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Picture Page January 2014 An unusual Eley shotgun shell...............
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
. 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. . . . . . . . . . . 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.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 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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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.
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. 
