Leather wads

[Ted W. Coombs]

I have a ton of scrap vegatable and oil tanned leather. Has anyone tried using leather for wads in their smoothbores? Seems like they would hold lube and cushion well in a smoothbore. Thank you kindly for your input.

Teton Ted

 

[paulvallandigham]

Leather wads, particularly if they were lubed, would be very heavy, and have a tendancy to follow the shot charge. You might get away using them with round ball, but the wads would be very heavy. You would have to use 3-4 leather pieces to form a thick enough wad so that it would not allow gas to blow by when shooting a PRB. The weight as well the difficulty in cutting the wads would be the deterrent factors, as cutting paper or cloth is so much easier.

 

[Wes/Tex]

...and don't think it's a new idea!

"Now search for Tow, and some old saddle pierce:
No Wadding lies so close or drives so fierce."

'Pteryplegia Or, The Art Of Shooting-Flying' 1727

 

[wyatt243]

I shoot leather over curogated cardboard in my 28 gauge I know that rabbits and partridge dont like that combo
:thumbsup:

 

[CoyoteJoe]

I often cut leather wads both for smoothbores and for revolvers. I too have alot of leather scraps from making knife scabbards and handgun holsters. Leather is much easier to punch out with a cutter than is thick poster board and works just as well. If you first dampen the leather it is especially easy to cut and it will absorb and hold any sort of lube. I've made cutters for .36 and .45 revolver wads which I can chuck in my drill press and they cut exceptionally smooth and easy when slowly spinning. Wads are available from "Circle-fly" so cheap it is not worth the bother to cut anything you can get from them but I have some odd-ball bores for which I sometimes want just a few wads and cutting them from scrap leather is an easy solution. :thumbsup: