Shotgun reloading

[56FordGuy]

Long story short, a buddy and I are getting into reloading together. He recently found us a shotgun reloading press, along with a bunch of primers. He's coming out tomorrow, we'll mount it to the bench then and look it over.

My question is, what are the odds the primers are still safe to use? The folks he got the stuff from said they're from the late 80's/ early 90's, it's all been stored in a cardboard box in their closet. I don't know the brand of the press, primers, or anything yet, but should have more information tomorrow. Have shotgun loads changed much in the last...gosh, almost 30 years? Should current load data work with primers that old? What are the odds the primers will even still be good?

[lowbud]

Long story short, a buddy and I are getting into reloading together. He recently found us a shotgun reloading press, along with a bunch of primers. He's coming out tomorrow, we'll mount it to the bench then and look it over.

My question is, what are the odds the primers are still safe to use? The folks he got the stuff from said they're from the late 80's/ early 90's, it's all been stored in a cardboard box in their closet. I don't know the brand of the press, primers, or anything yet, but should have more information tomorrow. Have shotgun loads changed much in the last...gosh, almost 30 years? Should current load data work with primers that old? What are the odds the primers will even still be good?

I found some at least 20 year old primers of my dad's after he passed. They were stored in the basement, in a cardboard box. They all worked just fine. I loaded up 200 rounds of skeet loads and didn't notice any difference from any other's i've loaded.

[enfield]

Personally, I wouldn't use the primers unless I could identify them.

[56FordGuy]

Personally, I wouldn't use the primers unless I could identify them.

Agreed. I believe the primers are still in the factory boxes, they were just tossed in a larger box with the rest of the stuff. He wound up not coming out here today, planning on tomorrow now. I'll post pictures.

[Guest Mugster]

Primers should be 100% unless they got wet and stayed wet. With a chronograph, I find the old stuff is within 1-2% usually of the new stuff. The thing to look out for is some powders that are 30 years old are not the same burn rate they used to be. So I might look at some reloading manuals for the period just to doublecheck.

Hulls can be a problem. Hulls are significantly different than they used to be. A peters blue magic load might or might not work in a modern winchester AA hull, but, who knows. If you have an old supply of blue magic hulls you want to get rid of, I'll take em and drive a long way to get them.

[Guest Bust'em]

make sure you're primers are the 209 version. many yeass ago, there were different sized primers.

[DUXBUSTER]

I do a lot of reloading for shotgun .410, .28, .20 & .12 ga. Primers that have been stored in a dry environment should be ok. I would refer to the new charts and powders before attemting any loading and trash the old stuff. Most people either used winchester 209's or Federal primers. You will probaly have seating problems using off brand hulls but stay with Winchester AA's they are the best and easiest or Remington. Trap shooters liked th Federal Gold's and they are paper hulls I would not recommend trying to load them even the best season loads have problems loading these.

Good luck.