12 gauge reloading shell holder

[Highland Lofts]

I pick up a lot of trash spent shotgun hulls at the shooting pits I take my grandson to and I always pick up trash. Some times there are shotgun hulls with brass heads instead of steel. I was thinking of cutting the plastic off with a scroll saw and then deprime them for scrap brass. The shotgun shell primers do have steel in them so they would need to be deprimed.
Does any one make a 12 gauge press shell holder?
If not I can get one made but it would cost a lot more then buying a factory shell holder.
Just an idea for recycling instead of tossing them into the trash.
I picked up a bunch today to play with and see how many would add up to a pound of scrap brass.

 

[Atavar]

Why not just deprime over a 1/4” hole with a pin punch and a hammer?
I have never taken a shotgun shell apart so I profess great ignorance.

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[243winxb]

Copper coated steel? Check with a magnet.

 

[JT-AR-MG42]

I picked up a bunch today to play with and see how many would add up to a pound of scrap brass.

I really do think it will be a LOT of hulls.
I've pulled split brass base AA hulls apart before and recall that the 'brass base' is just a very thin
layer around the base.
The brass would need to be removed from the plastic base to get scrapped at my recycling center.

Brass bases are on modern premium ammo hulls and most older paper hulls.
The premium hulls would probably be worth more sold as is.

The shotgun shell primers do have steel in them so they would need to be deprimed

In olden days the shotgun primer centers were removed from the cups and reloaded with a
new primer.
A buddy of mine has some of the primers used for this (Remingtons IIRC) and I'll ask him to send me some photos.

JT

 

[Highland Lofts]

Copper coated steel? Check with a magnet.

99% of the shotgun hulls have brass coated steel heads, the other 1% are brass.
Over the last ten years I've picked up hundreds of thousands spent shotgun hulls with a magnet from Harbor Freight. Every trip to the DNR shooting gravel pits I pick up shotgun hulls. Yesterday I picked up twenty gallons of them. Every trip there is always more from pigs who never clean up after themselves.
I also organize shooting pit clean ups. We cleaned a large DNR shooting pit three years ago and hauled out twelve tons of trash. Last summer we cleaned up the same pit and hauled our over five tons of trash. It is a real problem out there.

These shotgun hulls with brass can go in the trash but I'd like to recycle them once I get it down.
I am thinking cut the plastic off with a scroll saw, deprime them, then when I have a fire in our fire pit put the brass in a wire cage and burn what little plastic is left then take the brass to the recycle yard where I go to.
If I can use one of my cheap presses to decap them it would go pretty fast

Like I wrote in the original post I picked some up to try figure it out.

 

[FROGO207]

Drill a locater hole in a section of 2X4 that fits the rim. Then drill a 1/4 inch or so hole in the center. Use a punch of appropriate size to knock the primer out. Same idea as the Lee standalone military primer removers or the ones used. Either set the wood up on some spacers to let the primers fall out the bottom or dump it out when full.

 

[entropy]

AA hulls, STS and Nitro hulls, sell for about 6 cents a hull as is, and comparing the small amount of brass gained vs. The amount of work to obtain it, selling the whole hulls seems the better venture. Plus, you don't have to deprime them.
Steel based hulls are hard to sell, reloaders can get all they want free out of the buckets and off the ground at any Trap, Skeet, or Sporting Clays club.
As you said, 99.99% of the hulls you pick up from DNR land will be steel based. Just sort out all the AA, STS, Nitro 27 or Nitro Gold, and Federal HOA hulls, box them up by type, and put a flyer up at your local gun club for a nickel a hull. You'll get a few takers.

 

[Highland Lofts]

The hulls are generally no good when I pick them up, the get walked on , driven on or start to rust.
Some times I'll get a decent about of pistol and rifle brass if I get there before the tweekers pick it all up.

 

[Highland Lofts]

Well I got it all figured out, got the plastic cut down, the primers out. Now the next fire in the firepit I'll burn the rest of the plastic out and see what brass is left which won't look like much. Probably not going to be worth the time invested.

 

[entropy]

There's no probably about it. Perhaps post apocalypse it might be worth the time and effort, but I doubt even then it would.