Importence of the wad stack

[Don McDowell]

I'll have to get some of that 600 grit.

[Gunlaker]

Kurt do you think you could use pure wax between fiber wads and still get a seal? I'm thinking for bore diameter PP of course, and wiping the bore between shots.

I know pure wax, at least bees wax, is more brittle than if you add the oil so the wads might need to be moulded rather than cut with the case mouth.

Thanks,

Chris.

[Kurt]

Don't know Chris. Never tried it.
I have loaded some of my hard tallow cut 1/8" thick with the case mouth right on compressed powder and a .012" poster paper wad under the bullet. The accuracy wasn't great but I didn't clean out any lead either and I never looked at a bullet doing this.
Brent Danielson used a plastic and card and is doing fine with it with out a lube wad.
The top picture in my opening post is the prolate Brent uses and I also have a mould like it so I loaded some for the .45-70 like he does and that bullet was shot with his loads and I recovered several with cuts. But I think he uses a tighter chamber then I do in his .45-70.
He sure does a fine job using that bullet and load.

[Gunlaker]

I think I'm going to try a pure beeswax wad next time. I'll try cutting some today to see if it's soft enough to cut with the case mouth or if it shatters.

You know its funny. I was convinced that this .45-90 wasn't gas cutting with the LDPE wads. I'm sure my .45-70 is running well, as there is never a hint of lead in the bore. The new .45-90 seemed to be working well, but a few minutes ago I took it out of the safe to double check my cleaning after last shooting session. I store it using Eezox in the bore and ran a couple of patches through again and I got a little bit of grey wash, it looks like it's maybe in one groove only. I've been shooting 20:1 patched to the start of the ogive so I imagine it's not bumping up past the patch. Or maybe it was with those FFg loads running at 1350 fps. Either that or a little bit of gas cutting like those ones on the base in your picture.

I've decided that sometime this year I'm going to get a bore scope. I've got a few too many rifle projects on the go right now so it'll have to wait a bit for financial reasons, but I clearly need one to keep an eye on what's going on in the bore.

One of my projects was getting my old .50-140 rebarreled. It's been at the gun smiths for nearly 4 years. He's just started it now :-). I was just going to pick it up and sell it when he told me it had just been threaded. Brent sent me his chamber drawing and I'm going to give it a try in that rifle. I probably won't see it 'til next year but that's ok. This .45-90 looks like it's going to be a little while yet before it's at 100%.

I'll let you know how the pure beeswax works as a wad.

Chris.

[Kurt]

Maybe you should bring him a bag full jelly-Belly's