Cushion wad?

[Mad L]

Guessing this question has been addressed before but I have missed it. Has always caused a question in my mind as to the need of a cushion wad at all.

Guess I need to spend a bit of time at the range to figure out some of this stuff first hand ... but for now if you could ... please explain (again) your reasoning behind the science of a cushion wad in the muzzleloading shotgun.

Thank you for your answers in advance. Also the history if you would of cushion wads.

I can't recall who but on YouTube somewhere there is a video of a guy who experimented with the Blunderbuss, the whole experiment was to see what Wadding does to the shot pattern.

He broke in down into three parts:
1) No wad at all.
2) loose grass/weeds he just pulled from the ground on the range.
3) *I forget exactly but some form of dense tow or maybe a felt cushion wad.

His results:
1) No wad the pattern was very wide, some pellets did not even hit the target.
2) Loose grass/weed wad was FAR better, all pellets accounted for on targer.
3) The tight/dense wad was a nice tight pattern on target.

Now I know there are those on here that are going to blow their to: "Where is your Source?", "You can't come on here and spew hearsay without proof!", etc (those I speak to did the same when I quoted another with a link...oddly a few weeks later someone posted with the link to what I spoke of and everyone was somewhat civil).

So, go scour YouTube and you should find it as I once did, or go test the theory yourself.

 

[Comfortably_Numb]

I shot skeet with an 11 bore blunderbuss once. I could hit low house on station 1 but that was it. It had a 16" barrel that was flared inside and out. effective range was maybe 10 ft off the muzzle with shot.