Bio-degradable Cellulose Fiber (Paper) Based Wadding and Hull Components R&D
First I would like to clearly and explicitly state that I am not an environmentalist. Environmentalism is a faith based religion where mother earth is the worshiped deity. It is a false and dangerous religious faith which has violent, radical, fundamentalist believers. I do not spend my spare time fire-bombing logging trucks or going around the woods finding peoples tree stands and replacing the bolts in them with short lengths of wooden twigs so they hold together until some-one sits on them and then they collapse. I do, however, consider myself a conservationist. In other words, someone who through basic common sense and logic realizes that it is wise and logical to be good stewards of the land and preserve (same root as conserve) our heritage for the next generation.
Based upon this I have come to the conclusion that spreading plastic wads and to a much more limited extent plastic hulls (very few people who reload are litter bugs when it comes to hulls) all over our hunting areas might not be the wisest choice available. In truth, plastic concerns me much, much more then lead does. Lead is found in the earths crust and mined from it as - lead. Yes, that’s right. The lead we use in our guns is mined from the ground in essentially the same form as we use it minus some impurities. Essentially, when you fire a lead boolit from your gun and it eventually finds terra-firma and buries itself in the ground all you are doing is putting it right back where it came from in essentially nearly the same form. About the only valid objection point that can be raised against this fact is the truth that lead shot and boolits are of considerably smaller physical size then what is normally found in naturally occurring lead deposits and thus are more easily ingested by animals. It is true that lead does have certain hazards if taken internally - outside the body it represents little if any risk. Contrary to popular belief it is not water soluble and will not leach into ground water - if that were true the water of all the oceans would already be lead poisoned enough that no life would exist in them by the natural lead deposits in the earths crust alone and a lot of city folk would be dying off like flies from thousands upon thousands of miles of pure lead underground water main pipes that are still in use in most of the older cities in the U.S. Thus as I previously stated unless you swallow the stuff your pretty much safe. The same can’t be said of plastic, the stuff has a highly complex molecular structure that takes hundreds or thousands of years to break down depending on the exact type and the environmental conditions it is subjected too. Although it might not be dangerous it is very unsightly and there are already a few popular waterfowl hunting places I go to where all you have to do is stand still and start looking around your feet in the grass and you will undoubtedly find all kinds of different colored plastic wads littering the place up and making it look like a landfill sight – YuCK !!!!
I suppose if I looked really hard I might be able to find shot pellets as well but they pretty much blend right in with all the little rocks already in the soil and as I stated earlier they are made of materials that are essentially being put right back where they originally came from in nearly the same form.
So for the last few years I have been experimenting with building my own wadding components using mainly paper based materials. Long story short I’ve found that paper wadding components actually provide some significant benefits over the plastic stuff we are used to using. This is especially true with steel shot loads.
I have been building my own steel shot wads by hand rolling two sizes of paper tubes one at bore size and the other being just a little bit smaller diameter so that it is a slip fit inside the first one. This allows me to build a double wall shot cup with both the inner and outer tubes being slit with the slits offset so there is absolutely zero possibility of a hard steel pellet making contact with the guns bore. What I found most encouraging is that when I patterned the resulting loads I found that these homemade double wall wads made from paper tubes with nitro cards glued to the bottom to cap them off actually produced tighter and more uniform patterns on the pattern board then equivalent loads that were constructed with plastic steel shot wads. Although, I don’t know for sure why this is I strongly suspect that the paper material of the homemade wads double walls has a cushioning effect and is reducing “chatter” with the hard pellets. The reason I suspect that this is what is happening is because I have seen no real change in the patterns produced with lead shot between my homemade paper wads compared to conventional plastic wads. My experiments with making wads in the same manner for lead shot have mostly been with single thickness paper tubes to form the shot cup since there is no need to be absolutely sure no shot pellets contact the guns bore as is the case with the hard steel shot but I did try the double wall thickness tubes with the softer lead shot as well just to be sure it wasn’t the double wall construction that was making the difference in the patterns of the steel shot loads.
I’ve also had some very promising results with slug loads using strictly bio-degradable wadding components both for my full bore slugs and sabot slugs as well. It is possible to hand roll very heavy thick walled paper tubes that if properly sized can be used to make sabots slug loads with 475, 50, 51, and 58 caliber bullets in 12ga. guns. With 20ga. guns with a fast enough twist to the rifling it is possible to go still smaller and use 40, 41, 44, 45, and 458 caliber bullets as well. I have found that the resulting sabot slug loads although not strictly more accurate then conventional plastic sabot loads are more versatile as in it is easier to get them to shoot well with a variety of different bullets, loads, and guns then conventional plastic sabots. As far as the full bore slugs go most of us already know the benefits in accuracy of using a stiff strong wad column under a full bore size slug that a stack of nitro cards provides where most plastic wadding arrangements fail (the Federal “S” series wads with the petals cut off being a notable exception but even they usually need at least one nitro card between them and the slug).
So, over all my personal research and development (R&D) work in this area has been very promising and has shown me it is fully possible for cellulose fiber (paper) based wadding components to do everything the plastic stuff does as good or better then what we are used too with two exceptions.
The first being that in almost every case I have found that cellulose and other natural fiber based wadding components take up more internal hull space to provide the same functionality as their plastic equivalents. Thus one can rarely fit the heavier 2-3/4” field loads in a 2-3/4” hull when using strictly cellulose and other natural fiber based loading components one must step up to a 3” hull. Lighter trap type loads will still fit in the 2-3/4” hulls but not the heavier field loads. Then if you get into heavier loads still you have to step up to a 3-1/2” hull, some such loads could be made to fit in a 3” hull with conventional plastic wadding components. This is just part of the nature of the beast and I don’t see anyway around it. Long story short, I’ve been loading a whole lot of 3-1/2” hulls. They don’t kick like 3-1/2” loads but you have to use that length of hull to get everything to fit inside.
The second and personally I think the biggest problem with making loads in this way is the lack of an efficient over powder gas seal. The best I have found so far is to use oversize (11ga. in a 12ga.) waxed dipped nitro cards directly over the powder. The 1/2” thick really heavy duty ones work best; still though the seal is not as efficient as that produced by the gas seal cup on the bottom of a simple, cheapo plastic trap wad and that 1/2” thick card just to serve as the gas seal is part of the problem I’m having with running out of hull capacity to fit it all inside and still have enough length left to crimp.
I do believe that this problem is solvable and it the main focus of my R&D on this project at this time. Up until about 10 to 20 years ago the Winchester ammunition company was using a compression formed hard cellulose fiber cupped gas seal as an over the powder wad in their slug and buckshot loads. Even further back they were using it in practically all their loads (before plastic wads caught on). I desire to figure out a way to make my own stackable version of this particular seal design and this is the main reason why I am posting this thread.
I am looking for any and all information pertaining to this particular gas seal unit. I don’t have any currently in my possession or any photos but I have seen them before as removed from disassembled ammunition. They have a cupped hollow base that goes over the powder. They are made from a hard compressed fiber material similar to that used in nitro cards but not identical. They are about 3/16 of an inch thick from the rim of the bottom hollow base cup to the flat top. Photos, cross section cuts, dimensions, manufacturing technique(s), exact fiber type and glue types used as well as mix ratio(s), etc, etc, etc . . . Any and all information concerning this particular component and/or any similar designs and/or components and/or possible manufacturing techniques suitable for home/shop implementation. Also, I believe the materials and manufacturing methods used to produce the old style fiber egg cartons before they went to the styrofoam ones may be directly applicable since they materials and precision pressed or molded form of both are very similar if not identical.
Links to information desired, comments, and others R&D work along the same lines all welcome.
