How compatable are hollow bases and wads?

[guninhand]

Just wondering if wads, felt wads in my case, could hinder effectiveness of heeled hollow base bullets?

[KCSO]

I gave them up in 45-70 after i found a couple lodged in the hollow. I do know that in 44-40 thye throw off the bullet as they are hard to keep perfectly centered. I don't use them on pistol loads any more.

[guninhand]

Thanks KCSO.

I've found the Hornady 50 cal .410 gr HB-SP bullets fit perfectly in my 12.7X44R Swede Rolling Block brass, even though they are a muzzleloading bullet. But they are very expensive, and I can't afford to re-invent the wheel getting the best load. No wad will leave more room for powder too.

[beagle]

Kind of wonder why you'd want to use a felt wad with a HB bullet. The HB is designed to expand and seal the bore and from shooting a bunch of HB bullets, it does this quite effectively. So much do that imperfections in the HB cavity are ironed/swaged out on bullets I've recovered from the backstop.

From shooting HB sabots in a shotgun, at times, the wad is driven into the cavity and I've seen them seperate way down range or in some cases, stay in the slug when it hits. This can't do anything for accuracy.

What's your line of reasoning with the wad?/beagle

[44man]

Beagle is right about the shotgun stuff. Been trying for more years then I care to say to make the stupid things shoot. I have real solid base boolits to finish testing, just no time yet. I sure would not put anything under a hollow base. :coffee:

[jonk]

I don't get this at all. The muzzleloader crowd tells me that with a minie, sometimes a wad helps the skirt to obdurate more effectively, and that historically, even wooden plugs were used for this purpose. The cartridge crowd tells me that with a HB bullet- which is basically just a minie by any other name- it is a bad idea.

I'm trying both. Sometimes things that shouldn't work well do; I will surely use the wads with flat bottomed bullets though.

[44man]

The muzzle loader crowd uses way undersize Minies' so they can load fast. They also use pretty light loads and if the boolit has a thick skirt, sometimes it will not seal.
I have worked on many for accuracy and in every case, lapping the mold for a press fit in the muzzle has increased accuracy from not keeping the boolit on paper at 50 yd's to hitting a steel gong at 200 meters. No wad or expansion needed. I do not believe in "Bump up."
They only thing to worry about is how thick the skirt is in relation to the load. A thin skirt with a hot load will make the skirt flare out when it leaves the muzzle, turning it into a shuttle cock, not good at all. A wad wedged into a base is death to accuracy.
During the civil war the soldiers had different size boolits to load as the bore fouled and a wood plug aided the boolit to try and find some rifling. Most turned into smooth bores with the fouling. All they wanted to do was get a lot of lead in the air, fast.
None of this can be applied to our modern guns and smokeless.

[guninhand]

Just to answer a question that was asked, I was thinking of using a felt wad under the HB because the Hornady bullet comes with its own white flaky lube, a lot of which gets shaved off when pushed into the case. The felt wads are soaked in BP lube so it would help soften the fouling, I suppose.