I've been messing around with these magteck all brass shells. The problem with them is a couple of things;
1. The walls are very thin, much thinner than a standard plastic shell. SOOOO the standard plastic wads are too small, on the O.D., they're loose in the shell. This allows powder to migrate around the wads. I've had to use 10 guage over-powder wads, and 10 guage card wads to load these.
2. The brass has no base wad. That means the powder capacity as well as the overall capacity is huge. With a huge powder space, you need a LOT of powder to equal a standard plastic shotshell. More powder space = less pressure. How much? I don't know! Good question! I hope somebody does know.
3. Over shot wads---closing the mouth. Again, the 12 guage over shot wads are too small. Had to go with 10 guage again. Then how to crimp! Or use a sealer. In the above pics, I used a red candle to melt some wax to hold the over-shot wads. Also I used a 6 point mec crimp starter to partialy close the mouth. Lately, I came across a latex sealant used at the factory I work at. It's white in liguid state and clear when hard. Also quite sticky. Ideal for these shells!
4. These magtech shells take a large pistol primer. Now the problem is how to prime--deprime?! I found out I could deprime them with a 1/16 pin punch, placed over a hole in a chunk of wood. Popped the primers right out. Re-priming was accomplished with my mec 600 jr. by placing a lg. pistol primer on the re-prime peg, then feeling it into place while lowering the priming punch. A lot of fooling around, but it works.
I fired a few of my first attempts at loading these. I used a standard 1 1/8 ounce trap load, 18.0 grains of nitro-100, rem 2 1/2 lg pistol primer, AA red wad sealed as seen in above pic. I could almost run as fast as the shot! Well at one time I could have!
Just barely moved the bolt on my beretta 390.
I have some more loaded, with an increased charge of 22.0 grains. I may chrono these to guess at how much more to use. That's with a 10 guage BPGS wad, it should be a better seal! The BPGS wad is available from ballistic products,
http://www.ballisticproducts.com/ it's simply a thin plastic over powder wad.
I saw that magtech also makes .410 all brass shells. So, of course, I had to have some. These are much easier to load. Priming is simple, the head is the same size as most magnum rifles, so a #5 shell holder for the lee auto prime works like it should. Depriming is also simple, a universal deprimer, by lee, deprimes easily. Inside diameter is close enough to plastic shells that standard 410 wads work well. I got some 410 over-shot wads, the latex sealer holds them tight. My rossi single shot loves them!
