The UK's Finest Independent Forum for Shooters and Gun Owners. Est 2010.

I have a very early Winchester 1897 shotgun, and at the moment I feed it lyvale Express super light 21gs, but these never seem to extract right. they cost £50 x250. I was told by a few club members to buy heavier cartriges, dump some shot back down to 21g and then roll crimp them, as it should give better extraction. is this mental or a good idea?

looking at cartridges, it looks like £50 is the best price anywhere for them, and I can't even see anywhere local to me selling them where I can see a price online.

If this was a good idea and safe, how would I go about it, as it looks like I'd need longer cartridges? as 65-70 is for usual length, am I going to have enough material to roll crimp after cutting off the end of the star?

Chances are you have a generous chamber made for papercased cartridges and modern cartridges are made to tighter tolerances and that's causing the problem.
Best not to alter factory loads.

Altering factory cartridges as you suggest is mental. Find a cartridge that works even if it costs more. Fingers, hands and face are worth more than trying to save £1 on a box of cartridges.
Regards
Peter.

I never have but could you load your own? I had a brief look into shotgun reloading when I saw the price of solid slugs but never took it further.
This is the press I looked at, appears to be simple and pretty idiot proof: https://www.amazon.co.uk/GAUGE-LOAD-ALL ... B000NTKD28

I've loaded slugs before, supplies from italy, but loading full on shot, shotgun cartridges seems like a huge ballache as powder, wad and primer supposedly all have to be spec'd out.

as I understand it, it is not dangerous to lighten a load, it is making it heavier where the problems occur. that's how americans like taofladermaus and demolition ranch were always able to safely reload their weird projectiles.

as for saving £1, that wasn't really my intention, I know it's going to cost more, but I also don't want to spend out hundreds of pounds on shotgun cartridges trying to get them to work and winding up with the same issues if there was a more straightfoward approach by tailoring them to me. as all those I can buy seem to be star crimped, the only roll crimped shells I see are 2" shells or blanks.

I'd try a box of 'short' cartridges to see if that would even fix the issue first. Hull Comp X are some the shortest factory cartridges i've seen (or they used to be) and they come in 21g flavour

I would suggest having a look on Pigeon Watch forum - Lot's shotgun reloaders there.

Or if you're on Facebook the Pressure Detectives page

An early 1897 is going to have a chamber length of 2 5/8. Old cartridges with roll crimps and made of paper, extraction would be no issue, even if cartridges were a little long. Modern plastic cartridges with star crimps are probably having the forcing cone grip the mouth of the expended cartridge, hence making extraction not quite right.

There’s a number of fixes like chamber reaming or experimenting with star crimped lengths or feeding it roll crimps. The weight of shot is not going to make any difference.

If you want to investigate roll crimps, there must be loads of "antique" loading tools about for a few quid.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/124855355921 ... SwZz1g2eGC