This is the system I am currently going to try out for wads. I picked up 6 bags of steel-shot wads for 12 gauge for a good price and find them to be very heavily constructed and suited for this purpose. Along with testing BP loads with shot in the old 96 Marlin with slightly shortened wads, I am using the totally cut-down was for testing with round ball loads as well. The interior of the steel shot wads is perfectly cupped like the Swedish cupped wad of 1910.
: The first wad is the full sized wad.
: The second has been cut almost all the way through with a hacksaw, fine blade.
: The third wad is the base section.
: The fourth, with a .648" 404gr. weight pure lead ball bought from trackofthewolf.
: The last one, the .684" ball at 480gr., 466gr. in WW metal that I'll probably end up using.
: Next to that is a .744" round ball cast from a Tanner mould, which has had the sprue trimmed then rounded off with a rasp.
: I will experiment with both the .684" and the .722"(as cast) from
: The J.Tanner mould also pictured in RCBS handles. Lyman large block handles also work well.
: I am out of it's .722" balls, but seem to recall they weighed in the vicinity of 555gr. area cast out of wheelweights, about 575gr. in pure lead.
: The base cup as shown, results in having a square saw cut, is then chamfered on the inside using a sharp pocket knife, or a 3/4" ball mill with an electric drill could be used.
: Due to the shortness of this wad and ball, extra wads may be required between the powder and ball/wad combination. Card wads as well as fibre wads are available from www.trackofthewolf.com in a variety of sizes.
: I find 11 gauge fibre wads fit well into 12 bore plastic cases. 12 bore cards may have to be used(if you want to use card wads as the 1/8" 11 bore card wads expand the sides of the case somewhat when seated down into the case. That expansion may prevent chambering in tightly chambered 12 bores, maybe not. The fibre wads are all that's really necessaary and at 1/2" thickness, they can be split easily with a finger nail or knife if some other thickness is required. The whole affair can be loaded with a standard crimp or merely beveled over the top of the ball with a shotshell crimping station. I use a Lyman plstic crimper to start the fold-over, then use the coned crimp starter from my old Pacific shotshell loader to iron the fold further by twisting it around by hand. Regular roll crimpers can be purchaed from Lyman. These are used with an electric drill, or, more easily, with a drill press. Poking out primers is easy with a Lee decapping rod, or you can make one easily with a fairly descent sized nail with the end ground down a bit. A 5/8" diameter dowel is used with a flat surface and light hammer for seating a new primer. A Lee loader in 12 gauge (or whatever size you're loading for) can be used as well & contains the base sizer, wad seater, decapper, etc. They can easily be loaded by hand, btw, with a minimum of hand made tooling. A loading block is a handy device for holding primed and charged cases in different stages of being loaded.