Wads from Wine Corks

[Fiftyfour]

Has anyone one tried cutting wads out of a wine cork?

[snapper]

I like wine, but I would have to step up my drinking.

Could use whiskey corks

fleener

[Hungry Horse]

Although cork has been a material used off, and on, for some time as wadding for shotguns, wine corks are too dense for this application. The best cork for wadding is the fine grained granular sheet material. This is used to cover cork boards, and line tool drawers. This material disintegrates upon leaving the barrel, and almost never blows a pattern.
 Besides, genuine cork in wine bottles is rapidly becoming a thing of the past.

  Hungry Horse

[Greg Pennell]

You can get cork sheets from Lowe’s or Hobby Lobby.  Four 12” square by 1/4” thick sheets for making note boards will make a bunch of wads. If you want thicker wads just stack ‘em up.

Greg

[Tim Ault]

Would these cork wads be for over powder or over shot wads or for both if you wanted ?

Tim

[Daryl]

You could use sheet cork for both, however they are not very strong. They are very light weight and might work well as a barrier between a wet patch and powder if you thought that was a bad thing.
For wads, I prefer to use Circle Fly wads from Track - 1/8" hard card, thin "B" overshot wads and fiber wads - all used in my choked gun.

In a cylinder bored gun, I used 3 thin "B" wads over the powder and a single one over the shot.  Won that trap shoot, so the patterning was fairly good. Read about that loading system for non-choked smoothbores right here at ALR.

[hanshi]

What about card wads punched from cereal boxes?  I have plenty of those and they "seem" to work well.  But I've never tested them against other wad types.

[Mauser06]

Fiber, cork, felt, wool etc acts as an absorber when the load is fired. 


Like Daryl said, different barrels like different setups...if you're after patterns, it's worth playing with.



My jugged barrel likes exactly what Daryl said...1/8" hard cardboard wads. They are almost like MDF board.  They are fairly dense and hard. How they don't blow the pattern is beyond me...I've never recovered one and have a hunch they blow apart.

My turkey choked barrel liked to be loaded like a shotgun shell...powder, thin card stock wad over the powder and a stack of thin felt wads and thin cardstock over the pellets.


If you don't care about the pattern, card stock is cheap and will shoot pellets down range...

[Daryl]

The choke is what makes heavy wads work.  As the shot load hits the choke, it is squeezed down, constricted on the sides, elongating it making for an extended shot column as it passes through the choke. The wads are momentarily constricted, held back, so to speak and the shot cloud leaves the muzzle with the wads lagging quickly behind it, not pushing into it as from a cylinder bore.

WWGreener's shadow graphs show this very clearly on page 586 of "The Gun and it's Development", 9th Edition.  The pictures, taken at 25" from the gun's muzzles, show the card undershot wad from the cylinder bore pushing into the back of the shot column, expanding it outwards.  In both cases, the overshot wad is well ahead of the shot column and is what disrupted the wires to trip the camera. The shot columns are pictured 1" behind the overshot wads.  From the non-choked muzzle, the undershot card (between the overpower card and fiber wad) is the one pushing through the shot, with the fiber wad falling back at this point. Were this a heavy fiber wad instead of the lighter card as used, it would have expanded the shot cloud even more due to it's mass.

From the choked bore, the shot cloud is extending forwards with heavy centre concentration, with the undershot card just resting at the back of the shot column and losing speed. The heavier  fibre wad is already falling an inch or more behind the shot cloud, with the thick card overpowder wad an inch behind that.  It does appear a full 1/4" over powder wad was used, along with a 1/4" fiber cushion wad in both loads.

Note how nice and square the cylinder bore's load it. It is a as long as it is in diameter.  This makes for a shorter, although a wider shot cloud.

In his text., Greener noted that some improvement in patterning from cylinder bores was made possible by cutting threads into the steel at the muzzles, however subsequent shots filled these 'threads' with 'dirt'(fouling) which reduced the improvement to nothing.  He was talking of ctg. guns, loaded at the breech.

I will note here, that in loading the gun from the muzzle, these threads could easily be 'wiped' out so the 'improvement' of restricting the wads slightly would happen each shot. I would not do this if shooting patched balls from the same gun, as when loading, the patch might be injured by the threads.

[Daryl]

Here's that picture from History - it should explain the situation clearly.
It also shows the 'proper' or 'standard' loading column, as powder, then card, fiber, card, shot, card - or is that crumpled tissue? lol
The card over teh fiber and under the shot is to keep shot from embedding into the top layer of fiber and possibly through adding to it's
weight, possibly disrupt the pattern as it does in the cylinder bore.
Both shot charges were the same weight, ie: 1 1/8oz and same powder charge.

[Mauser06]

Daryl, great explanation!   Makes good sense.


I found the thick 1/2 fiber wads in the jug blew donuts. I had a cool picture of a pattern at 10yds or something fairly close that showed it really well. Seems the fiber wads were heavy enough they flew with the shot column.

The 1/8" hard wads did well.


It's interesting to see what changes the patterns. 


Heading towards the finish line on a turkey barrel now.  Excited to get to the range in a month or so.

[Daryl]

Good luck - we experimented with loads in Taylor's 15 bore Manton cylinder choked SxS, finding some loads blew patterns with a normal load, while other's powder and shot charge, did not. All using  fiber over the powder, then shot then thin card.

IIRC- (maybe) - 65gr. 2F, Circle fly fiber, none lubed, then 1oz 7 1/2 shot, then thin Circle Fly "B" wad.  He may have been using 1 1/8oz - not sure.

With more powder, as in 75gr., the hole in the middle of the pattern at 25yards was about 20" in diameter with NO pellets in the centre at all. Minor juggling of the 'load' changed that to nicely to around 67/68% both barrels, which is about a weak IC choke.

 Made a heck of a good grouse load. We need to do more work with our smoothies.