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Comerford enjoys fruits of invention
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Neighbors | Submitted.Boardman's Ron Comerford (right) is the inventor of the plastic shotgun wad for trapshooting. Comerford, 80, drew up his first sketch for the wad in about 15 minutes. He is pictured with his daughter Karin Myers.
By TIM CLEVELAND
An avid trapshooter, Boardman’s Ron Comerford was dissatisfied with the scores he was making with the cardboard dividers everyone else was using. Seeing a need, he sat down and in the early 1960s, he invented the plastic shotgun wad, which is the standard in use today.
“Back then almost all shooters loaded their own shells to save money,” he said. “You bought cardboard dividers to put in the shells. Four pieces of cardboard were used to make a wad column, and they were a little too big for the shell so there was no leak when the ignition went off. This was a tedious process and the outcome [shooting accuracy] was not that good.”
Comerford said the process to invent the plastic shotgun wad was relatively quick.
“I was sitting there one day and I thought if there was some way to have a plastic sealing and something in the middle to absorb some of the shock would work better than the cardboard. So I drew it out in about 15 minutes,” he said. “I took my idea to a tool and die maker and he made a single die. We made a prototype, shot them, and they worked almost perfectly the first time. The first ones I shot that people saw were nicknamed ‘red radishes,’ because the plastic we used was red and they were lying all over the field. People were picking them up and they were the talk of the town.
“To this day wads have not changed much from my first concept. I admit some of the success was luck, but it was the right answer to the problem. Loading the shotgun shells with my plastic wad took about four times less than the cardboard.”
The new plastic wads were a sensation. The time and investment paid off for Comerford when Winchester bought his patent for $50,000 in 1963, although he feels his lawyer didn’t do the best job of negotiating on his behalf.
“It has revolutionized and changed shooting forever,” he said. “From the business model for shell companies, reloading and definitely how shooters perform.”
Comerford was born in Cleveland in 1934 and has lived in Boardman for the past 38 years. He is a 1952 graduate of West Technical High School and attended Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea. He played on the basketball teams in high school and college.
An engineer by trade, Comerford is now happily retired. He spends his days riding his motorcycle [with sidecar] around town, and he and his wife are lifelong world travelers.
Despite the success of his plastic shotgun wad, he never tried to come up with any other inventions.
“The wad was my 15 minutes of fame,” he said. “After having a family I chose the more stable full-time work life. Sadly the big companies did not treat me as fairly as they could and should have when it came to the financial aspect of my invention, especially considering the impact it had on shooting and the revenue they earn from it. But overall I am happy that I helped all the shooters out there.
“I have spent a lot of time over the years shooting, patterning guns, repairing them. It is a hobby I have thoroughly enjoyed and I was good at it. And it helped me and other shooters perform the best they can which is what you want; why have the tools for a sport but then not have them perform 100 percent? I sometimes had to be ‘inventive’ with repairs, even in my other hobbies, which are fishing and owning a boat [which is practically a job itself], but the idea I had back then was the big one.”