16 ga. Sterlingworth dislikes the Remington Game Loads

[jeffl]

I started this topic on the "Parts for Sale" forum under "Need 16 guage hammers." This may be the end of the topic, but in deference to Silvers' suggestion, I thought I 'd post this follow-up here.

The hammer tips on my sterly protrude .065" right bbl, .064" left bbl.

As stated earlier, the springs appear pretty strong (although not as strong as a 16 ga. Model 21, to which we were able to do a side-by-side comparison, no pun intended).

We measured depth with a depth guage to the primer-face on 5 or so shells that failed to fire, coming up with depths of .012" to .016".

On some of the RGL hulls that did go bang, either in the Sterlingworth or my Mod. 11, we were still reading depths of .006" - .008". I had hoped they might flatten out from "fire-forming", and it seems they did, but not enough to make me comfortable going through the effort of reloading them. Too bad, because the Remington hull seems to be the only one readily reloadable with 7/8 oz. loads without fooling with fillers.

As far as welding longer tips on the hammers, I too had given some thought to the notion of punctured primers, so i don't think I'll pursue that idea further. Besides, the RGLs and even my precious purple Federals patterned horribly! At 40 yards, a basketball might be safe depending on where in the pattern it was. On the other hand, the Winchesters put the same number of #6's in the circle as the #7.5 RGLs. Now if I can just find some #7.5 Winchesters to pattern.

Well, I've probably passed the point of y'all's interest, so I'll close.

Thank you,

Jeff Loth

[Researcher]

I load the purple Federal hulls with the DR-16 wad and 7/8 ounce of shot and they work great, same with the cheap Australian Winchester hulls. No need for any fillers. For one ounce loads I use the CB-16 clone of the old WAA-16 in my hoard of compression-formed Winchester/Western hulls.

[Twice Barrel]

jeffl some people have reported that Remington primers have been pretty hard lately. I haven't run into any but I'm still working on RGL shells I bought 5 or 6 years ago. Are you getting the same results after reloading the Remington Game Load hulls with Winchester or Cheddite primers?

[jeffl]

Twice Barrel,

As part of all this, I also have heard about the hard primers, and I think it could certainly be a component of my experiences recently.

I should clarify another point, I aim to begin reloading my 16 ga. hulls, but I am not quite there yet so I am afraid I cannot answer your last question. I am still in the process of figuring out which components to buy, which is now a bit daunting since I found out how persnickity my gun is about throwing a decent pattern. I hope I don't have to buy one bag/bottle/box of each brand/type of component before I finally stumble across a recipe that works. Or is that the fun part?

Researcher, along these same lines, thank you for your information. I probably haven't made the most exhaustive search, but I had not yet seen a recipe using less than 1 oz. with the DR-16. Are there any 7/8 loads with this wad that are available for public viewing? I haven't joined the 16ga.com low pressure group...yet.

Thank you all,

Jeff

[eightbore]

Don't fool with your gun. The Remington Gun Clubs are also as bad as the Game Loads as far as primer failures. The primers are hard as rocks and the firing pin depth doesn't have anything to do with it.

[Twice Barrel]

I know this was directed to Dave but here is load data for the Remington SP/RGL hull.

http://data.hodgdon.com/shotshell_load.asp Select 16 gauge, lead, 7/8th ounce, Remington SP hull.

I would recommend that if you don't have a lot invested in the RGLs that you have on hand you swap hulls for the Winchester SuperX (I know Hodgdon insists on calling them X-pert but Hodgdon is wrong) and use this data http://data.hodgdon.com/shotshell_load.asp Select 16 gauge, lead, 7/8th ounce, Winchester X-pert hull. It is my experience that lately the Winchester SuperX/Cheddite hull is outperforming the Remington RGL hulls.

You also may want to go to 16ga.com and search "load data" or "DR16 wad load data"

[Researcher]

I've shot a lot of Remington Gun Clubs in 12- and 20-gauge and a lot of Remington Game Loads in 16-gauge and have never had a bit of trouble. I've shot them in Fox, Ithaca, Remington, Tobin, Lefever, Parker Bros. and RBL doubles, Remington Sportaman autoloaders, Remington Model 31s, Winchester Model 12s, and Browning Superposeds. I find the 20-gauge Gun Club hull one of the best reloading hulls ever. The last two flats of the Remington 1200 fps 1 ounce 16-gauge Game Loads I got, seem awefully harsh even in my hefty 16-gauge Sportsman. Much more then my 1 ounce 1200 fps reloads in the compression formed Winchester hulls?!?

As for the 7/8 ounce 16-gauge loads there was an article in the NSSA magazine, by Tom Ceretto, on 7/8 ounce 16-gauge loads with the DR-16 wad. He gave six loads with International Clays, and six loads with IMR PB for the Winchester hull and six or seven with each powder for the Remington hull. I use the load of a Winchester 209 primer, with 16.9 grains of International Clays, the DR-16 wad and 7/8 ounce of shot in the cheap Australian Winchester hulls, said to give 1200 fps @ 7300 psi. In the Federal hulls the load I use was given me by a member of the 16-gauge board who had it tested by Tom Armbrust. It is a Winchester 209 primer, 16-grains of American Select, DR-16 wad and 7/8 ounce of shot, said to do 1184 fps @ 9633 psi. My bushing actually drops 16.2 grains of American Select. I took two boxes of the Federals and a few extra shells and have shot them six times and reloaded them the seventh time and now have 44 shells. Still had two full boxes at the fifth reloading. All have been shot in my RBL.