Fiber wad ober powder question

[kylecdennis]

I have a white mountain carbine that I shoot TC maxi balls. Shoots pretty good but I have heard wad over powder can help some. What thickness wad should I get? Looked at track of wolf and they have a few options. Wasn’t sure how thick the wad should be. Thank you

 

[Woody Morgan]

1/8" hard felt should be the ticket with your choice of lube on it.
I like plain old olive oil but others mix some beeswax in with it. Keeps the fouling soft either way.

wm

 

[SDSmlf]

I have purchased 1/8” thick hard felt from Duro-Felt Products that I make my own wads from in a variety of diameters. Have generally had the most success using wads slightly over bore diameter, .50” diameter wad in 45 caliber, for example. You will have to experiment to see what works best in your guns.

 

[gun_painter]

1/8" works for me too. I use a looser patch (.010") with .490" round balls. The patches get shredded pretty fierce without a wad, pretty much blown apart, and the accuracy looks like a shotgun. As soon as I started using a wad, and dropped my powder charge a hair, I got really great accuracy. I repeated and proved my accurate load today, besting it a bit by using a scale to measure the powder charge down to the .1 grain, and changed my loaded procedure a bit, and got 3 balls touching at 54 yards with open sights. Now with my Lee REAL 320gr bullets, I tried wads with those, and got poor accuracy, BUT, I haven't thoroughly tested them yet. I didn't even try a wad with the 90gr loading cause it shot quite well without it.

What i'm basically saying, is give it a try. If it doesn't work, the cost to get a bag of 100 wads to try isn't going to set you back hardly anything.

Branden

 

[kylecdennis]

Thank you for the responses

 

[hanshi]

The wads I punch out of the Duro-Felt sheets work well in my rifles. I don't use them except in the woods and are probably not really necessary since I load with thick patch material. But they most assuredly do not do any harm.

 

[Britsmoothy]

I call them firewalls.
Never a bad thing in my book.

 

[ohio ramrod]

I make mine from leather scraps which I get free from a harness shop, thickness runs from 1/8 to 3/16. I soak mine in olive oil from a few days, and then "dry" them on newspaper for two days.

 

[Mad Professor]

I've been using the pre-lubed ones from oxyoke for years.

 

[renegadehunter]

An 1/8" wool wad is a good idea to help out accuracy, helps with leading some too.
Another thought since you're using Maxi-balls. The upper grease groove is huge and some have discovered that it doesn't shed all of the lube out of it before it exits the barrel, making for poor concentricity. Depends on the lube and how old it is.
They have reported much better groups when leaving the upper groove empty and only lubing the bottom groove. Might give that a try too and see if groups shrink.

 

[Stantheman86]

I've used them in a .45 Kentucky Pistol that shot ragged holes at 25 yards with patched round balls.

I plan to use them in a .58 ArmiSport CS Richmond that already shoots very well with .570 balls but can do better.

 

[kylecdennis]

Great info! Thanks everyone