Ah My Dear Coffin
Back when I was in a club and shooting trap 3 times a week I bought a nice big MEC!
Awesome thing, pull the lever, shove in an empty, churned out the 12 ga shells like a little conveyor factory. of course when something jammed up it was ... unfortunate.
So I sold that and the rem 1100’s but got a Lee Loader ...
That thing is simple, neat, easy to work, and easy to fix. If anything breaks, a piece of aluminum and JB Weld will handle it! I love old school.
Speaking of old school, as I went collecting other peoples garbage, I ended up with several ( ie more than two) old iron presses, and at least two are old school monster iron ( ca 1950 ish? ) 12 ga presses...
I need to do some searching and restoring, methinks...
Also In my pile of scheiss precious objects I have an antique shotshell kit with the ubiquitous roll crimper! I need to make that thing work for 2.5 inch paper shells....
Regarding the unavailability of brass shotshells ... where there is a will , there is a way! I have been experimenting with making my own shells for my IAB Sharps 1863 percussion paper cutter, and have several protoypes, some made entire of soldered plumbing bits, some made of 28 ga shells bottoms and soldered on tubing, and there is always the heavy machined brass cartridges. One outfit even made the extra thick cases such as the .44-100 Ballard Everlasting, which last darn near forever...
So if one wanted, one could slowly turn out a bunch of cases on a little lathe...
Where there are machine tools, there is a way....
“Take that Cambridge Scholars”