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Wadding is a disc of material used inguns toseal gas behind aprojectile (abullet orball), or to separate thepropellant from loosely packedshots.[1]Wadding can be crucial to a gun's efficiency, since any gas that leaks past a projectile as it is being fired is wasted. A harder or more carefully designed item which serves this purpose is often called asabot. Wadding formuzzleloaders is typically a small piece of cloth, orpaper wrapping from thecartridge.[citation needed]
Inshotgun shells, the wadding is actually a semi-flexible cup-shapedsabot designed to hold numerous much smaller-diameter sub-projectiles (i.e.shots), and is launched out together as one payload-carrying projectile. This minimizes chaotic collisions of the shots with the bore wall and with each other, allowing theinternal ballistics to be more consistent. After leaving themuzzle, the wadding loosens and opens up in flight, allowing the muchdenser shots to beinertially released and scattered. The same function is served when shootingslugs.
Wadding is used inmodel rockets to protect theparachute when it ejects. Without the recovery wadding, the parachute would melt because the ejection is by a smallsolid-fuel engine, which gets so hot that it melts the glue almost immediately.[citation needed]
Burning wadding may have ignited the fire that led to the explosion that destroyed theOrient at theBattle of the Nile (q.v.). The father ofRobert Morris, "Financier of the American Revolution," died as the result of being wounded by flying wadding from a ship's gun that was fired in his honor.[2]
