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Just a thought...plastic wads


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6 minutes ago, Brodie said:

In the interests of reducing plastic waste do we all use fibre wads for clay shooting?

 

I buy most of my trap cartridges from the ground; if they sell fibre that's what I'll use as I can then use any remaining ones over decoys or whatever. If they only sell plastic then that's what I'll use, and keep any remaining for the next visit.  

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6 minutes ago, panoma1 said:

That's interesting! The gas seal element in a wad made from potato starch may prove testing......but a shot Cup? Hmmmmmmm!

I know nothing about the process of extracting starch from spuds, even less about its conversion into a suitable material (strength wise and resistance to perforation wise) from which to make steel safe wads and/or shotcups. But it could be a winner? 

If successful you should think about patenting it!

I like you am no Potato starch plastic expert, but i imagine it can produce adequately suitable wads to use with harder shot types in gun barrels, and looking back at card cups in their current basic bucket form good gas sealing is easily achievable with inverted card cup seals and conventional cushion wading to offer the potential for good patterns.

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3 hours ago, Smokersmith said:

We generate a lot of potato starch in our process, and have successfully turned it into Golf Balls, plastic bags and ice scrapers.

Not sure if it will work for wads, but I've initiated an internal process to find out ... so that's one positive from the thread ...

along with helping some folks to understand better the lead laws in England and Scotland, and once again establishing that ingested lead is bad for Wildfowl.

Good topic !!

It is a good topic and a potato starch wad that stands up to steel shot and fully degrades can only be good 

 

if 

if you don’t grow the potatoes under hundreds of acres of plastic 

we have all to look at the big picture and move forward 

the biggest problem is the environmental impacts of the production of the products we want 

just a thought 

all the best 

of

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24 minutes ago, Old farrier said:

It is a good topic and a potato starch wad that stands up to steel shot and fully degrades can only be good 

 

if 

if you don’t grow the potatoes under hundreds of acres of plastic 

we have all to look at the big picture and move forward 

the biggest problem is the environmental impacts of the production of the products we want 

just a thought 

all the best 

of

I agree OF, if the process for making eco friendly wads proves to cost more (financially and environmentally) than the resultant benefit! It is probably a no go!

44 minutes ago, Fen tiger said:

I like you am no Potato starch plastic expert, but i imagine it can produce adequately suitable wads to use with harder shot types in gun barrels, and looking back at card cups in their current basic bucket form good gas sealing is easily achievable with inverted card cup seals and conventional cushion wading to offer the potential for good patterns.

Yes! I have been using inverted 'bottletop' O/P card wads, capped felt and a bio wad Cup, behind ITM, quite successfully in my 8 bores for years!

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Shortly after I left school I worked in the R&D dept of a major petrochem company (circa 1970). Even then they were working on a starch based, UV degradable polymer  that degraded to naturally occurring compounds, the trouble then was it degraded too fast (2/4 weeks) if exposed to low level UV (sunlight)but work was ongoing to extend this period.

I don't know what became of it as I left the company, but the physical properties of it appeared very similar to that of plaswads. However I fear it, like many things I worked on, never seemed to appear but it would suit the application ideally.

The indication is that such products exist.

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Guest stevo
7 hours ago, Brodie said:

In the interests of reducing plastic waste do we all use fibre wads for clay shooting?

 

Why would It matter if clay grounds use plaswad anyway ? Most ground that let you you plswad , collect them up and binned once a month or whenever. So it’s neither here nor there really ,

we have a big recycling company here in Lincolnshire that collects them from grounds all over the country and recycles them , they go all over even down to grounds  like brook bank ect 

Edited by stevo
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15 hours ago, motty said:

I hardly ever use fibre wads for anything.

Don’t get me wrong; I don’t care what anyone uses, but on the land on which I shoot, those landowners who expressed a preference don’t want plastic wads strewn all over the place. I’m  just thinkin ( for purely selfish reasons) of a time in the future if and when plastic wads are banned, or lead shot is, it won’t interfere with my shooting. 

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15 hours ago, PPP said:

Fibre only for everything, always have

It is a few years back now but it was discovered fibre wads were worse for cattle to ingest if they picked any up whilst grazing than plas wads.  A cow would reject a plaswad but a natural material would be consumed and apparently the scrubbing effect of the wad on the barrel collected lead deposits  etc etc.....

 

One main reason for the ban on lead shot was course fishing. Lead weights being ingested by swans was killing them off. 

On a days shooting I will pick up very empty shell I see AND any plastic wads. It amazes me that so often I walk to my peg to find the ground littered with empty shells. Too many out there shooting who have no consideration.   Any empties I collect are incinerated at high temp the heads go in the scrap collection bin.

 

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I confess I hate to see plastic wads littering the tideline, plastic cartridge cases discarded and plastic wads littering wild places and lying about the Peg or Butt.....I like to leave it as I found it......except for the odd footprint and maybe minus a bird or two!

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17 hours ago, panoma1 said:

I confess I hate to see plastic wads littering the tideline, plastic cartridge cases discarded and plastic wads littering wild places and lying about the Peg or Butt.....I like to leave it as I found it......except for the odd footprint and maybe minus a bird or two!

The plastic wads/cups from the NCSC at Bisley have found their way to lane making/covering duties on site!

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44 minutes ago, Dekers said:

The plastic wads/cups from the NCSC at Bisley have found their way to lane making/covering duties on site!

Yes I don't think it was a great success, I thought it was a clever idea when I first saw it but they were too springy and didn't  compact down to create a new surface. Good thinking  

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