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A sturdier hull base, one wrapped in metal, albeit lightweight and relatively soft as metals go, may have advantages when shot through gas-guns and pump-actions which tend to extract shells with greater force than over/unders or side-by-sides. For gas and pump guns, you need a shell rim to be made of a reasonably strong material and firmly attached.

Ray “Hap” Fling, a former All American Trap shooter from Ohio who now lives in Gainesville, Florida occasionally shot trap with the inventor of the plastic wad/shotcup in the ‘50s. The original, red plastic wad is marked “Pat. Pend.” on the powder side. On the shot side, it has an interior, six-pointed star-shaped structure, perhaps to help offset the shock of setback on lead pellets. The 12-gauge wad has four petals and measures 1-1/2 inches long.

There are two fundamental designs of plastic hull in use today: a two-piece, straight-sided hull and a one-piece, injection-molded, compression-formed hull. The straight hull has a removable base wad of paper or plastic that separates the powder from the metal of the base. This shell is typically the thinner of the two designs and is frequently the hull of choice for building powerful hunting loads where every micromillimeter is packed with powder and shot. PMC offers a straight-wall hull in its HP Competition load, however. These high-end target shells have a six-star fold and the hard shot contains 5-percent antimony.