Home made revolver wads?

[JMtoolman]

Another way to make your own wad punches. Get a shaft or two off of an old golf clubs. There made out of a hardened steel tube, just cut off at the diameter your need and as long as you want. Sharpen the small end and use a leather hammer to cut the wads. You will have to use a abrasive cut off disk to cut the tubing. Harbor tools have them. The toolman.

[troy_mclure]

Why the heck would you want to occupy such limited powder space with a wad? A revolver will not benefit from the protection of the ball or bullet and a grease wad is one painful way to lubricate black powder bullets.

my gun is way more accurate and tons easier to clean with a lubed wad between the ball and powder.

[Omnivore]

Why the heck would you want to occupy such limited powder space with a wad? A revolver will not benefit from the protection of the ball or bullet and a grease wad is one painful way to lubricate black powder bullets.

It's not about protecting the ball. It's about keeping the fouling soft, so you want the lube behind the ball where it will do its job. The felt helps contain the lube, so it doesn't contaminate the power too much. A lube cookie would be a good choice also. In a BPCR it's both for protection (on subsequent shots) and for fouling mitigation-- they go hand-in-hand in any case. Also; most people shooting round ball from a percussion revolver aren't loading maxed-out chambers anyway, so the same load with or without a wad is plenty short enough to function. In that case, the wad helps keep the ball slightly closer to the cylinder face, which is a benefit. Wads don't take up all that much room as you might think anyway because they compress substantially as the ball is rammed home. Not sure what you mean by "painful" though-- I've loaded thousands of wads and it never hurt a bit.

A well-lubed BP gun, after a day of shooting, will not have the hard, whitish, nitrate coating in the bore, but a soft black goo that can be swabbed out easily with a couple of passes.

Also; for some reason unknown to me (maybe fouling mitigation as above, maybe gas seal, maybe something else I haven't thought of), a lubed felt wad behind a flat based conical in a ML rifle can improve accuracy substantially.

[IROCZ]

I have always liked the lubed wad over the "smear gooey stuff on the front of the cylinder" technique. The first time I fired my 58 I used a beeswax cookie sold as "Revolver seals" that I got by mistake from T.O.W. They worked fine. The pistol ran perfectly for 30 shots. I would worry about powder contamination if it was much warmer. Any thoughts on the melting temp of beeswax or powder contamination if used for a long term load?

[Nobade]

If you are going to keep it loaded for a long time such as hunting or carry for protection, I would tend to use dry felt wads. You can fire a whole cylinder full of those and the gun won't bind up. But for normal range work and firing multiple times, the lubed wads are the way to go.

Oh, the lube should be pretty hard. I tried lubing some with Pearl Lube and that was a failure. The lube squished into the powder when I seated the balls and killed the powder charge. Balls barely made it out the muzzle and lube wads were on fire. I stick to Gatofeo lube - beeswax/gulf wax/mutton tallow for the wad lube and don't have that problem any more.

-Nobade

[Texantothecore]

I use coke can 24 count cases and punch out the wads with one of the Harbor Freight tools. They work well. Cheap too.

[dikman]

I started off with felt wads, but switched to 1/4" solid wax pills (cookies?) made using Gatafeo's recipe. Much cheaper, as felt is expensive here. The pills soften up a bit in the hot weather, but they're not in the chambers long enough to be a problem.

Occasionally I find the wax lining the hole that the ball made in the target .

[Hanshi]

I make my own wads for all calibers I shoot. I've used leather, card stock and felt, all to good effect. I bought a set of punches from Harbor Freight and felt from Durofelt. This produces very inexpensive wads for most calibers. A .36 rifle, for instance, will use a .375" punched wad as a minimum while a .40 does well with a .470" wad. If a correct punch can't be found for a specific caliber, the next largest is used, i.e. .530" to .550" or thereabout for a .50 rifle. This works for revolvers exactly the same.