C.I.L. 3-B Shotgun Shell Primers

Hi there folks, in this video we're going to have a look at some vintage shotgun shell reloading components. These are some old CIL shotgun primers, probably from the 1930 time frame. As you can see here, these are the CIL number 3B primer, and you'll note that it says without battery pockets. We'll get into that in a bit. Super clean, non-rusting, so these are a non-corrosive primer even though they're old. Of course, explosive handle carefully. All primers are explosive and should be handled carefully. Manufactured by Canadian Industries Limited of Montreal, Canada. So there's a box that's in pretty decent shape. This is a full carton and despite the size of it, it only has 500 round trays in it instead of the thousand that you would expect, just because of the way that these are packaged. So, nice old vintage box. There's the lot number on the bottom. We'll have a look inside and carefully pry the top up here without doing it any damage, hopefully. I'll show you how these are packed. I've unfolded the tab. These tabs would have been locked together originally, but as you can see, we have our five individual sleeves inside there, and in between each sleeve is a rolled up chunk of cardboard to act as a spacer. This is sort of an early form of safety packaging that would keep the primers from being in too close of contact with each other so as to prevent a chain detonation should one of them go off for some reason or another. So there's what they've got for a spacer in between, just a piece of folded over cardboard, and the individual packages look like this. Once again, kind of classy looking old packaging, very similar to the outside carton. Once again, the lot number and the warning, and you can tell these are old because they're just in English only. There's no other French on them, which is kind of funny when you consider that these were manufactured in Montreal, which is a French city. So anyway, CIL still exists to this day, but they don't make this type of product. They basically manufacture paint and agricultural chemicals and things like that. They were a subsidiary of, I think, ICI of England, Imperial Chemical Industries of England, I think started up CIL in Canada, if I'm not mistaken, and quite an old company. It has its roots back in many of the old black powder manufacturing mills in Canada that were amalgamated together with other chemical companies and, you know, they kind of grew into CIL. So anyway, it's unfortunate that CIL doesn't make this type of product anymore, but there you go. So the interior of these sleeves, so we've got basically a cardboard sleeve. This one, of course, is damaged. I did not open any of these up. These were all opened up like this when I got them, so I'm not responsible for that. And we've got our tray inside, which is kind of cool because it is made out of wood. So this is basically a wooden piece, almost like you'd make trim for your house. It's all milled out, and then it's got this paper bit glued onto the sides to keep the primers from falling out. And once again, we've got a lot number there. So the primers themselves, I've done enough blabbing about packaging. Let's have a look at those. They are rather unusual, so let's see if we can get a look at them. It's an unusual looking primer for a shot shell, isn't it? So these are like a brass cup. We've got the priming compound inside, and we have the anvil there. Now they're missing a part. As you'll note on the package here, it says without battery pockets. Well, the battery pocket is this component. So let's have a look at what is the battery pocket. So this particular little stamped top hat looking piece of metal is a battery pocket. And modern standard primers are made with this piece and this piece combined. But back in the olden days, you could buy primers for less money if they were without the battery pocket. So if this part wasn't part of it, you just got the cup and the anvil and the priming compound, and that was cheaper. And the old shot shell loading presses could be set up with a very small decapping pin, which would push through this part of the primer pocket, and it would push out the cup and the anvil. And then you could press in a new one of these without having to replace this part. Of course, that's gone nowadays. We have a big fat depriming pin on our current shot shell reloading tools, which pushes the whole thing out. So I'm going to grab a Winchester style of primer. We'll just compare the two. All right, here is a Winchester 209 shot shell primer. This is a little bit of an older one, but this is the basic standard for modern primers pretty much the world over. This is pretty much supplanted with all the other types of primers that are out there for shot shells. And as you'll notice, it has the cap inside. It's all unitized. There's actually a little flash hole cover there so that powder doesn't get down inside the primer. But you'll notice that these are a different height. So the CIL primer is quite a bit shorter than the Winchester style. However, they are the same diameter at the back. So you can use this style of primer in a 209 style of shell. So the problem with these types of primers, if you wanted to actually use them, is that you need a supply of these battery pockets. And I kind of pick up old CIL shells whenever I see them that are fired, and I decap them so I can get these primer battery pockets. So I've taken to saving those up whenever I find them, and I deprime them. I use my regular reloading press with a decapping die and push the centers of the primer out and save the battery pocket. And then I compress the new primer into that. And here's what a reloaded primer looks like. So we've taken one of these and we pressed it into one of these, and we end up with a reloaded primer essentially. So there's what we end up with. And this will fit, like I said, in any 209 style of shell and can be used for that. Anyway, I got a bunch of these primers and, like I said, some of the packages were already torn open. So I have been experimenting with the primers because they were already opened up. The sealed up ones, I'm going to leave those alone. They've survived this long without anybody using them. They deserve to be preserved for a little longer, so I'm not going to use the ones that are sealed. But some of these ones that were torn open, I've been experimenting with them. And in the course of my experiments, I have discovered that these old primers, even though they are supposedly, according to the package anyway, they are supposedly for smokeless powder shot shells, I have had no luck using them with smokeless powder. I've tried them with target loads, using fairly fast, easy to light powders like 700X, Red Dot, and so forth. And they just are not a good primer for that anymore. I think they've gotten weak with age. And like I said, haven't had any luck with that. However, they didn't work with smokeless powder. However, we will try them out with black powder loaded shells to see if they are usable for black powder. You don't need nearly as much of a spark to get black powder lit up as you do with smokeless powder. So I have a few shells loaded up with black powder, 12 gauge, and we're going to take those out to the range and we're going to see how they work. So let's pack up and head out to the range. All right, I'm at the range and I've got a black powder loaded shell with the CIL number 3B primer in it. There you can see the old primer and this is a Federal paper hull and it has 80 grains of double FG and one ounce of shot. So we're going to try that out of the old bake owl because it's got a chrome line bore and it shouldn't mind shooting black powder. Well, that works well. No problems with that. Next up, we have a plastic hull. This is a newer style Federal top gun and this has 74 grains of double FG and one ounce a shot. Once again, with the old CIL shotgun primer. No problem. Those work. Those work good. All right, one more of the Federal plastic hulls. One ounce a shot. Works good.