Cardboard gas check???

[Red River Rick]

I hate it when I see shot up computer mother boards. The circuit boards would make seemingly good checks because they are layered with wires and are very strong. They must withstand the high temps of wave soldering techniques. The resin withstands very high temperatures and is a great buffer between the burning powder and the lead. Great use for them too.

That would be the last thing I would want going down my bore.

The combination of resins and materials used for making phenolic boards is "EXTREMELY" abrasive.

I have machined a lot of phenolic and this stuff will wear down "Solid Carbide" end mills in no time. I really don't think this material would do any barrel any justice, probably more harm than good.

RRR

[JRR]

At the farm supply store, in the bee keeping section, they have bees wax foundation sheets. Some are pure bees wax and some are a thin plastic sheet with the bees wax coating.

Right now, I am experimenting with using a spent case, slightly flared, and then the mouth sharpened with a de-buring tool to punch out wads with the plastic foundation sheets. When the weather clears up enough, I'll do a work-up, with chrono and gc as well as plain based using a 357 winchester which will allow enough velocity for real results.

[codarnall]

Is it abrasion that wears out the carbide tools or is the heat caused by the friction on the tool itself? I would not call nylon abrasive but at improper feeds the tools will smoke.

[yeahbub]

Codarnall, if you're talking about using circuit board material, do you know that it's made of a fiberglass material? It's very abrasive. When I worked at Cincinnati Microwave, one of the highest tooling consumption rates was for the little drill bits used to drill holes in circuit boards and they were carbide! There was a time when fiberglass ramrods were popular (late '70s) until people found they were visibly wearing the rifling out of the muzzle ends of their barrels.

[codarnall]

Codarnall, if you're talking about using circuit board material, do you know that it's made of a fiberglass material? It's very abrasive. When I worked at Cincinnati Microwave, one of the highest tooling consumption rates was for the little drill bits used to drill holes in circuit boards and they were carbide! There was a time when fiberglass ramrods were popular (late '70s) until people found they were visibly wearing the rifling out of the muzzle ends of their barrels.

Ok, one thing the US Army determined the abrasion problem was to to the dirt, good ole dirt! The dirt that stuck to the soft rods! QED

[abunaitoo]

What about a styrafoam egg tray????
Could be glued to the base, then dip lubed.
Reason I brought this up is because it seemed to be a waste of gas checks with the load I'm using.
According to those who should know, I really don't need a gas check. Just lube and load.
I tried it and got lots of leading. No leading with the gas check.
My thinking is if I have something to keep the lube where the gas check sit, it might help stop the leading. Also keep the flame from touching the lead.
Don't want to use any fillers. I've tried it and didn't think much of it. Besides my load doesn't seem to need a filler.
Does this make any sense????

[looseprojectile]

You guys got my brain in low gear.
Now, why not use the pithy paper egg cartons to punch out discs of groove diameter?
Could soak the carton in Bear grease or any lube, grease , wax, before or after punching. Wax of some kind might be best, to not contaminate powder. Redbear's wad of bunched up wax paper sounds like it may work also if you could use filler.

Think I may try some in the .357 or 40 65.
Will try in straight cases first and not worry about sticking them to the boolit.
Life is good

[Leftoverdj]

Most every thing mentioned has been tried repeatedly and failed to some degree. A gas check has to seal the gases behind the bullet to work. That gets really difficult when you are trying to shot a GC design without a check that fits around the shank. Plain base designs are a bit easier, but I've only been able to get a limited improvement and that with fairly thick disc cut from an offset printing blanket.

I suspect that a good plastics production man could make workable GCs along the lines of the gas seals that were used in shotshells just before the advent of the one piece wad. I've seen such a product for sale, but since the maker did not know enough to say which .45 caliber he was offering I suspected he did not know enough to make a workable product.

[mroliver77]

I was wondering if gaschecks could be injection molded out of the type of plastic used in the .30 cal sabots. Mebbe I will do some experimenting in that direction.
J

[Leftoverdj]

I was wondering if gaschecks could be injection molded out of the type of plastic used in the .30 cal sabots. Mebbe I will do some experimenting in that direction.
J

They sure mould #11 percussion caps for toy pistols which are similar in shape. That plastic won't take enough heat, though. I'd suggest a much thicker base than metal GCs so the skirts only have to position the bullet, and the base can take the pressure.

If you have the skills and access to the equipment, go to it. There's certainly a market.

[Baron von Trollwhack]

FWIW, my little old timey ticket puncher tool knocks out perfect round holes at .249", almost groove diameter for my 25-20 WCF. The "plan" is to try them as a card board GC/fouling scraper by using them over loads where there is no possibility of them falling through the neck due to loading density. Although I have two heaping tablespoons of the nicest little holes ready, twenty-nine other projects are ahead of this.

I do note that you can get a cheapo set of RED CHINESE hand punches from harber fright ,grind out diameters a little as required and make your own experiments up. BvT

[fornra]

I have used a cardboard over powder wad that I cut from a Natural Lite beer box in my 45/70 Marlin with good results. I don't think this would help with a bottleneck cartridge though.
I just take a 7/16" hole punch and cut them out then push them down on top of the powder with a 7/16" steel rod, then add enough plastic shot buffer to fill the case to the bottom of the seated bullet. With this settup the powder gasses do not melt the base of the bullet and it also keeps the powder charge where it needs to be.
I would also suggest tumblelubing them with Lee alox on top of your regular lube, it has helped me at times.

[yeahbub]

rbstern, now that you mention it, Ross Seyfried speculated as much in an article he wrote ten or fifteen years ago in which he also wrote about paper patching .30 cal jacketed bullets for use in 8mm. It's pretty easy to get copper shim stock in various thicknesses. I'd expect that patching a cast bullet with soft .001 or .002 thick copper would work quite well. It would have to be done in such a way as to get the patch to let go of the bullet easily and reliably, since it doesn't seem likely to get it to adhere as well as a jacket would. Maybe fold the edges over the heel instead of twisting a tail on it, so the escaping gasses would strip it off when it exits the muzzle. From what I've read, aluminum foil increases the wear rate in the barrel, due to the existence of aluminum oxide on the foil's surface, so aluminum ought not to be used. Some people are using it as gas check material, but that has a plastic coating on one side. The jury's still out on that one, but I'm not doing it. Thanks for reminding me of that idea. I just may go for it.

[Alferd Packer]

Old thread but still interesting.
I thought maybe a dab of hot glue cast on the base of a bullet would suffice to act as a gas check to protect the bullet base.
I think a damp paper cylinder rolled on the bullet maybe one and a half wraps like a paper patch would be installed, but used as a coffer dam projecting far enough past the bullet base to hold a dab of hot glue till it became solid on the bullet base. The paper could then be pulled off leaving a cast in place gas check. I thought a damp paper cylinder would not be glued onto the gas check.
I had also considered using a cut off cartridge case neck oiled or greased which could then be pushed off the bullet leaving the glue gas check in place.
Everyone has been brainstorming on this thread and i really loved reading their thoughts and ideas. Just trying to resurrect this wonderful article .

[country gent]

Most hot melt glues are softer materials. a die made might form one in a reloading press that can be super glued to the bullet. a measured amount of glue on the punch face and run up into the die should form it very nicely.

[MT Chambers]

All kinds of wads work with shotguns and BP pressure loads in rifles but hit it with 50K psi and things prolly change.

[Alferd Packer]

11 year old thread, but still good.
How about a dot of glue from a hot glue gun, then left to set up, or how about a dip in hot wax, or maybe tumble lube, add a dot of paper while still wet.

[longbow]

As MT Chambers commented above, at low pressure ~ 10,000 PSI things are much different than at 20,000 PSI and different again at 50,000+ PSI. Cardboard (nitro card) wads do a fairly decent job of sealing gases at shotgun pressures and plastic gas seals do a very good job but... when pressure get to the high end plastic shotgun wads can fail and that is at less than 12,000 PSI. Most handguns and rifles run at much higher pressure.

For straight walled cartridges, handgun or rifle and even high pressure you can use a regular gas check inverted under a PB boolit and that has been done by many people quite successfully.

I'd be leery of doing that with bottleneck cartridges because if the check gets below the neck it could drop off inside the cartridge then not exit the barrel and next boolit may meet a bore obstruction. Gas checks made of whatever should be firmly attached to the boolit so they cannot fall off into the cartridge.

Even "wax wads" have been used (and maybe still are?) in handgun cartridges as a cheap and simple gas seal to reduce gas cutting and maybe allow a little more pressure/velocity in straight walled handgun cartridges. This used to be available (maybe still is?) and looked like dental wax sheets. You simply pushed a sheet down over the case mouth after powder was dropped. These apparently helped but they did not replace gas checks. Cardboard has been used similarly by punching and placing cardboard disks into the case mouth after dropping the powder charge then seat the boolit on top. Again, while it helps protect the boolit base, it is not an effective seal replacing a gas check. Cardboard or plastic disks are not effective seals at 20,000+ PSI. They may help some but do not replace a gas check.

Consider that the gasses can and do "cut" lead so how would a much softer material survive? I got my lesson when I moved from PB .45-70 boolits to GC .30 cal in my .308. Using well cast Lyman 31141 GC boolits and using Lyman Cast Bullet Reloading Handbook data I loaded up my first batch of .30 cal cast boolits and went to the range. I couldn't hit an 8 1/2" x 11" sheet of paper at 25 yards! It took quite a few shots to get any hits at all and those were dead sideways! To qualify, I didn't have any gas checks and being used to loading hot PB boolit .45-70 loads for my Marlin and Siamese Mauser I didn't think not having a gas check in a moderate load would matter. It did!

It had been snowing a lot and the snow was wet and heavy. I could see the boolit tracks in the snow so did some digging. I found a few and they were smooth/rippled and shiny with hardly any lube grooves and no sign of rifling! Never seen that before. So, I loaded up some more and tried again. Same result. I wound up getting some gas checks then loaded up more with the same data. Now they worked quite well!

When you have a properly sized boolit and gas check installed that gas check is a hard barrier tightly sealed to the bore and it does what it is supposed to ~ keeps most of the gas behind it. There is a philosophy that boolit lube forms a "liquid gasket" at firing and while there may be some truth in that, if totally true then why don't wax disks act as gas seals? And they don't, I've tried with poor results and I think if they did then metal gas checks wouldn't exist.

You can certainly try the hot melt glue but I strongly suspect that not only won't it seal, you will get a mess in your bore and any glue left on the boolit base will act just like an uneven cast base leading to inaccuracy.

Even powder coating doesn't replace gas checks... or as far as I understand it anyway.

Granular filler can work quite well but that is a hotly debated subject and a technique all its own.

Something that does work is paper patching. It really isn't hard to do and will work with smokeless loads. If you are thinking of rolling a damp paper cylinder around the boolit to aid in adding hot melt glue then why not just paper patch? Lots of info on paper patching for both BP and smokeless here and it works! One caveat, you need boolits sized to about bore diameter then patch to groove diameter.

Standard boolits can be sized down though it is a lot of sizing. Depending on caliber there are commercial moulds available for paper patching especially in BP calibers, moulds for .30 cal. (N.O.E. has them) or you can order whatever size mould you want from Accurate.

No harm in experimenting with hot melt glue, cardboard discs or whatever if you want but most, if not all, of it has been done before and much posted on this site. Try searching for topics. I've seen posts on wax disks, cardboard disks, inverted standard checks, plastic checks, paper mache checks, half jackets of paper patch (I tried that one!) and a few others. A search and some reading could save you some time and powder.

Longbow

[parkerhale1200]

Just a out loud thought.
Get a piece of good old hardwood.
Drill a hole thru it that is a bit larger than your boolit diameter.
Get some thick painters tape, the cheapest you can find(most aggressive glue)
The more expensive painter tape is easier to remove, that why cheapest.
now put the tape with the sticky side up on top of your block and place/press your boolit onto the sticky side move/drag it to the hole and press it thru the hole.
To avoid that inoing pain, use a small piece of inside your hand palm to press.
I don't own a lee push thru but perhaps there are some possibilities as well?

Hope this helps, best.

[GONRA]

Longbow may be referring to IPCO graphited wax sheets sold decades ago. Couple years ago, GONRA found a box in my Junque Pyle.
(Tested 'em decades ago in full power 9 mm loads.) Gave 'em away to local Gun Club black powder CARTRIDGE shooter.