Colonial Wads?

[frogwalking]

When I was young, I listened to Turner Kirkland.  Chuck and I used newspaper for wads in our old double bbls. (I bought a 12 ga persussion for $12 and he was given a 10 ga percussion.  Both rough, both shot with some work)  Needless to say, the newspaper did not provide any kind of consistency.  We did manage to kill a few rabbits and squirels anyway.   

I use factory made card wads these days, but what did they use in the colonies in the mid-1700s?

[James Rogers]

tow, old hat, brown paper, pieces of leather

[Rick Sheets]

My grandfather said they used wasp and hornets nest. Rick

[northwoodsdave]

Rick

Interesting to know.  I have lots of old wasp and hornet nests around the properties.   Will give em a try and post back!

Dave

[Longknife]

Note: Harvest your hornets and wasp nests in the winter!!!!!

I have used leaves, just plucked from a tree while green. That worked ok, I suppose dried leaves would work too but might burn...don't use three pointed leaves from a vine!!!!!!!!

[roundball]

Rick

Interesting to know.  I have lots of old wasp and hornet nests around the properties.   Will give em a try and post back!

Dave

I've run range tests with hornet's nest material as wads out of a .20ga and it works perfectly.
The material is very flimsy and I found I'd have to tear off a few small pieces of material to stuff the top 2-3 inches of the muzzle with it, in order to have enough so that when compressed down it made a normal thickness wad...picked them up off the range and they were still held together, had not burned, etc...our settler ancestors were Very resourceful...

[omark]

its my understanding that wasp nests were used between cloth patch and powder in rifles if they had patch burning problems,  mark

[Daryl]

Good point, Mark - if they loaded easily without a short starter, they had patch burning problems.

[northmn]

The ML smoothbore could be loaded with about anything.  In the later years many came with a wad punch to cut out wads.  Paper and cardboard may ahve not been all that readily available in the early years as today.  I have heard of the use of leaves, cloth, wasp nests, leather etc for wads.  Performance wise the early smoothbore could not have been up to todays standards.  They used cast, hobbed or Rupert type shot makers, some did not even try for roundness. Also the shot sizes tended to be larger, maybe BB size more or less. It was not untill after the very early 1800's that shot towers existed in the US.  England had them about 1790.  Hunting with shot often meant waiting for the game to group up to get the most for the least unless one was wealthy.  Today we use cotton for patching, yesteryear they may used more linen and leather which is a little tougher.

DP

[Dphariss]

Does anyone have any pre-Sam Fadala documentation for wasp nests wads?

Ned Roberts does not mention it or Dillon or Cline nor does anyone else I have read, except Sam Fadala who was trying to stop the flame from coming out the muzzle before the ball.

Dan

[Daryl]

Good question, Dan - something I've only seen written about by Sam.   

[James Rogers]

To date I have found no 18th century documentation for wasp or hornet's nests. Still looking.

[Randy Hedden]

I don't remember the exact source, but a mountain man wrote about fighting off some Blackfoot Indians who had come to raid a rendezvous.  He mentioned that when the Indians shot their trade guns you could actually see the blanket wads flying through the air.

Anyone remember whose journal this was in?

Randy Hedden

[northmn]

I don't remember the exact source, but a mountain man wrote about fighting off some Blackfoot Indians who had come to raid a rendezvous.  He mentioned that when the Indians shot their trade guns you could actually see the blanket wads flying through the air.

Anyone remember whose journal this was in?

Randy Hedden

Likely Journal of a Trapper by Russel.  He was not very complimentary about the effectiveness of native Fusils.   
As to the wasps nest.  I remember hearing about their use in the 1970's shooting  trap.  How far back their use is documented I do not know. Was that preFadala?

DP

[Rick Sheets]

My dad and grandfather talked about this in 1969 (neither of which were muzzle loading people) when I got my first muzzleloader- a Spanish smoothbore.
Not a Colonial reference for sure, but certainly pre 1970's and no internet information flying around.
Rick

[Dphariss]

I don't remember the exact source, but a mountain man wrote about fighting off some Blackfoot Indians who had come to raid a rendezvous.  He mentioned that when the Indians shot their trade guns you could actually see the blanket wads flying through the air.

Anyone remember whose journal this was in?

Randy Hedden

Joe Meek comes to mind. They were ambushed and he was close enough to see the blanket wads. His horse was hit in the neck and went down but the horse got back up and he escaped just as the Indians approached.
Russell is a good possibility too, he was involved with a couple of "scrapes" with the natives.
Dan

[frogwalking]

Hey Rick,

My first muzzle loader was also a Spanish smooth bore.  I was had been saving for a Numrich underhammer for 6 months when they raised the price $5.00.  I gave up and bought a "shotgun" from Spiegel by mail.  My first shot went through dad's workshop wall.  It blended in with the shotgun pattern my brother had tested years ago.  As I remember the quality was not much.  That shot of a hand hammered "ball" in 1966 hooked me though.