Strider:
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<br>Yes, initially almost all shotgun shells were brass, mostly because paper was not waterproof at that time, I'm not enough of a shotgun historian to know when the first paper hulls came out, but around the turn of the century, I'm guessing. Plastic hulls were developed by Winchester in the late 50s as I recall. All army shotshells, loaded with buck shot used to be brass and they were pretty common at one time, but are mostly priced as collector's items now. Remington made a run of brass 12 ga a few years back for Ducks Unltd. and they ran about $25 bucks a box, loaded with a decorative metal box. I image there are still some floating around and there may be a source for brass hulls somewhere, but I am not familiar with it. Federal still makes paper hulls for one of their target loads and they are a great hull for relaoding, but they don't last long, due to pin holes burning through the paper, usually 2 or 3 reloads is it. They have a distinctive smell when shot, especially the first time, that some of us find quite pleasant.
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<br>The reason brass is not common is because it is a pain to reload, you have to use a top wad with shot and because there is not an easy way to seal the load in, and particularly to make it watertight. You have to go back and use some kind of wax as a seal after loading, putting the top wad on, and then crimping it in place. This is a guess, but I would doubt that brass hulls would pattern as well as plastic for several reasons that are not worth getting into here. I always said I was going to shoot some of those DU shells, but never got around to it. I shoot o/u's so functioning was not a concern, am not sure how some semi-autos would react to them, probably fine but have no personal experience along those lines.
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<br>There is no real advantage to using brass for shotshells and quite a few disadvantages. The only plus is that brass might last for a very large number of reloadings, but with the low cost of good plastic and the difficulty of reloading brass, I would not really consider this a big deal. Most good plastic hulls will last for 6 to 10 reloading today, so a 20 box case of good plastic hulls will probably last for 3000 rounds or so, and for most non-competitive shooters that is a long time.
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<br>To sum it up, brass is interesting historically, and some cowboy shooters may use them(might have a source there, I don't know) but it is not the way to go for modern shotshell loading. How necessary precision is in shotshells is debatable, but in shotshells, your precision comes from the care with which you assemble the components, and your testing, and the hull contributes very little, since all it actually does, besides holding the components, is seal off the chamber. The different hull designs do affect pressures, so you need to use what the loading manual calls for.