Wads And Fillers

You must understand that some shooters have written that shooting cartridges with wads over the powder has caused "rings" in their rifle chambers. The ring is described as an annular ring in the forward end or mouth of the chamber.

It has been reported that using wads of cotton or kapok rather than Dacron will eliminate the risk of ringing the chamber. Unfortunately, there have also been reports of chamber ringing with both cotton and kapok wads.

It has been theorized that old barrels made of softer steels are more likely to develop rings than new and stronger/harder barrels.

I do not use over-powder wads in antique rifles.

I have never ringed a chamber in thousands of shots fired with wads in antique or modern or reproduction rifles.

Be aware that there is a risk.

I believe that we're better off not using a wad. Reloading time is reduced, we don't have to make or buy the wads and that little bit of "I wonder if this one will ring my chamber" is gone.

That said:

What is written below is about smokeless powder loads. Black powder is a whole different story, where the wads seem to be an important part of the load.

Some shooters use a wad pushed down on the powder to keep it next to the primer. The velocity of the bullet varies with the position of the powder in the case at the time of ignition, and the theory is that by holding the powder against the primer with a wad, variations in velocity are reduced and accuracy is increased. The wads used for this purpose include pieces of toilet paper and balls of Dacron. I use Dacron wads in some rifles. Dacron batting is available at stores that sell sewing machines and supplies, it is used in making clothing as insulation between the outer and inner cloth layers of the garment. It is a non-woven batting material, it is sold by the running yard eight feet wide, and I won't live long enough to use the first yard I bought. I pull a small bit of Dacron off the piece and tease it into a fluffy ball, which is big enough to make a sort of tight fit in the cartridge case. The ball is about three-eighths to one-half inch in diameter. I push it into the charged case with the pointy end of a ball pen, and tamp it down on the powder with the blunt end of the pen. The object is to use as little as possible, to use the same amount each time, and to have the ball big enough to hold the powder against the primer by friction against the case wall. A piece of toilet paper about an inch square does the same job; just push it down on the powder.

     Some other shooters use a wad in the mouth of the case to protect the base of the bullet and reduce the chance of the hot gases cutting the base of the bullet or blowing by the bullet. The wads used for this purpose include plastic, cork, cardboard and balls of Dacron in the mouth of the case. A few years back Merrill Martin got a lot of shooters interested in die cut plastic wads in the mouth of the case. There was a lot of science involved, "Low Density Polyethylene" or "LDPE" was the plastic of choice. Lindy Blaisdell used these wads for a while with good results, but has since given them up. I tried them.

Old time black powder shooters used cork or cardboard or postcard wads in the mouth of the case. I suspect that these wads were more to keep the powder from falling out of the charged case than to protect the base of the bullet.

"Ramone" on the handloads.com forum says that he uses wads cut from Styrofoam plates in the case mouth.

Yet other shooters use grease or lube wads in the mouth of the case that are supposed to both protect the base of the bullet and lubricate the bore. "IPCO" wads were sold for years. These were sheets of lube about  one-sixteenth inch thick. You pressed the sheet of lube down on the mouth of a charged case, leaving a round lube wad in the mouth of the case, and seated the bullet on top. There are two possible problems with grease/lube wads. First, the wad may melt a little and contaminate or "kill" the powder charge. A cardboard or felt or plastic or cork or ? wad should be used between the grease/lube wad and the powder. Second, the wad may be free to rattle around in the case, between the powder and the base of the bullet. The danger here is that the wad will act as a projectile, whack into the base of the bullet on firing, and ring the chamber. I don't know if this has ever happened, but recommend that users assure that any wad NOT be placed on top of the powder leaving an airspace between wad and bullet, and not be free to rattle around in the case.

Some grease/wax wads under an undersized bullet will keep a revolver from leading-I have tried this and know it to be true. An undersized 429421 bullet in my M29 44 Magnum revolver leaded in a few shots. With a CF Ventures "Soft Gas Check" leading was eliminated.

Grease/wax wads under a rifle bullet will eliminate leading. The 308403 bullet leads furiously in my 30WCF M54 Winchester, but with a CF Ventures "Soft Gas Check" the leading is completely eliminated.

The CF Ventures "Soft Gas Check" is a hard red material that is about 1/16" thick, and comes in sheets about 3" X 6". I have not found any increase in accuracy using these wads, but they do eliminate leading.

I have experimented with grease wads for years in smokeless and black powder loads in rifles, and have never had as good accuracy with grease wads as without them. I know, it should work, and many people will tell you that it does work, but I've never been able to make it work. I think it comes down to this: An undersized bullet will lead. A grease or wax wad will frequently eliminate leading, but won't make the bullet shoot accurately. A larger bullet will not lead and will shoot accurately. Good luck.

Cream of Wheat is used on occasion as a filler in both black powder and smokeless powder loads. Black powder loads in cartridge rifles should fill the case; there should be no or almost no air space between the top of the load and the base of the bullet. The story is that bad things will happen if there is an air space. Unless it is compressed slightly black powder won't burn correctly, and velocities will vary a lot. Sometimes we want to shoot less than a full case of powder. A .45/70 duplex load of ten percent smokeless and the case filled with black powder with a 500 grain bullet is not a lot of fun to shoot. We can use less than a full charge of black powder, while not having an air space, by putting Cream of Wheat on top of the black powder to fill the case. It seems to me that black powder loads with Cream of Wheat burn cleaner than without.

Cream of Wheat has also been used on top of smokeless loads. In bottlenecked cases Cream of Wheat is said to cause high pressures, but I never noticed it. What I have noticed is that Cream of Wheat on top of a smokeless powder load eliminates leading, even when the bullet is not lubricated. However, I never had as good accuracy in smokeless loads with Cream of Wheat as without, so I don't use it in smokeless loads at all now.

Editor’s note: I’ve played with Cream of Wheat loads a great deal. And while I have had some excellent groups, it is true that this technology generally gives somewhat less accuracy than conventional loads. Oddly enough, they seem a great deal more consistent if used with UN-LUBRICATED cast bullets. Why a bullet lubricant should detract from accuracy with these loads, I can’t even guess, but I’ve seen it repeatedly. In its defense, I’d like to note that Cream of Wheat loads will often perform reasonably well at much higher velocities than conventional loads, and I haven’t been able to get ANY leading with a Cream of Wheat load, no matter how extreme the load, nor how poor the bore. Ken Mollohan as editor. 

PVC Wads

I have never found a wad in the case mouth to increase accuracy. Cork or grease or plastic. When breech seating, I have to use a wad in the case mouth to keep the powder from drooling into the Martini action on my bench gun. This gun reliably leads after 10 record and a couple of sighter shots, and has done so for 15 years, but it shoots very well and is worth the cleaning.

Bill McGraw sent me some PVC sheets, and I've cut 30 caliber wads from them and have been using them in the case mouth. The last three times out there has been no leading. Yesterday, 8/23/2006, at 100 yards I got five shot groups of .9, .775, .8, .975 and .85, with two different bullets. Total of  31 shots with fouler.

There was zero leading, not one flake, when I cleaned the gun. The bullet is breech seated but the case goes AROUND the bullet in the chamber, so the wad is pushed down by the bullet base. So, this .062" thick PVC wad has cured the leading problem, now I've got to get Bill to tell me where he gets these sheets.

I might add that Soft Gas Checks also eliminate leading in this gun, but the accuracy doesn't seem to be as good.

"Merrill Martin sent me a roll of the .062” PVC (Vinyl) some years ago when I couldn’t find any more locally. I had sent him some .041” thick sheets when he was using LDPE material and he liked it so much he changed to PVC, now called Polly Wad material many use. I originally found the material in a furniture fabric shop. I don’t have an order number or spec sheet for the identity other than what I sent Merrill long ago. The PVC material is much easier to cut wads from than LDPE and LDPU, both being too hard unless cut with a proper cutter and a drill press. I cut mine with a sharpened case mouth, de-burred on the outside, and sized in a Lee Collet Die for the correct diameter. I tap the case into a sheet of PVC over a backer of harder plastic to protect the cutter and remove the wads with tweezers. I seat the wad “small side” down on the powder; they are slightly tapered and enter the case mouth easier that way; Merrill disagreed with my method. The wad should be .003” larger than the rifle throat and obviously larger than the ID of the case mouth so that they fit snugly and don’t drop into the powder charge.

The wads do not make an accurate target load better—how could they? They do correct some compromises we have with bullet fit, perhaps reducing gas-cutting and resulting leading. They certainly make my low-vel target loads work well as well as some serious hi-vel loads shoot accurately. I don’t use them unless I have to correct a problem.

Tom Gray uses LDPE material. Perhaps it is a softer form but he swears by its merits." Bill McGraw

"We shoot P Wads or PVC wads around here all the time. They do two things. They scrape the powder fouling out of the barrel and also the lead fouling. You can go 60 rounds or so and not get any appreciable amount of barrel fouling.

If a person has a less than perfect bullet fit in the throat, I've seen them pick up an extra 50 fps. from adding a proper fitting wad. Make sure the wad is a thou or two larger than your bullet so it stays in the neck. As a gunsmith, I've seen several ringed necks where the guy was not careful and the wad wasn't against the base of the bullet.

If you have not fixed the initial problem of leading, you are still leading up your barrel but it is now not allowed to accumulate.

You should not get leading with a proper cast bullet load. Sometimes this is very hard to achieve.

You can buy PVC sheeting in 1/16" from MSC or one of the large tool supply catalogs. Check on Production Tool, J&L industrial tool, Enco etc. I got mine from one of them but can't remember who." Tom Gray

"Once a guy wrote that the finest accuracy was to be found just before the point where leading begins. I think his name was Marshall. Some call that tailoring the mix to the load or purpose.

     If you do something that prevents that from happening, you would also push the accuracy point farther out wouldn't ya? Change a variable and you have to adjust.

     I once had a guy tell me that Teflon ruined the accuracy of his barrel. I have used Teflon many times. It always ruined the accuracy of my loads. But once I adjusted the loads up, my accuracy came right back. I take that back, I had one instance where I had to go back to a less slippery lube to get accuracy to come back with that same powder because ignition was impacted that much. I suppose that is the same logic described in the first paragraph.

     One last thought. It is becoming a perceived fact that accuracy simply is not possible from a gun / load condition that leads. Some of my best accuracy loads will lead. And all loads will lead eventually requiring cleaning. We just go with what is acceptable to us." Bass Ackward on Cast Boolits Forum

Dacron Wads And Chamber Ringing

Much has been written about "ringing" chambers when wads, particularly Dacron wads, are used over powder.

BEWARE, use of Dacron or any over-powder wad is said to cause rings in chambers.

I have used Dacron wads for many years in cartridges from 223 Rem to 45/70, shooting thousands -maybe tens of thousands-of shots, and have never ringed a chamber. I continue to use Dacron wads, and recognize that there may be a risk.

I have read intricate explanations of how the ringing occurs, written by presumably sincere folks who were substituting theory and/or conjecture for fact.

Ed Lander, a Massachusetts gunsmith at the time, said that he believed that chamber ringing was caused by a chip catching in the reamer during the chambering process. He suggested that repeated use of one cartridge case during breech seating allowed the brass to flow into the ring.

I've read everything I can find on this matter, nothing has been convincing so far.

References:

"This Chamber Ring Thing", John Campbell, Precision Shooting, May 2000

Chapter 17B, "Chamber Ringing", C. Dell, "The Modern Schuetzen Rifle, 2nd Edition

"Chamber Rings and Natural Fibers", ASSRA Journal, Jul-Aug 1998, J. Campbell

"Chamber Rings, Another View" ASSRA Journal, Jul-Aug 2002, M.L.McPherson

ASSRA Journal letters etc:, Volume, No., Pg. Author

47,6,14 J. Campbell

48,3,20 H. Angus

48,3,23 J. Brennan

48,4,16 L. Thompson

48,4,17 J. Childs

50,4,22 J. Campbell

I went to several forums on the internet, including the ASSRA forum, asking for stories about ringed chambers with Dacron.

There were many responses, a host of opinions, a few death threats, but these were the only reliable stories I got about ringed chambers. Examples of the event appear thin on the ground. I continue to search for stories, if you have one please send it.

Hi from Kim Williams in New Zealand. I was using a .303 (A No. 1 Mk III* Lithgow made in 1942) with 10 gr of 7625 powder and a grape sized wad of 100% pure cotton tamped down with a pencil and a LEE 180 gr gas checked bullet, lubed 50/50 Alox and dipped in Lee Liquid Alox, cases were DI 1943. Average 1185 fps. No problems with several hundred shots. I increased the load gradually over a few weeks. At 11 gr, average was 1295 fps with 18 rounds going into 2 1/2" x 4 1/2" at 100 yards. At 11.5 grain average was 1340 fps and 10 shot groups at 100 Yds. were round and 2 1/2". At 12 grains 7625 my problems began. After about 3 shots of the 12 grain load, extraction became hard and I noticed a ring in the neck of the case (about where the base of the bullet was located) and when I looked inside the chamber, a corresponding ring showing as a dark line in the chamber neck.

My thoughts were that the 12 grains of 7625 was too fast and too much and the flat surface of the powder (held as such by the wad) made a very fast pressure spike which was hitting the bullet base and making a ring bulge in the neck. It literally took only 1 to 3 rounds of the 12 grains load to cause the ring - only those 3 cases showed the ring mark on the neck, the previous week's cases at 11.5 gr. showed no signs. I still use the same barrel with 18 gr. H4198 and no problems with extraction, even though the ring is still there. I still use a filler but have gone off cotton or similar fillers. As they do not sell Cream of Wheat here in New Zealand, I use Medium ground Semolina mixed with graphite powder (1 cup semolina to 1 teaspoon graphite powder) and put in to halfway up the neck - I use a dipper for this. This is used with a 314299 gas check lubed with 50/50 Alox and then sized through a LEE sizer and then dipped in Lee Liquid Alox. Total weight of bullet and projectile is 230 gr - not too far from the 215 gr. of the original jacketed Mk 6 bullet. Averages 2 1/2" 10 shot groups at 100 yards."  Hope this helps. Kim.

I have experienced one example of ringing in a rifle that I built myself. The rifle was a Falling Block, the barrel was a 32" octagon chrome-molly blank. I chambered the rifle in .50-90, used 450 grain bullets and test fired it a number of times at the range with duplex black powder (Goex Cart & 4759)... No problem.

I switched to Accurate Arms 5744 and a Wonder Wad and ringed the chamber badly on the first shot.

I re-chambered to .50-140, switched back to duplex loads and never experienced the ringing again." Voyageur on the ASSRA

Of the eight Schuetzen members in our club that have fired at least 30,000 rounds through their rifle, only one has ever ringed a barrel.

     All of our club members place the wad directly onto the powder charge. We all use either Styrofoam wads or the material used for sealing against drafts under sill plates. However the only member to use the floral foam for wads was the one who ringed his barrel. Coincidence? Maybe.

     All of the barrels in question were stainless steel and we all use the .357 Max case cut back to 1.470 which is tapered with a .223 die. We all use AA#9 / H108. However the ringed barrel was chambered for a shortened 32-40 case.

So is there something to be learned regarding the material used for wads or the case design or the combination of the two? If ringing was due to pushing the wad down onto the powder then I expect the rest of us should have ringed our barrels after over 30,000 rounds respectively. Schuetzendave ASSRA

"I've been following the discussion on this for the past few months and guess I might as well fess up. Yes, I did, in my 45-70 BPCR and I shouldn't have tempted fate. I've used some Dacron and tp fillers, but not much, but am a fan of LDPE wads, most of which are used with full case loads, and this goes back over the past 20 years or so. HOWEVER, in the BPCR I'm using smokeless and hence the need for the filler.

The load was 25.0 gr 5744, Lyman "Mathews" 457676 @ 540 gr. seated to an OAL of 3.060. For a filler to hold the powder back I've been using the .250 thick small bubble foam they use in packaging material for cushioning, (referred to as fw) comes in sheets, you've all seen it. Cut them (and the others) in the drill press with a short length of sis tubing, .035 wall thickness, with the tubing chamfered from the id to od, so wad dia. is .480/.500. This weighs .2 gr and is seated on top of the powder. No problem here, have shot 1000's and never found the wad. Still, with this combo, some airspace between fw and bullet base. Now I come across some other foam, 3/8" thick, wt. .4 gr,(referred to as tfw) use that on top of the fw, no airspace, but notice many of the tfw in front of the bench, showing little sign of having made that quick trip. All of these have had the LDPE wad under the bullet, seated by same. Well, in a stroke of insight, (where was that dope slap when I needed it) I thought the load might profit from a LDPE wad on the powder, +fw,+tfw+ LDPE wad +bullet, hey no empty space and slight compression on the tfw that was going thru intact. It ringed at the base of the bullet, though didn't realize it at the time. I'd fired 10 rounds. When I got to resizing the cases, noticed the ring, best I could measure on the case was .003 o/s on the ring. Moral of this, DO NOT EVER use a LDPE wad anywhere but tight on the bullet base.

Upside is I sent the rifle to Lee Shaver to have it setback and re-chambered. Lee suggested chamber relining, (was aware of barrel relining, but not chamber), which I agreed on. Rifle was back in 1 week, shoots as good as before, and doubt if one could tell what was done even knowing what had been done. No need to alter forearm as would have been required with the "setback and re-chamber" as the octagon turns to round right at the end of the forearm.

Can't aye/nay on other fillers, I continue to use the fw, and have used it with 4759, 2015 in this same cartridge. Hope this may be of some use to others, cuz, hey, it can happen." Keith Johnson

"Well, as long as you're going to 'fess up, I may as well. About 20 years ago, before we were told this was a bad thing, I used to load a Martini Cadet rechambered to .32/40 with 14.5 gr. of IMR4227 in reformed .30-30 cases with a Rem. 9-1/2 primer and a Lyman 323470 (165 RNGC) with a 0.10 grain Dacron wad seated on the powder. It was superbly accurate and fun to shoot. After a while, I noticed that extraction was getting problematic. Investigation revealed that the chamber had ringed at the base of the bullet after a lot of rounds. It's still very accurate but I need to use a cleaning rod to remove the fired cases.

I was using fixed ammo, bullet was approx #2 Lyman alloy seated to just contact the rifling, the Dacron puff (about 1/2" dia) was used per the recommendations of one of the gun writers (don't recall who) of the time for small powder charges. This was used from the start of load development.

The Martini Cadet action makes it very difficult to get a good visual in the area as it is not one of those drilled for cleaning from the breech, but extraction was initially good and deteriorated the more that I shot it. The ring seems to be in about the middle of the case neck, which would be the location of the base of the bullet. Accuracy is still superb with the 323470 or 319261.

Need to re-barrel one of these days,

Rick Shepardson"

     I used Dacron for quite a while in 30-06 with small charges of W231 pistol powder and 311255, a 119-grain round nose plain base bullet. All was well until I varied my technique slightly without thinking about it. What I did, was push the Dacron through the case neck with a pencil, ending up with a space between the tuft of Dacron and the bullet base. The only effect was that I found melted toroidal masses of Dacron stuck to the rear web of the cases after firing. I dug them out when reloading, and didn't think much about it except for wondering how it had happened. However I then did the same thing with the same powder and bullet in 30-30, and it was not so harmless. I got pronounced rings in the cases at the junction of the shoulder and neck, which happened to be where the bullet base was. In the higher loads the neck ring was bad enough to prevent extracting the case with the Marlin action, and I had to use a cleaning rod.

     It seems clear to me that the Dacron was forming a compressed wad, and hitting the base of the bullet as an internal projectile. With the strong 30-06 case, the wad just bounced off the bullet and stuck to the rear web. With the thin 30-30 case, the wad damaged the case neck when it impacted the bullet base. Incidentally the wad was not retained in the 30-30 cases as it had been in the 30-06s.

     So, my experience is that so far I've had no problems with Dacron tufts that completely fill the airspace in the case, but I've had quite serious problems with Dacron tufts just pushed down with a pencil through the case neck. I don't recommend use of Dacron at all, though I still try it from time to time myself - but I'm very careful to ensure it springs up against the bullet base.
Geoff

     Did the chamber of the 30/30 or 30/06 rifle get ringed?

     How much Dacron did you use in 30/30. I use a teased ball about as big as a nickel in 45/70, somewhat smaller in 30 caliber. Pushed down on the powder and tamped with a pencil. Almost zero weight though. May I quote this in the CBA book? Thanks; Joe Brennan

"Joe,
     At that time I used the tufted bulk Dacron rather than the type that is in rolled sheets. The tufted style seems to me to be more dense - you can't see through a small tuft of it, whereas you can with the sheet type. The tuft was of a size to fill the cartridge case without teasing it out, or compressing it either - just a case full in its natural state. Pushing it down into the case with the pencil resulted in the front third of the case interior being empty.

     As far as I can tell there was no damage to the chamber of the 30-06. The cases showed no sign of being misshapen at the time, or subsequently. In the 30-30 if I hold fired cases up to a bright light and rotate them, I can see a slight bulge at the shoulder-to-neck joint, in the same place where the original ring occurred. There is no effect on case extraction, and as far as I know accuracy has not been affected either. I am still using the same set of 30-30 cases, despite ten of them having been ringed - they have been loaded 10 times now, FLS each time with the die backed off about a third of a turn from shell-holder contact, and only two have been retired, both due to shoulder cracks. They have never been annealed from new. Of course you are welcome to use the report in the CBA book if you wish."
Geoff

"It was 30 years ago

I bought the Remington 700 BDL 30/06 new and the chamber was correct, with no excessive machining marks. It was fired with several hundred jacketed bullet loads before I decided to try my hand at shooting cast. In addition to cleaning the bores, I always clean the chambers of my rifles, and inspect them from the breech end with the muzzle pointed at a strong light. The chamber was good before I started fooling around with the cast bullets. I only had about 2-3 years experience handloading at the time, so I was, admittedly, near the bottom of the learning curve (as we all were at one time). I did, however, read everything I could get my hands on regarding guns and handloading, and I tried to replicate most of what I found interesting in the various magazines, handloading and cast bullet manuals, books and whatever else I could find to learn from.

     The bullet was the Lee 190 grain flat nose GC (looks like C309-170-F, but weighs 190), with the GC, and the powder was a book load of Unique. I couldn't get my hands on anything else at the time, so I know the primer was a CCI 200. Since the Unique wasn't giving me very good accuracy, I decided to try the Dacron filler, as suggested in several of the articles and cast bullet books I read. I don't remember any of the articles saying that the Dacron was to be inserted loosely in the case, and when I inserted it, it didn't appear that the fluffy stuff had any possibility of keeping the powder next to the primer (for good ignition, as the books said), so I pushed it down until it seemed to remain in a position that I thought would help it serve its intended purpose. It wasn't "packed", it was just pressed down so that it was a mildly expanded wad of material on top of the powder that didn't move when the case was shaken. Accuracy didn't improve appreciably, and upon cleaning the rifle, I found the chamber's new feature, a ring, right where the bullet base was located in the loaded rounds." Stew

"I’ve used fillers and wads for decades. I’ve used wax wads in the mouth of cases as lubricants, and I’ve used Dacron that varied from a tuft to all I could stuff in the case with a pencil. I’ve used them at high pressure loads, and with plinking loads. I’ve used them with straight cases and with heavily bottlenecked cases. For the most part, I’ve had very good results with them.

I’ve also managed to ring a chamber slightly with a wad that was pressed down over the powder, leaving a substantial air space before the base of the bullet. I was playing around with squib loads that weren’t burning cleanly. The loads were using wax wads for lube, which were installed by pressing a sheet of wax down over the charged case. The bullet wasn’t seated more than about ¼ inch, with the idea of letting it align itself with the throat. In any case, I was extracting some pretty dirty cases, and had a lot of residue, and very low velocities. I decided to see if better ignition / burning could result from confining the powder a bit more, so I used a pencil to push the wad down tight against the powder at the base of the case. This was years ago, and I don’t even remember what the next shot did for power, impact, etc. I only remember that when I inspected the bore for un-burnt powder, I saw a slight ring just where the base of the bullet would have been. Fortunately, it was at the very mouth of the chamber, and extraction wasn’t affected. I like to experiment, but ‘testing-to-destruction’ was more expensive than my wallet could stand, so I didn’t try to evaluate any cause and effects. I just made a mental note that I was NOT going to seat any wads like that again, and let it go at that.

FWIW, I’ve read a lot of armchair ballisticians holding forth on explanations that involve the light wad being driven at very high velocities into the bullet base, causing it to upset with enough force to ring the chamber. Sometimes they blame an air column being pinched between the wad and the bullet. Sometimes they say the wax wad itself expands or splatters when it hits the base of the bullet, and its forward velocity is converted to sideways pressure that does the evil deed. It all sounds reasonable until you give it some thought: The wax wad may or may not expand when it hits the base of the bullet, but ringing is reported with cardboard and felt wads too - and they sure don’t expand. And I can’t believe a sheet of paper or Dacron can be given sufficient velocity to impact and upset the base of even pure lead, much less hard alloy bullets. And even if they could, someone will have to explain to me why this is so different from ordinary base upset, which some people go to a lot of trouble to achieve. I can’t see that bullet base upset from the impact of a pressure wave should behave so differently from base upset from the impact of a felt wad.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not calling anyone a liar. I’m just pointing out that we really don’t have a handle on the underlying causes of ringing at all, except that it seems to require an air gap between the wad and the base of the bullet. My recommendation is to avoid forming any such gaps in your reloads until someone can prove out exactly what is going on here."

Ken Mollohan