I shot a string of 10 shots recently during an early morning's calm.

I was experiencing some shots that would go higher occasionally so I decided to load up some rounds with an over-primer wad of newspaper. These go into the case before dumping in the BP powder. Caliber is 40-65.

These were shot over cross-sticks using a 6x scope. The first shot was the one that hit on target. I thought the barrel was sufficiently warmed up by the time I made this shot so I proceeded to shoot the next 9 shots. I did not make any sight corrections during this 10 shot string. Some slight running mirage came up after shooting the one 6 shot group and this produced the next 3 shot group. I was trying to aim at the same spot in the center of the Turkey swinger at 385 meters.

Seems like a keeper and one more step that I will be doing in reloading in the future!

westerner wrote on Jul 21^st, 2020 at 6:02pm:


Just one. I initially thought newspaper might be too thick but using coffee filter paper would have been too difficult to manage and get into the bottom of the case.

oneatatime wrote on Jul 21^st, 2020 at 7:03pm:


I use a 40-cal wad cutter die in the press. It can cut 10's of wads at a time. I think maybe a 38-cal die would work best as maybe the wads would be small enough to just fall to the bottom of the case. Don't know for sure or if the wads may still have a stick-effect to the sides of the case. I use a gage pin to coax the wad to the bottom of the case and to lie flat.

So you are putting the news print in the case as opposed to the primer pocket in front of the primer?

If I use rifle primers in black powder cartridges, I drop a single disc of newsprint down into the case so it rests on the bottom against the flash hole.  But having to check each case and make sure the disc isn’t clinging to the side of the case instead of down where it should be is kind of annoying.  So I have taken to using pistol primers with a Ram Prime setup, where seating the primer punches a circle out of a strip of paper inserted under the shell in the primer relief slot in the shell holder.  The paper circle seats in the primer pocket between the primer and flash hole.

The paper stock used in the ASSRA Bench Rest targets is of the perfect consistency and thickness to seat the pistol primers flush with the cases while allowing no excess room to slam back or leak gas against the breech block on firing.  I snip out the center (where all the bullet holes inevitably are  ) and cut the rest of the target into 1/4” wide strips and feed them under the case when priming.

The powder-in-flash-hole argument seems to have supplanted the original notion that modern primers are way more ignition than black powder needs, and may be breaking up the powder column or even moving the bullet before powder combustion is complete.  Whatever the reason, multiple comparisons show that primer wads give slightly smaller groups than the absence of same.  I would have loved to prove all this was voodoo, and saved myself the extra reloading step, but it just didn’t happen.