Wadding back in the day..?

[Homesteader]

We have quite a few discussions about the proper size, number, thickness, etc., of cards and wads for our smoothies. That got me to thinking about how it was done back in the day, mid to late 18th century for me.

I'm sure they weren't cutting cardboard circles from cereal boxes, or buying thick fiber wads from ToW. So what were they using?

I know just about anything works in a pinch, but what was common? Leather for overpowder? Leaves or grass or paper for overshot? Bark? Wasp nest for sure...

Which then begs the question about lube. Edges of leather, I suppose, but what about all the other wadding materials? And how about blowing holes in the pattern?

Not sure if this is the right forum, but I am interested what you more erudite folk know or think about this.

 

[CoyoteJoe]

Well, not everyone was so crude as some today would like to believe. Surviving cased gun sets usually included a wad cutter, very much like the arch punches we use today. Those were supplied with the more high end fowling pieces but were available for purchase by anyone and could cut wads from felt or leather. Tow, the coarse fiber waste from linen production, was commonly used both for cleaning the bore and as wadding and was much more readily available then than now. Paper newsprint also makes a very good wad if tightly packed and old shooting instructions often stress "ram well the powder", actually meaning to tightly pack the wad over the powder. Old saddle cushions were highly regarded for wadding, probably because years of use had packed it as tightly as thick felt, which was also available. Then there were all the makeshift, make-do substitutes such as bits of cloth, leaves, short lengths of corn stalk, soft punk wood, whatever.
I would imagine that those who were seriously interested in the "art of shooting flying" would provide themselves with the best they could get and would shoot test patterns whereas the backwoods farmer just used what he had and hoped for the best.

 

[DanChamberlain]

Funny you should mention this. I spent the afternoon trying out my Trade Musket that I built from a Pedersoli kit. My order of wads from Circle Fly hadn't come in yet and I couldn't wait, so I headed out with news paper, shot and a tin of prelubed .36 caliber patches I used for cushion wads.

Loaded powder, seated a wad of news paper over that, rammed down 3 prelubed patches for cusion, topped that with shot and rammed home another wad of news paper. I didn't have a patterning board as this was impromptu and just trying to see if the durn thing would go off, but I managed to kill a couple of pepsi cans that someone had left along the trail. One shot was at a stepped off 20 yards and the can had enough #6 in it to guarantee a dead squirre (even with my flinch!!!)

I have a stand of river birch in my back yard and the outer layer of birch is always peeling off paper-like clumps. I've started wondering if several leafs of this wouldn't make fine wadding. I'm going to try it soon.

Dan

 

[Capt. Jas.]

ditto Coyotejoe. I would add old hat, which was a very popular wadding of wool felt. Careful for nylon fibers in wool felt today.

 

[paulvallandigham]

A lot of small game hides provided cushion wads, fur and leather, when needed back then. The further you were from supplies, and the less cash money you had to buy "store bought " components, the more inventive hunters got is "making do".

Mostly, they got a lot better at getting closer to insure that every shot fired brought home meat. Hunting was not a sport, back then, which we all tend to forget. It was survival- and families didn't eat well if someone came home empty handed.

This state of affairs lasted well into the early 20th century. My grandfather, born in 1879, Grew up near Coloma, Michigan. He remembered many winters when the apple crop paid off debts at the store, and the family was left to make do with a 100 lb. Sack of potatoes, whatever apples they culled from the orchard floors, and the game that his older brothers caught in their trap lines. Lead was in so short supply, that they could not afford to waste it shooting rabbits and other small game. Vegetables came from their garden that his mother canned for use over the winter, and well into the following summer when the first vegetables ripened. The little hunting they did was for deer. Getting a deer meant that the family ate a couple of good meals, around the holidays, with plenty of meat for all.

You could still buy shotgun shells and even rimfire cartridges by the CARTRIDGE well into the 1950s, in most rural gun stores, and hardware stores, when I was a boy. Grandpa never talked about Muzzleloaders, as he had no personal experience using them. He, and his older brothers had some of the early breechloading shotguns, that shot BP cartridges. When he died in 1965, He still had some roll-crimp cartridges with a semi-smokeless powder in them. Those cartridges dated back to the 1890s!

You will still find wad punches, just like those sold today, as well as primitive reloading tools for the early cartridge shotgun shells, in may estate sales, or antique stores. They still work.

I have pulled " obstructions" from a couple of very old family "heirloom" MLing shotguns, that belonged to friends, to find newspaper used to cut wads, crammed down the barrel, on top of a powder charge. In one gun it was Black Powder. In the second, it was a semi-smokeless powder. When touched off in an ashtray, bot powders still burned.

I am convinced that newspapers were commonly used anywhere they could be had, as shotgun wad material. Nothing was wasted.

If you have been reading this thread for some months, we have also discussed using hornet, and wasp nests as wadding material. All kinds of leaves were used, too. :thumbsup:

 

[Russ T Frizzen]

A lot would depend on who you were and where you were. Tow was widely available and required no special tools to use. And I've found it very effective with both shot and ball. As a separator of shot and powder it's very good, and you don't need to pack it down solid, like a modern wad. It's light and it seems to just "fluff" up and stop as it leaves the muzzle instead of blowing through the pattern. Wasp's nest makes a good over shot wadding where you want more stiffness, but you need a good thickness and it needs to be cut to size for best effect. I've tried tow here too, and it works, but I need to spend more time with it and I want to try different lubes, too. But a base of beeswax with tallow still seems best to me and can be tempered with olive oil as dictated by the ambient temperature.

 

[Many Klatch]

In a pinch on a woods walk I have used green leaves picked off of trees and bushes as wadding. It works OK, but the barrel really stinks and is a real mess to clean up after a few shots. Still, back in the day, if you were out hunting and saw a dozen ducks sitting in a pond, you might try to get a few with one shot and then deal with the mess in the barrel later. Wing shooting was for the elite, shooting sitting ducks was for hungry people.

Many Klatch

 

[Mike Brooks]

You can use anything you can imagine for wadding. Your patterns are going to suffer. They knew this "back in the day" also. Although I can't back this up I would assume a correct size wad punch was bought along with the fowler and used to make wads that were the correct size. I suppose many things were used for material, leather, felt, both old hats and blankets, multi layers of paper and stuff we can't imagine.

 

[SCATTERSHOT]

My Granddad was from about the same era as yours, and I remember him telling me that they used newspaper in their ML shotguns.

Also, I remember reading that if you don't have a wad punch and want to make wads that are fairly uniform, stuff a bunch of wet paper into a pipe of the proper diameter and let it dry. Then poke out the "rod" of paper mache' that results and slice off the wads at whatever thickness you need.

 

[CoyoteJoe]

Paul, I think you make a very good point about not expending ammunition on small game. I think that today we forget there was a time when powder and lead were precious commodities, too dear for poor folks to expend frivolously. A single squirrel hardly makes a meal for a single man, whereas the same powder and lead in the form of a single ball load could feed a family for a month.
While the gentry could afford the grand sport of "shooting flying" the backwoods farmers and settlers more likely used their muskets and fowlers with ball and relied on traps and snares for the small game.
That is yet one more reason I doubt the typical frontiersman was anything like the great rifle shot our fantasies have made them out to be. They simply could not afford the time, powder and lead to "work up loads" nor to practice their shooting.

 

[Blizzard of '93]

the Belgian musket (smoothy) I found was loaded with a large charge of what appeared to be #6 shot and wasp nest under and atop the shot.

 

[kherring]

Tow does make good wadding in fowlers. I have used it before. Be careful though. It almost always comes out smoldering and can start fires in dry woods. Seen it.

 

[Homesteader]

All good replies, gentlemen. Good info, thanks. If anyone's got more, please keep 'em coming. (BTW, I love the paper shaped by a tube idea. Perfect!)
:thumbsup:

 

[pmwest]

Cork
Blotter pad

 

[Maverick3855]

I'm not sure how far back in the day you are interested in but I used to buy and restore old surplus muskets, (Most had been turned into smoothbores)
I reconverted several of these back to flint.
I had a few 1816 models as well as some CW Enfields and Springfields etc.
7 of 13 of these were still loaded when I got them.
All 7 of them were loaded with news print wadding.
I'm not saying all guns were used with news print but 7 out of 7 I unloaded with a worm were using news print.
Most was un-readable but I did find a date of 1887 on one piece of news print pulled out and strangely the only other readable date I could find came from another that was dated 1931.
I was surprised to see that someone was still using that gun in 1931.
Again I'm certain there was a lot of other wadding material used and this is just my experience.
It must have been a fairly common practice.
I just threw it out there for information purposes.

 

[Cosmoline]

Very interesting thread! I'm going to have to get some wasp nest. Without getting stung I hope.

I think that today we forget there was a time when powder and lead were precious commodities, too dear for poor folks to expend frivolously.

Those days are coming back, sad to say.