Making Bio Wads

[flippermaj]

Following on from a post in the wildfowling section "Another Nail in the coffin" I have the following questions.

1) Can you buy on line any "eco wads" for steel shot wildfowling loads for home loaders?

2) Is it possible to make any such wad for steel shot (or TSS)?

Cheers

Flipper

 

[Smudger687]

The only eco wads currently available to the home loader are the fibre shot cups from clay and game, and their performance isn't anywhere near as good as a plaswad; they're not particularly consistent, they're not very good at protecting the chokes, their capacity isn't great for how much space they take up, and you need a ton of powder behind them to get the velocities up. 

But they do biodegrade, so it's your call. They generally do fine with protecting the barrel itself with steel shot, so if you think of choke tubes as consumable items you can hold your nose and go for it. 

In terms of making your own wads - good luck with that, it's not straightforward. You can either go down the route of rolling your own paper/fibre based cup wad (but you may as well use the clay and game fibre cup) or you can try and make your own bioplastic wad using a custom mould and a decktop injection moulder but that's a huge outlay for materials and equipment, and having done a lot of research on this there aren't many polymers that are suitable for use as a wad.

The most practical solution would be to take a clay and game fibre cup wad and cut a length of craft paper to stick into the cup as you would with a mylar wrap. You can make this as thick as you like and the extra space it takes up is just what you need for TSS. 

[holloway]

I might be wrong but i think the clay game biodegradable wads have been discontinued .

[Dave at kelton]

11 hours ago, holloway said:

I might be wrong but i think the clay game biodegradable wads have been discontinued .

Fibre shot cups are still available as Smudger says. I have them in 8, 10 and 12. You need to use them with an obturator to get best performance. These can be produced as inverted card cup wads using a tooling set that Graham Deakin makes. I have these in both 8&10.

With a little effort you can go entirely biodegradable/non toxic with a little effort and money. As to making them I would not bother whilst I can buy them. There are solutions if you homeload. As to chokes if you have external ones you should be okay.

[flippermaj]

Hi Dave,  sorry for being a bit ignorant here but what is an obturator?   If I explore this further I would like to load a 36grm no1 orr 2 steel load in 12 bore.  What loads have you done in the 12?

cheers

[Smudger687]

36 minutes ago, flippermaj said:

Hi Dave,  sorry for being a bit ignorant here but what is an obturator?   If I explore this further I would like to load a 36grm no1 orr 2 steel load in 12 bore.  What loads have you done in the 12?

cheers

An obturator acts as a gas seal. In a bio cart you're limited to a nitro card or some inverted card cup wad as Dave has suggested. Easiest and most convenient option for you will be a nitro card. 

The 45mm cup from C&G holds about 39g of number 1 steel but needs a 3.5 inch case to accommodate it, the nitro card and the powder. Not sure you'll get 36g into a 3 inch case. 

Only load I have uses 40 grains of discontinued maxam SSB-150 to push 39g at ~1350 fps at 2.5m. I imagine other common steel powders would give similar results. 

[flippermaj]

Cheers smudged.  What’s the problem with choke damage?   Seems strange that a fibre cup/wad can damage the chokes.

[Smudger687]

On 06/10/2023 at 08:39, flippermaj said:

Cheers smudged.  What’s the problem with choke damage?   Seems strange that a fibre cup/wad can damage the chokes.

The chokes get score marks and scuffing. I've even had it happen with quarter choke.

[cash1]

I'm old enough to remember when the plastic wads first came on the market and there was a lot talk about the risk to livestock and the environment. Tests were carried out by Gov approved departments and wads were fed to cattle etc without any side effects and were deemed perfectly safe. However as far as I am aware they were new clean wads, that is not contaminated with lead.

The early plastic wad was so rare as we collected spent cases for reloading we would find and collect the used plastic wads as well. These plastic wads were reused and they worked perfectly even though we never reduced the powder charge (Nobel 60, 62, 80, 82 were the only powders available) . It was a few years later when Plaswad began selling their wads that we found out loads had to reduced by 10%. With hind sight we were lucky not to blow up some of the old hammer guns we often used.

I'm not saying plastic is the sort of thing we should willy nilly scatter about or that steel shot wads aren't contaminated with lead or that they wouldn't do harm to livestock or wildlife. But if we habitually picked up any we see and disposed of them by the correct route perhaps any problems might be reduced to insignificance. 

The good ol' freedom days  most of us survived them.