doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Fibre Wads in Clay Guns

Simon Ward is an English shooting instructor, regular 'Field' and 'Fieldsports' magazine contributor and often sited as being one of the top UK game shots.

I hope that both he and Fildsports magazine will forgive my reproduction below of part of his recent article in the January edition, which looked at killing high pheasants. His first paragraph gives his opinion on the best cartridges to use and I have included it for interest. However, I did find his remarks about the use of fibre wads in clay guns informative:

"I would suggest that 70 per cent of pheasants are shot between 20-30 yards, so 28g or 30g No. 6s are perfectly adequate for typical game shooting. A bigger load will not make you more accurate. Beyond that range, however, I would suggest 30g or 32g No. 5s. And then for the very high pheasants you will need 30g-36g No. 5s or even 4s. For an English gun, I would advise 30g No. 6s to 30g No. 4s. Shoot the best you can afford.

More and more shoots are specifying fibre wad loads only. There has been a great debate running suggesting that fibre wad loads are inferior. This is no longer the case. Until quite recently a lot of cartridges used for game shooting had plaswads and a shot cup, so the pellets don't touch the side of the barrel. Whereas fibre wads do not have a shot cup, so when the gun is over-bored (or back-bored) there is potential for loss of striking energy due to the gas seal being reduced as the shot charge travels up the barrel.

The idea of over-boring has come to us from the USA, where it was designed to reduce recoil. It has subsequently become a feature of production line guns and is used as a sales ploy. If you use fibre wad cartridges in over-bored barrels, the fibre wad load can lose significant pressure and velocity when the shot charge travels up the barrel. This can greatly reduce your chance of clean kills at over 35 - 40 yards. Many people in the game shooting field are using sporting clay guns to shoot driven game � often with over-bored barrels, thus giving the fibre wad loads a bad name, quite wrongly. However, not all new guns feature over-boring and bespoke guns have it only at the request of the customer.

My own guns are not over-bored and as a result I can and do use felt wad cartridges with total confidence and am at no disadvantage. Clearly if you use back-bored or over-bored barrels, then fibre wad loads will not match up to plaswads due to the absence of an efficient gas seal. Otherwise, fibre are mostly every bit as good.

Simon Ward Jan 2014 feldsportsmagazine.com"

Tim

Tim, true enough. I've not found a jot of difference in the shooting field. I tend to use felt wads because I don't like the thought of slinging litter around the countryside. Lagopus.....

I ALWAYS use fibre wads (game and clays), and have never considered it a disadvantage (certainly with my very ordinary standard of shooting!).

When I ran a (fairly large) shoot, some of our landlords required that we only used fibre wads. Most guns (shooters) were quite happy with this, and I don't remember anyone having serious disagreement.

I have never measured the boring of my guns (just in front of the chamber), or the length of the forcing cones. It falls into that category, "it is what it is".

If there is definitive evidence of fiber wads not working in barrels with a bore greater than 0.729" I am unaware of it. At what bore diameter do problems start to show up? Do tighter bores like 0.720" work better? Can one load a shell with a larger diameter fibre wad? I would like to see an objective study where several different loads were shot over a chronograph and at paper to see what the real degradations in velocity and patterns are. In the quoted article I enjoyed the fact that Mr. Ward placed the blame for the over boring debacle on us colonists. I have a spendy Italian target gun that is 0.740 bore from the factory.
Regards
Jeff

Here is some interesting information. A.H. Fox in the 1920s produced the Super Fox guns for long range waterfowling, a sport where delivering a small pattern of shot at a distance was every bit as important as in driven pheasant shooting. A large amount of work went into boring and choking barrels to throw tight full patterns. The 12 gauge guns were initially bored to 0.750. Further testing led them to settle on a bore of 0.740 with 3/4" forcing cones (long for the day) and 4.5" chokes with a 1" parallel. The 20 gauge guns were bored 0.624, had the same forcing cones and 3.5" chokes. Choke configuration was, and is, important in producing tight patterns. This was all done with fiber wads. The full choked guns were renowned for the ability to throw 78-80% patterns at 40 yards with factory Winchester Super-X ammunition.
Regards
Jeff

This statement is either an incredible simplification or outright falsehood of what actually occured here in the US. The concept of backboring and it's use in American produced shotguns roughly coincides with the successful recovery of two species, the giant Canada goose and the American wild turkey. During testing, it was discovered that backboring would actually put more of the larger pellets used for hunting either bird on target at longer ranges. At no time in the past 50 years did American ammunition producers use fiber wads for loads intended for waterfowl or turkey, and, to a very large degreee, few, or no guns produced in England would have been suitable for the loads that were produced here for those pursuits.
The arguments over reduced recoil from backboring seem specious at best to me when the conversation is about American 12 gauge 3" loads of 1 1/2 ozs of number 1 shot. Or, any other heavy American load intended for turkeys or waterfowl.
My own, limited experience has shown that fiber wads perform admirably in a slightly over bored American 16 gauge, when used for smaller size shot (English 7s) at the range one typically encounters ruffed grouse, woodcock and pheasants here in the US. I speculate the fiber wad is capable of a bit of expansion, as it only has two ways it can move, outward, to fill the bore, the shortest direction, and down and out the barrel, decidedly further.

I am not a huge proponent of backboring, or big loads, or even of goose or turkey hunting, but, it seems to me there is much more to the notion of backboring than a wish for the reduction of recoil.


Best,
Ted

Fiber wads were all that were in use when Western Cartridge Co. and the A.H. Fox Gun Co. introduced the Super-X loads and the Super-Fox shotgun specially bored for these heavier/higher velocity loads in 1922. The Very early Super-Fox 12-gauge guns had .750" bores, but then they settled into .738" bores. Early on the Super-X load was essentially a progressive burning smokeless powder load put up in Western's regular FIELD or RECORD shell.

Ted, is correct. Just as a major ammo company developed the 3.5" 10 gauge shell in conjunction with the Ithaca 10 gauge NID over 80 years ago, Federal Ammo in 1988 developed the 12 ga. 3.5" shell for turkey and geese. The first gun chambered for this round was the Mossberg 835 Ulti-Mag pump. Other than a 12 gauge chamber, the barrel was over bored to 10 gauge. It wasn't long before other guns followed suit. Gil

Time to petition for re-introduction of the Super-Seal Cup Wad?

I know of only one recent study that compared modern fibre wad loads to their poly wad equivalent, that conducted by BASC.

Result ....no statistical differences in pattern percentages at 40 yards.

Eug