Since Daryl has got me hooked on the concept of trying round balls in my old Ithaca, I ordered a custom round ball mold from Jeff Tanner in England. While I wait, I thought I'd assemble some stuff I might need along the way.

For felt wads, a wadcutter is needed, or might be. 12 gauge wadcutter tools are hard to find {source?} so I made one.

I bought a couple pipe nipples, ground a round edge and set them up for cutting wads. I attemted to harden them, but the metal does not appear to have enough carbon and they do not respond to a quench. Regardless, though somewhat soft, they work. Cheap and easy, for those of you who can't get wadcutters for twelve bore guns or don't want to pay the money for one if you find one. The pipe nipples are cheap, a couple bucks each and the caps are a buck or so.

Here's what they look like, along with a storebought .715 ball {that actually measured .719} that I used to slug my bore, and the old-timey Lee Loader I'll use to assemble the loads {along with a hammer I made in High School metal shop many years ago, recently rehafted in local serviceberry...

}. Anyway, just a tip for you roundballers out there, for what it's worth.