doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com BlackPowder and plastic wads

I did not know of those. Thanks!

Check out Ed's Red.
PAY PARTICULAR ATTENTION TO THE STORAGE REQUIREMENT.
It weakened the bottom of my HARD plastic container in four months. Lifted the hard plastic container to use the fluid and the bottom stayed on the shelf.
Too soon ve get oldt, und ...

The easiest way to remove that plastic fowling is as follows:
Heat up some hot soapy (dish detergent) water on the stove
While waiting for the water to heat, plug the muzzle end of each barrel with a tightly wadded paper towel.
When water is hot, fill both tubes with your hot soapy water.
Let stand for a couple of minutes, then remove plugs; crud will slide out with liquid.
The heated barrels will quickly evaporate any moisture; then the barrels are wiped down and cleaned barrels are ready for the next round.

I think plastic wads in front of black powder is something people only do once. After that, they decide that if they are going to go old-school with black, better also go old-school with fiber wads.

Ithaca5E,
I tend to agree. But the fiber wads worry me when fire conditions are high. Mostly, I just go with smokeless then, but in any event, I loaded a bunch of black with plastic wads some years ago and apparently still have some left over. There are at least 2 more boxes on the shelf. Whatever happened to the loads I made last winter with fiber wads, I do not know.

I make plastic wad bore cleaner by mixing acetone 15% and kerosene 85%. Soak a cotton patch and run thru. Plug the barrel ends and let set. Bronze bristle brush and remove crud.

Say! My go to load in my fowler 28 gage 54 cal is 55 garains of 2f, felt wad over powder, AA plastic wad, 3/4 oz shot and sot card over the shot , no issues with plastic fowling guess I am lucky

28, lucky you are. I hope you did not just jinx yourself.

I have heard of many people using plastic wads by putting a good non-plastic between them & the powder. "IF" you get a good seal with the over powder wad there should be no problem with melting the plastic.

I have done all my muzzle loader shooting using Card & Fiber, never had a problem with starting fires either. I have heard of people having fire problems by loading with crumpled up Newspaper, but never had any problem with the hard card wads catching fire or even smoldering.

I don't think it is the hard card wads, but the softer fiber wads, lubed or dry, they are good candidates for a slow smolder. When the corn is dry and unharvested, and I'm hunting prairie or dry cattails next to it and it super dry, I just can't take that chance and there is a very good alternative that is a lot safer in that regard, so it would be pretty irresponsible on my part to take the chance.

I don't know what it takes to get a good seal, but like I mentioned above, a thick Circle Fly fiber wad and a nitro powder wad between powder and shot cup won't stop the plastic from melting, though it seems that it should.

Interestingly, I never see any sign of melting when I seat a low density polyethylene wad directly over 80+ grs of blackpowder. Those wads can be recovered looking almost as new, so I can't really understand why the shotcups have such problems. I've wondered if steel shot wad/cups might be better somehow, but I haven't bothered to figure that one out.