, and his "station 1" die and cam are head and shoulders better than the original design. My original decap/resize die broke twice and never ejected the hulls on the up-stroke. Bruce' system cured that. That is not necessary for reloading the short hulls, but it improves the function of the press immensely.

First off, I wanted to have better pre-crimps on all my shells loaded on the MEC press. In order to do that I removed the pre-crimp die from the bolt. I replaced the bolt with a 1” flange head bolt in ¼-20 thread pattern. I then added a 1/8” nylon washer between the die body and the lock washer below the tool head. That lowered my pre-crimp die and gave me a much more aggressive pre-crimp that most definitely made a difference in my finish crimps. The next step was removing the pre-crimp and finish crimp shell holders. I then replaced the original bolts with longer ¾" flange head ¼-20 bolts and two nylon 1/8” washers under each shell holder. I then tightened them up and, voila, cocked, locked and ready to rock, Doc! I then swaged five of the 3” hulls and proceeded to load them. Since the new hulls are 3”, I can adapt the loads by using ¼" less of filler in my wad columns. The current load of Clays, Gualandi Hi-Cap wad plus a ¼" 12g felt wad under 1 1/2 oz of shot allows a perfect crimp!

Just keep the original bolts and any washers that accompany them and it’s an easy swap out those shell holders. In a few minutes you’re loading 3 ¼" hulls again. Easy peasy.

The nice thing is even if you're not using new 3” hulls, you can trim any 3 ¼" hulls whose hull mouths have seen better days and still have life for more reloads. This will give us more options to keep our beloved 8g guns up and running.

I hope some of you guys can use this little bit of information. Keep your stick on the ice; we’re pulling for you!

Here are some pics of the finished product. Enjoy.