Wads?

[Gunlaker]

My copy of Perry's book just arrived today. I'll start reading it tonight. I suspect, but don't know, that wads are a good idea. I have a tight necked (.474") 45-70 that is not too picky about wads. It's certainly less sensitive than my rifles with modern chambers. I have recovered a number of LDPE wads and they are always imprinted with the fold marks from the paper ( mine are wet patched in much the same way that I've seen in Kenny's and Dan T's pictures ). Those marks are probably better to have on the wad tan on the bullet I expect. But I can't prove that of course.

Chris.

[Gunlaker]

I just had a quick look in the book at a section on wads. It won't hurt to give it a try without any. Next time I bring that rifle out I'll put ten on a target without wads and see what happens :-)

[Don McDowell]

Be sure and let us know how it works for you.

[Gunlaker]

I recently hurt my neck and shoulder so have been playing with the .38's. I should be able to get back to the .45-70 this week.

I played a bit with no wads using breech seated PP bullets in my .38-50. They shot reasonably well, but not nearly as well as when I use an LDPE wad seated with the bullet. Those shot extremely well. Both of .38's highwalls seem to like that trick.

I also finished reading Perry's book. Early on he does say that "no wads whatever should be used" in a breech loader, but on page 74 he says "The term no wads (page 18) has reference to lubricated wads, or anything like them that serve as an elastic cushion to deaden the initial blow necessary to properly upset the bullet". He also says that thin card board or writing paper wads are virtually equivalent to no wad.

I've tried a single 0.030" veg king wad in this rifle before, but they didn't quite do as well as a LDPE wad. However I only tried once so it's not like it was a statistically rigorous test. It's worth trying again. Tonight I'll finish loading some cartridges that'll only differ by wad types. I do have a new Cornell wad punch that I want to try. Dan T. suggested it to me, it's for cutting LDPE wads that are sized a bit smaller, to better fit in a tight chamber.

I'll also soon have a bit more distance to shoot as I've got a membership at a 300 yard range rather than just 200m where I shoot most often now. It's not a lot further, but every bit counts ;-)

Chris.

[Don McDowell]

I was really surprised at how well those hard bullet no wad loads I fired the other day did. Have a few more with thin wads and my regular wad stack to try out when the weather gives me a chance, and I don't have a ton of other stuff to get caught up on.
Those Cornell wad punches are a good investment.

[Gunlaker]

I took the .45-70 out today to play with some different wad combinations. On the suggestion of Dan T, I shot two targets with a single 0.060" LDPE wad which did pretty well for vertical. My usual combination of a 0.030" Veg King wad and a 0.060" LDPE did the best though, keeping 9 out of 10 into just a shade over 1 moa of vertical at 200m. The third load was just a 0.030" Veg King wad and had some issues as half of the shots landed nice and close together, but the others were flyers, two of which were very wide.

Interestingly I usually use 20:1 and decided to load with 16:1 this time, actually closer to 15.5:1 ( 1.45" BACO Money, .445", 8lb Seth Cole). I noticed that I wasn't getting very good shredding of the inner wrap like I usually get. Do you think that the alloy change could do that?

thanks,

Chris.

[Don McDowell]

If the inside wrap wasn't shredding then the bullet wasn't bumping up enough for the rifling to cut the paper would be my guess. Was it the same way with both wads?

[Gunlaker]

That's what I assumed too.

I should have paid more attention to the paper and how each combo was shredding it. In total there were about a half dozen shots out of 40 where the inner wrap was cut into big pieces.

I realized last night that one other change was that I used smaller diameter LDPE wads than I normally use. Previously I'd been using precut .45 cal wads from BACO but this time I used my new punch to cut wads that were closer to the bullet diameter. I doubt that would affect things much, but they were quite a bit easier to get into the case.

Chris.

[Tombstone 71]

Don, Just stopped at NAPA and this is what I picked up,

Cork-Rubber sheet-----1/8" thick
Cork-Rubber sheet-----1/16" thick
rubber-Cellulose Sheet---3/64" thick
rubber-fiber sheet------1/32" thick

These came in a 4 pack part # 3060 FelPro 9 1/4" x8 5/8"

Is this what you were talking about?

Tim

[Don McDowell]

Tim the stuff I've been getting (thanks to Kenny's suggestion) is just one roll thing, I'll have to look and see if I still have the label from it. but any of those that you have should work.