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Picture Page

January 2014


An unusual Eley shotgun shell...............

This brass shotgun shell with the head stamp ELEY  12  14  LONDON was made for use in a chamberless 14 gauge shotgun. It is of one-piece construction, uses a battery cup primer, and has a much thinner wall than standard brass shotgun shells do. The chamberless gun was developed in the 1920s by Dr. Charles J. Heath, a British surgeon and water-fowler. Dr. Heath determined that using a thin walled solid brass shell eliminated the need for the heavy forcing cone that was required on a gun that used paper shotgun shells. Removing this cone allowed the bore to be enlarged to about the same size as the inside diameter of the brass shell. Because these brass shells had such thin walls, they held more powder and shot than a paper shell of the same gauge, but also required that a larger wad be used; this particular shell used a 12 gauge wad, hence the '12' in the headstamp. An added benefit to removing the forcing cone was that it significantly reduced the recoil of the gun.

The standard roll-crimped mouth on a thin walled shell had a tendency to not hold the wad securely, resulting sometimes in the shot charge spilling from the shell while it was being transported or handled when loading the gun. To prevent this, other methods of crimping were often used, such as the 'star' type crimp on the shell in the photo, which would tend to render the fired shell incapable of being reloaded. W. W. Greener patented a crimper for these thin walled shells which 'fluted' a short section of the mouth of the shell for the purpose of holding the top wad in place. An illustration of the Greener crimper is shown here. 

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These thin walled shells were being produced by Eley, Kynoch and perhaps others, prior to Dr. Heath having taken an interest in chamberless shotguns in the 1920s, as evidenced by the company catalogs. This picture from the 1898 Kynoch catalog shows their patented two-piece "Perfect" thin brass case. No mention is made to chamberless shotguns in reference to this shell. The headstamp on the illustrated shell is KYNOCH'S No 12 PATENT.

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This 1925 Nobel catalog includes a standard "solid brass' shell and below it a "thin brass" shell, and again no mention is made to chamberless shotguns in relation to the thin shells even this late. These shells were made by Eley. However, the headstamp in this thin shell is ELEY  10  12  NOBEL, indicating it is for a 12 gauge chamberless shotgun, and requires 10 gauge wads.

 

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This 1938 ICI catalog lists their Eley "Thin Brass" shells as being for chamberless wildfowling guns, however, the headstamp is ELEY-KYNOCH  12  12  ICI (in a circle). The headstamp makes no reference to the need for 10 gauge wads.

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