I have a question of the use of wads under paper-patched bullets.  If for instance I wished to reduce a black powder charge in a .40-70 2 1/2" straight case for recoil reduction. I placed a veg. fiber wad under bullet..and used a soft felt wad or grease cookie..or even Puff-Lon filler to take up excess space,  would the kick of the black powder charge still obturate bullet to fill rifling grooves?  Bullets are bore dia. plus .001" 30-1 lead-tin.  330-350grs.  Thanks!

The boyz at TR&R used Cream of Wheat filler to reduce recoil for the offhand Trapdoor match.  Seems like we used about 55 grs of 2F, a wad and filled teh case up to th ebullet with it.

I wondered about that issue myself, although I was not seeking recoil reduction but simple occupation of extra space in my .44-77 shells.

In straight shells with paper-patch to bore bullets, I normally use a 1/16” thick cork wad, but with the bottleneck shell, I found that two 1/8” cork wads filled the gap between the 80 gr of powder at shoulder height and bullet barely in the end of the shell mouth, and didn’t seem to interfere with the bullet obturation at all.

The 1/8” stuff I got at Hobby Lobby was for cork message boards and had stickum on the back.  I just put the sticky sides back-to-back and pushed the composite “wad” into the case mouth.  It gave about 1/8” space to insert the bullet.

Worked for me, but given the problems some have reported in all degrees of freedom trying to sort out paper patching, YMMV. I myself have never been able to make up an “economy” or “low-recoil” loading at will with black powder and paper patch bullets.  There may be a “sweet spot” in there (my rifle seems to like 75 grains almost as much as 80 gr) but recoil is indistinguishable, and loading 17 shells instead of 16 isn’t a huge savings.  My basic philosophy with paper patch bullets is “When in doubt, add more powder.”

Bent_Ramrod wrote on Mar 19^th, 2020 at 11:21am:


After shooting PP rifles for the last decade I've more or less come to the same conclusion.   

Of late I've been playing with Swiss Fg though and it seems to work as well or better than 1.5 in most of my rifles.

Chris.


Chris.

MartiniBelgian wrote on Mar 19^th, 2020 at 1:57pm:


Yeah that sounds painful.  My .45-110 weighs 15lbs and I wouldn't want it to be an ounce lighter 

I do have a 12.6lb highwall in .45-90 that I shoot with 93gr of powder and it's right at the upper limit of what I want to deal with recoil-wise for match shooting.  I've actually come to prefer Swiss Fg in that one.  Interestingly the recoil feels about the same to me as my 13.5lb Shiloh shooting 80gr of powder with grease grooved bullets.   

Chris.

I have found that the nicest way to reduce recoil is to use a smaller cartridge  .   My .38-55 and .38-50 are very pleasant with charges in the 58-62gr range.   

Another alternative could be to try one of these dual diameter patched bullets that some are using these days. I was talking with a fellow that says the idea is not at all new.  He had, or has, an old Ideal mold that is a dual diameter PP mold!

Chris.

Yes you can use wads to take up space on straight cases and black powder. you might have to softer your alloy depending on how much you reduce the charge. I would stay away from fillers COW, Puflon etc as they tend to agrivate case stretching and eventually case separation.

40 Rod