"Wonder Wad" is a trade name for a felt wad sold by the Ox-Yoke Co.
These wads are made of felt and lubricated with some kind of oil.
I occasionally use Wonder Wads in my black powder guns but most of the time I cut my own felt wads from stiff felt (not the limp felt sold in hobby stores).
When I do buy Wonder Wads, I don't use them as-is. To my notion, they don't contain enough lubricant to keep the bore clean.
IF I use them as-is in my 1851 Navy .36-caliber or my Remington 1858 .44, the last few inches of the bore near the muzzle are heavily fouled.
This tells me the wad runs out of lubricant before it leaves the barrel.
So, you can imagine how quickly they run out of lube in my .44-40 or .45-70 rifles.
I dump 100 of the new Wonder Wads in a clean tuna can and place a Tablespoon or more of home-brew lubricant (see below) in the can. Heat the can at very low temperature, just enough to melt the lubricant, and stir the wads around in the melted lubricant until they soak it up. Add more lubricant if needed; don't be stingy with it.
I store the wads in the same tuna can, by snapping a plastic top on it, sold in the pet food aisle.
Wonder Wads with this additional lubricant keep the bore far cleaner than if used as-is.
The lubricant recipe I use is very old, dating at least to the 19th century. I found it in the pages of the February 1943 American Rifleman and it was old then!
OLD BULLET LUBE RECIPE
1 part paraffin
1 part tallow (I use mutton tallow, purchased from Dixie Gun Works)
1/2 part beeswax
All measures are by weight, not volume.
I use a clean, quart Mason jar with a screw top to mix the ingredients.
On my kitchen scale I measure 200 grams of paraffin, 200 grams of tallow and 100 grams of beeswax.
This nearly fills the Mason jar, which is a lot of lubricant but it keeps well if stored in a cool, dry place with the lid screwed down tightly.
Place the filled Mason jar in a pot of boiling water, three to four inches deep. This creates a double-boiler effect, which is the safest way to melt these ingredients.
When melted, stir the ingredients thoroughly with a clean stick or a disposable chopstick. Remove the jar from the pot and allow the lubricant to cool at room temperature.
If you try to hasten cooling by placing it in the refrigerator or freezer you may cause the ingredients to separate.
I use this old-timey lubricant as a patch, wad and bullet lubricant. It's also useful over the ball of cap and ball revolvers if you don't use the wads.
I live in the Utah desert, which can get hotter than a debutante in a roomful of doctor's sons! Humidity is often very low too.
I usually use a lubricated felt wad twixt ball and powder in my cap and ball revolvers for ample lubricant. But on hot, dry days I augment the wad with a smear of lubricant over the ball.
Similarly, I've also smeared some additional lubricant on the nose of my .45-70 lead bullets when shooting black powder under such conditions. This really keeps fouling down.
I've strayed off-subject here, but thought you and others would profit from it.
