Biodegradable Shotgun Wadding....

[jderrick]

.... I heard some company was making shotcups that disintegrated in sunlight. Anyone heard of such things? Any made to rot away?

 

[Oldnamvet]

http://www.shotgun-insight.com/fibreVsPlasticSkeetShells.html
I have heard some plastic wads are being made that are photodegradable. That means they have to be exposed to sunlight for significant amounts of time to breakdown. I guess some ranges require fiber wads since they will break down after a few rainstorms. I have not seen the ranges but I would guess that there would be quite a bunch of plastic wads to vacuum, sweep/rake up when you have lots of shooters shooting constantly. It is fairly easy to require people to police up their hulls but the wads would be difficult to say the least.

 

[Dave McCracken]

IIRC, some loads from Polywad use a cardboard style shotcup and wad setup.

Old style fiber wad columns are biodegradable also.

I expect to see more of these show up as more ranges deal with biohazard suits.

 

[ArmedBear]

Do the Polywads work with lengthened forcing cones?

 

[Dave McCracken]

IIRC, the Polys have a folded bottom based on the fold of the old BB tubes. They should work IF the pressure's up enough before the charge hits the cone.

Betcha a little experimentation will show how they do.

 

[berettashotgun]

I use a load for skeet that only uses a thick cardboard type of disk between the powder and the charge.
No shotcup at all, I was very surprised at my patterns. alas I only have about 20k of these babies left. Made in the late '60's- early 70's ( I think ) by ALCAN, I got mine at a going out of business sale in the late 80's; along with a few thousand of ebay for basically shipping. I'm happy.
They are the original degradable wads - heck, exactly that ~ wads of paper fiber.
It is actually amazing to think that plastic wads have only been around for a 1/3 of the shotguns last century- somehow people got along pretty well without them.