Eley Titanium and Titanium Strike 28 gram
Titanium and Titanium Strike are the latest premium competition cartridges from Eley. There are six types in the range: Eley Titanium have plain lead shot and a choice of plastic or fibre wads; Titanium Strike contain nickel coated shot loaded into plastic wads. There are 24 gram and 28 gram options – we tested 28 gram loads.
Both are loaded into strong, smart, Maxam cases with 16mm, nickel-plated steel heads. The powder used in both is a special blend of Maxam PSB +3, which is a single base, flake powder. This produced notably lower pressures than many similar cartridges and burns cleanly. The wad used is the efficient Maxam ‘A’ type wad, which has an excellent central cushioning section and an efficient gas seal skirt.
The combination of primer, propellant and wad produced sensible velocities – high without being punishing. Combined with the chunky shot, these velocities yielded positive smashes on distant targets.
The key component of the Titanium is the premium grade Italian shot they contain, which is well graded for size, has good sphericity, and most importantly is extremely hard, with at least 5% antimony content. My shot crush tester recorded the highest CV reading for this size of shot I have yet recorded! That should mean tight patterns, and, as the results show, that is precisely what these Titanium cartridges produce.
Note how the nickel shot produced marginally tighter patterns, but with a lower CD, meaning a more even distribution across the whole pattern; that’s the nickel-coated shot at work.
Testing on second barrel Trap and distant Sporting targets showed that Titanium will effectively tackle the longest of targets.
When the targets get tough, try Titanium!
They all seem excellent cartridges, but no prices.. As a regular clay shooter and pensioner, surely there must be very good clean shot out there at an affordable price!