16ga.com ~ View topic - Crimp options for 2 1/2" shells

Joined: 27 Oct 2017 Posts: 80 Location: Joliet, IL

I'm basically at the point where 100% of my 16ga shooting is reloads due to availability and roll crimping is slow.

I was digging around and saw a picture on a forum somewhere of a guy that had cut his shells short but continued to use a standard length star crimp tool. He put an overshot card in the hull, then star crimped it in a standard length machine.

This resulted in what looks like a normal star crimp around the circumference of the shell with a gaping hole in the middle. Except the overshot card holds the shot in. He had a name for this type crimp but I lost the page!!

My reasoning is this: I have an abrupt forcing cone. Don't want to shoot 2 3/4" shells. But if I could cut the shell and get this to run in an adjusted MEC I could greatly speed up my loading process and use my gun more. Basically I would be subbing in a partial star crimp instead of a roll crimp. I could continue to use my 2 3/4 low pressure load data in 2 1/2" shells, just a faster crimp process.

Thoughts? It will be an expense to find and convert a MEC to 16ga, I dont want to spend money and find it doesn't work.

Joined: 30 Jul 2012 Posts: 318 Location: Central, ND

Hartin crimp is what it’s called

Joined: 27 Oct 2017 Posts: 80 Location: Joliet, IL

Joined: 30 Jul 2012 Posts: 318 Location: Central, ND

Ive tried them. Work just as well as a fold crimp. However I prefer the aesthetics of roll crimps

Joined: 08 Feb 2009 Posts: 1308 Location: Western WA

Hartin crimps didn’t work for me. The velocities dropped way down (well below roll crimps) and were very inconsistent. Maybe the load I was using didn’t like the loose crimp, but either way, I gave up on Hartin crimps and went all in with 2 1/2” loads with fold crimps for 1 oz and under. Been very happy with them ever since.

For heavier loads over 1 oz I use roll crimp, which still fits in short chambers but has 2 3/4” capacity. Roll crimps are time consuming but my heavy load usage is less, so it doesn’t really matter if it takes a bit longer.

B.

Joined: 14 Feb 2022 Posts: 26 Location: Evaro, MT

They have their fans—Russ of the low pressure group being one. He advised me to cut hulls to 2-9/16” and shared a story of how well they worked.

I would love to see velocity and pressure comparisons, thoughts on six vs eight star crimps, etc.

Joined: 27 Jan 2016 Posts: 490 Location: Oswego, Kansas

You can adjust the MEC loader to crimp shells that are 2 5/8" just fine. When I had my crimp station adjusted for the Remington game load hulls that measure that length it dawned on me to cut some Cheddite hulls to that for use in my short chamber LC Smith.
The result with the cheddite hulls when used with the SG16 wad and 1oz of shot was that they would not crimp closed. I switched to 7/8oz loads with this wad and they worked great.
For 1oz loads with the SG16 wad I roll crimp them which makes it easy to tell which loads are which. But to get 1oz loads with a regular star crimp I switched to using fiber wads to get the proper stack height.
To avoid switching to fiber wads you could always just cut the shot petals off of the SG16 wad thus making it a brush wad.

Joined: 07 Jun 2020 Posts: 224

While fold crimps are faster to load I have found roll crimping to not be all that slow.

I have done 25 hulls through all but the crimp on my MEC then worked the lot of 25 through my roll crimped mounted on my harbor freight drill press, the process is actually fairly quick.

On short shells, other than those that started as fold crimp 2.5 in, I roll crimp.

I have an old Texan single stage loader set up to do 2 1/2 roll crimping, while my MEC and Ponsness are set up for 2.75.

I still have a bunch of short Westley Richard, H&H, and polywad fold crimp hulls, but I mostly roll crimp or load RMC brass.

On the challenge of the occasional fold crimp with a slight hole, I have found a drop of recycled birthday candle wax or a slip of paper cut out with a punch works well, you can also buy cards of paper or Mylar to do the same thing.

Joined: 27 Oct 2017 Posts: 80 Location: Joliet, IL

Guys, thank you all for the input. Very helpful

Joined: 08 Feb 2009 Posts: 1308 Location: Western WA

Agree with makintrax73, the SG16S (short version of Sg16) works well with 1 oz in 2 1/2” Cheddite hulls with fold crimp. For 7/8 oz I switch back to SG16 and adjust the crimp punch accordingly. So now we have good options for both 1 oz and 7/8 oz in 2 1/2” Cheddite hulls.

B.

Member Joined: 06 Oct 2007 Posts: 2346 Location: West MI

makintrax73, have you used the search tab (directly under the 16ga logo) to look up Hartin Crimp? There is a bunch of past threads on the technique.

Makintrax73 -- Follow this link to a thread on crimping short shells with the Hartin method. Near the end I contributed a lot of photos and text. You can do it with what you've got.
http://www.16ga.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=18347&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

Makintrax73 -- By the way, I do like roll crimping, and do more of it than the Hartin crimp, but good roll crimpers are a bit costly and roll crimping really does take more equipment and time, unless you almost have a dedicated set-up with a drill press or something like that. (Google GAEP for the best and most costly equipment and method -- their stuff, when properly used, produces real factory results.)

Personally I have never had performance problems with properly Hartin-crimped ammo. The crimps aren't "soft" if the depth is right. Use the same kind of depth that is normally good for a pie-crimped plastic or paper hull -- no "bulged up" or crowned-up center of the crimp, please. The Hartin crimp is just another pie crimp with a big hole in the middle covered by an overshot wad. I advise not using anything thicker than a 0.030" paper card wad (a "B" wad - what it was called in the old roll-crimp days), as the crimp folds need to crimp that too. And now, having said that, you'll notice in the pictures I put in the article I mentioned above, that I Hartin crimped over the Spred-R device, which is pretty damn stiff and definitely does not get deformed by the crimp folds. I guess the top of the Spred-R device is thin enough so that it works well with Hartin crimp anyway.

There's my 20 cents worth (inflation).

Cheers!

Joined: 27 Jan 2016 Posts: 490 Location: Oswego, Kansas

Roll crimps don't take a bunch of equipment. I use my regular hand held electric drill with the crimp tool from precision reloading. The hulls are held in a hull vice from the same place. I made a loading board out of some scrap 1x10 lumber with holes drilled with a spade bit and a piece of scrap paneling glued to one side for the bottom.
I laid out and drilled sixty holes so I can load that many shells on the Mec and then roll crimps them in a batch.

Joined: 27 Oct 2017 Posts: 80 Location: Joliet, IL

Thought occurred to me I have 2 1/2 RST 1OZ shells on hand, what do they use?

Cut one open. It sure appears to be the "short" version of the SG16 wad. However when compared to an SG 16 it came out of the shell .090" shorter than an SG16. Reading up on the specs it makes me assume RST is using a hard crimp or a lot of wad pressure to get it in there, and it crushes down a bit. The specs I read say both wads are the same OAL , just one sits deeper on the powder because it lacks fingers in the powder seal.

But with an extra 1/16" of shell length I believe a load very close to 1oz could be developed for a MEC that wil crimp normally.

BTW the powder they use is purple just like the hulls! 17 grains.