Before plastic arrived in 1960, shotgun shells were made of brass and paper, with internal components crafted from felt, cork, and cardboard. The original self-contained shotshell dates back to the early 1860s and was made entirely of brass. Paper hulls followed in 1869 and dominated the market for nearly a century, until Remington introduced the first plastic shells around 1960.
All-Brass Shells Came First
The earliest self-contained shotshells, appearing in the 1860s, were solid brass cases. They were simple, durable, and reusable. A hunter could grab a handful of brass shells, head into the field, and reload them when he got home. But brass was expensive, heavy, and slow to manufacture in large quantities. These limitations created demand for a cheaper alternative, which arrived less than a decade later.
Paper Hulls Took Over by the 1870s
In 1869, the C. D. Leet Company in Springfield, Massachusetts patented the first paper shotshell in the United States. The design used a wound paper tube for the body, with a small brass jacket at the base that formed the rim and held everything together. Inside that brass head sat a base wad made from horsehair or other natural fiber, which sealed the gases behind the shot charge.
Paper shells were far cheaper and easier to manufacture than solid brass, and they quickly became the standard. They remained the dominant shotshell design for roughly 90 years.
How Manufacturers Fought Moisture
Paper’s biggest weakness was water. When paper shells got damp, they swelled, and a swollen shell could jam in the chamber or fail to feed properly. Manufacturers went to considerable lengths to solve this problem. The tubes were soaked in melted paraffin wax under vacuum conditions, forcing the wax deep into the paper’s pores. Before the wax treatment, the outer surface was coated with soybean oil mixed with drying agents to create an additional moisture barrier. Some makers used perilla oil instead. A typical waterproofing formula combined 88% soybean oil, 10% aluminum stearate, and 2% lead oleate, though dozens of variations existed.
These treatments helped, but they never fully solved the problem. Paper shells remained sensitive to humidity and rain, which was a persistent frustration for waterfowl hunters and anyone shooting in wet conditions.
What Was Inside the Shell
Modern plastic shells use a one-piece plastic wad that acts as a gas seal, cushion, and shot cup all at once. Before that innovation, each of those jobs was handled by separate components made from natural materials.
The gas seal at the base was typically a cardboard disc, called a card wad, pressed firmly over the powder charge. Above that sat one or more filler wads made from felt, cork, or fiber board. These cushioned the shot from the force of ignition and helped maintain a tight seal as the charge traveled up the barrel. Felt wads were considered the best performers, while cork was common and cheap. Some shooters used fiber board wads cut from builders’ materials.
On top of the filler wads sat the shot charge, and above that, another thin card wad or paper disc sealed everything in place. The shell mouth was then crimped shut, either with a rolled edge or a folded star pattern.
Improvised Wad Materials
Because shotshells were frequently reloaded at home, especially in rural areas, shooters experimented with whatever materials were available. Oiled sawdust was used as filler wad material by at least one major cartridge company in the 19th century, as noted by the prominent firearms writer W.W. Greener. Cornmeal saw occasional use in the same role. Crumpled newspaper served as an emergency filler wad. Some handloaders even fashioned shot cups from copper wire mesh, filling them with shot buffered by bone meal and wrapping the whole assembly in thin paper. These improvised loads varied wildly in performance, but they reflect how accessible the pre-plastic shell design was to anyone with basic tools.
The Earliest Cartridge Designs
Even before the American brass and paper shells of the 1860s, the French gunsmith Casimir Lefaucheux developed an early self-contained shotgun cartridge in the 1830s. His pinfire design used a cardboard powder tube with a copper base that incorporated the primer. A small iron rod fixed perpendicular to the base carried a tiny fulminate cap, which fired when struck by the gun’s hammer. This assembly provided a tight gas seal and reliable ignition, and it laid the groundwork for the metallic-base, paper-body design that would dominate for decades.
Why Plastic Replaced Everything
Remington began producing plastic shotgun shells around 1960, and the transition was swift. Plastic hulls didn’t swell in moisture, didn’t soften or tear during feeding, and held up to repeated reloading far better than paper. The one-piece plastic wad replaced the entire stack of card, felt, and cork components, simplifying manufacturing and improving consistency from shell to shell.
Plastic wads also included a built-in shot cup that prevented the pellets from contacting the barrel walls, which reduced pellet deformation and produced tighter, more uniform patterns. For older shotguns with short forcing cones (the tapered section just ahead of the chamber), cork and felt wads could sometimes fail to seal properly. Plastic wads largely eliminated that issue in modern guns, though some owners of vintage shotguns still prefer traditional fiber wads because plastic wads can generate higher pressures in those short forcing cones.
Paper shells haven’t disappeared entirely. A few specialty manufacturers still produce them, and handloaders working with all-brass hulls continue to use card and fiber wads. But for the vast majority of shooters, the paper-and-felt era ended more than 60 years ago.