Help on which hulls to buy and ones to stay away from?

[Southern Thunder]

New to shot shell reloading and I have found a online source of once fired hulls. My reloading manual won't be here until Friday and I hope it will cover this but my question is. what do I look for in a hull to tell if it's a good candidate for reloading ? I've noticed their are A lot of winchester, Remington and federal hulls out there what is a good way to know what's trash and what's not ? Can someone please help me sort through this?

[Graybeard]

Buy their top of line target hulls and all three are OK. I guess rat now I'd rate Remington Premier at the top. I mostly use Winchester AA HS for my .410 skeet gun which is the only one I'm actually shooting anymore. I've not loaded anything other than .410 in a few years.

I've not used the Federal hulls in quite awhile tho their cheap Top Gun I think it's called hulls worked fine in 20 gauge last time I loaded them. They won't last as long as their top of line hulls however.

Have you looked around any local skeet, trap, sporting clays ranges? You can usually get the Remington Club and Federal Top Gun there free and they work fine for free tho I'd not pay more than two to three cents each for them.

AA and Premier will likely run you at least ten cents each. More for small gauges.

[huntswithdogs]

I like the Remington hulls. The Premiers are great! For my 12, I load just about any of the Rem hulls the same. The only ones I had problems with were the ones that have the silver base. I've had folks tell me that the silver based and the brass based are the same, but some the silver bases have pulled off when I'm resizing. My BILs are loading just about all Remington hulls for their 20s with no problems at all.

What gauge hulls are ya looking for? Smaller gauge hulls are a lot harder to come by than 20s and 12s.

HWD

[Catfish]

Any of the target hulls are good. If you are looking for the cheap hulls Remington are by far the best. If your going to load the heavest loads you can The Federal target hulls are the best.

[Southern Thunder]

Thanks guys this is the info I'm looking for. I will be loading Alot of 12 ga. For now and Im using a mec sizemaster. I think I have found a good source of hulls in the last day or so but as I've said I'm new to this and I've just started reading my manual so I have Alot to learn. I'm trying to figure out this spilt hull or 2 piece hulls, paper basewad and so on. I have also got mixed reviews on how many times a hull can be reloaded, so if y'all can  any help would be welcomed . Some info like what hull y'all use and how many reloads it's capable of. I'm Looking at dove hunting loads for now with 1 1/8  shot . And agin thanks for yalls help!!!!!!

[curteric]

Years ago I got 6 beer cases ( bottle ) of Win AA one piece hulls. I"m still working on them. For sporting clays. I load 1 oz of 7 1/2 or 8 shot at 1125 ft/sec with Hodgdon  Clays. When the crimp end will no longer fit in the trays of my mtm Case guard ammo case. My wife stop's using them in Her Benelli Sport and Rem 1100. I can still use them in my Browning O/U. When they get about so bad, I then  throw them into a separate box and use them for 1 1/8 or 1 1/4 oz 4,5,6 shot hunting loads using Hodgdon Longshot. I really can't tell you how many times they can be reloaded. When they wont hold a decent crimp or the hull splits toward the base, from the crimp end it's time to get rid of them.

[Graybeard]

There is no set number of loads you can get from a hull. You might get only one or you might get a dozen or more. It depends on a lot of things such as the heat generated by the powder. Unique is particularly bad in this regard and burns/crystalizes the hulls rather quickly in my experience. You'll get fewer loads from a semiauto than an O/U also.

Good target hulls like the AA and Premier often give me 10-15 loads per hull but some fail sooner than others even if you keep them as a batch which I seldom bother to do.

Most of the time I find splits from the mouth down are the first sign of failure in 12, 20 and 28 gauge hulls. In the .410 the hulls usually become brittle from the high pressures and heat and if you keep loading them eventually you'll have one rifle on you with the top half or so of the hull going out the barrel with the lead, wad and all still intact. I've seen it happen a lot of times on the skeet range and never yet seen the target being shot at break so I'm assuming the hull didn't open and release the shot.

[woodchuckssuck]

Cheap remmie hulls work great for me. Black or green.

I scoop up STS when I get a chance though, much smoother to reload, especially the resize die, because they are brass base, while the cheapies are steel.

A few AA exist in my rotation, but not many. Mostly Gun club, Game load, and some STS/Nitro...

[nitesite]

By far the best performance I have experienced has been with Remington STS, Premier and Nitro 27 hulls.  And Remington brass and steel base economy shells still provide very good reloadable hulls (they are 8-point which is nice) but they don't have as many cycles in them before they get tossed.
 
If I were going to have to put out cash or effort to get just one brand, it would be Big Green.

[darkgael]

By far the best performance I have experienced has been with Remington STS, Premier and Nitro 27 hulls.

+1 about that. I am loading about 10K a year at this point. I streamlined my reloading and went to the Remington hulls exclusively. One kind of hull, one powder, one wad.
Pete

[SHOOTALL]

I have loaded Win , Rem and Fed . all worked . I like Rem hulls with 8 point . Here is something to consider . If you load alot of different hulls and have to buy alot of different wads you will end up with lots of stuff laying around , half a bag of wads for hulls that are worn out or a few hulls with no wads on hand etc. In most cases each time you switch the machine will need adjusting . It is much simpler to settle on one hull , one or two wads and always have the supplies you know work.

[painted horse]

Federals for the HEAVY hunting loads (more room) Remington for everything else. I do have a couple thou of the newer Winchester AA's in 20 gauge and don't like them as well as the older AA's or the Remingtons. Haven't tried Fiocchi (sp) but have heard some good things about them as well. By the way, the Sizemaster is a good very good press...

[mcwoodduck]

I tried all sorts of hulls and load combinations.
Now I keep four hulls.  Each hull has it's own load.  That way I can tell at a clance what is in the shell.  I have had two boxes open in the back of the Jeep and a few turns down this road and the two boxes were mixed.  and my skeet and trap loads were mixed up. 
I keep Red Win AA hulls that are 1 1/8 oz 1200 FPS  7.5 Shot (target load and upland)
The Grey Winn AA hulls are 1 1/8 oz 1200 FPS 9 shot (target load and dove)  The Win AA loads are for trap, skeet and sporting clays. 
The Remington Gold Premier are 1 1/4 oz 1300FPS 7 shot  (Hunting and Pot loads)
Remington Green Premier are 1 1/4oz 1300 FPS 6 shot (hunting load)

[Couger]

Cheap remmie hulls work great for me. Black or green.

I scoop up STS when I get a chance though, much smoother to reload, especially the resize die, because they are brass base, while the cheapies are steel.

A few AA exist in my rotation, but not many. Mostly Gun club, Game load, and some STS/Nitro...

I agree with this most of what others have posted.  My favorite hulls since the old AA's were discontinued are now the Remington STS, altho there's NOTHING wrong with Game Club.
 
Plus its worth noting most of the load recipes for the STS hulls, also work well in the cheap Remington Game Club hulls as well.
 
I also agree the most 'voluminous' hulls for the heaviest reloads are Federal.