Lubed wads

[Kurt]

545-18x... don't think the felt wad was doing anything strange in my loads.

Well that's good! you had a good day

[Don McDowell]

525-5x the year before with 2 misses on the 600, both crossfires and both x's on the wrong target.
Felt wads aren't a problem.

[Kurt]

Don they are a personal choice more then anything.
What I see using lubed or dry felt and I gave both a try. They worked no more then OK under 300 yards but getting out to mid range and beyond they did not hold up. I started to look at recovered bullets and the engraving got shallow and to many gas cuts showed up with just a thin card wad over the powder and a 1/8" felt and a carton wad under the bullet.

For the long range Gong shoots I used a milk carton wad over the powder a lubed felt and two 034" plastic wads under the bullet this improved the accuracy some but not as well as using a lube wad instead of the felt.
If the felt works for you by all means use them, but look at the results when the distance increases from 200 yards if your seeing the center hits reduce.

[Don McDowell]

To much junk in the case, with the felt wads if you don't use them by themselves and thin card wad is sufficient.

[Stephen Borud]

I have Jojoba oil to put on felt wads Don. I was just curious how well they worked in place of a 3/16 lube cookie I use now. With the boys shooting more and the Oilfield picking up my work hours and time away from home is all screwed up. I’d like a quicker way to reload, and still have multyshots available. I would think that using something such as a felt wad would give a more consistent stack height and bullet seating depth. Depending how hard you push the card down on the lube can change the seating depth of the bullet.

[Don McDowell]

I like them Stephen. I use a napa rubber cork wad to compress the powder then the felt wad and thumb the bullet into the case. I have also punched wads from one of those big Gold Fish cheese cracker boxes, loaded the felt wad and shot 50 rounds from the 45-70 with nothing more than blowing down the breech.
I also wipe the exposed portion of the patch after the bullet is seated with the jojoba and wipe the excess off with a cloth. Seems to me that the fouling is a bunch easier to deal with and as you pointed out the seating depth stays pretty consistent.
I loaded another 139 45-90's this morning to take to Lodi.

[Stephen Borud]

Very nice Don! Thanks for the input.

[Don McDowell]

There's an outfit called duro felt that a lot of folks that punch their own felt wads use. I suppose a person could hit the yard sales and find old felt hats for cheap too.
Be interested in hearing how the felt wads work for you.

[Stephen Borud]

Don I found some 50 cal wads on Track of the Wolfs website. Bought a 100 lubed and a 100 dry. The problem is I don’t know how thick they are or the OD of the wad, I couldn’t find any info on that looking at their website. I needed some .025 thick 50 cal cards anyways so it worked out. Will let you know how they work. I figured I could do a test for each wad. The dry I will lube with jojoba oil and the lubed wad I will leave as is and see which works better. I was hoping they had some for the little 40/50 BN I have but they didn’t carry that caliber.

Thanks
Stephen

[Don McDowell]

Stephen check at sportsman’s warehouse or rocky mtn I think they carry the wads I use any way the 38 caliber wads work great in the 40 cal rifles