Why the onion skin hype

[charger 1]

Ya its nice adhesion is a treat to work with, but are you guys triple wrapping or starting with 453+ boolits for your 458's ? After its on and shrunk,lubed and seated a mere two wraps seems to do wonders for comming out of my marlin 45/70 sideways. When I size the bare animal to .001 over bore the only paper that seems to fly for me is the stuff we used to use in the old crank type photocopiers. What am I doing wrong? I'd love to use the onion. Nice to work with but just not getting the build

[Lead pot]

A PP bullet is not very user friendly in a repeating rifle.
There is too much of a chance to damage the patch when the cartridge is run through the action.
I don't know if your using smokeless powder or black powder.
With smokeless there is a great chance your getting some very bad gas cuts that destroy the patch and the bullet base.

[charger 1]

I'm just using the repeater single fed to get the swing of it. Yes I'm using smokeless. I've found it eith wants the mimio paper at .0035 or the skin is ok,just so long as its triple wrap, but who feels like doing that. I hear of these tremendous speeds with 9# onion though

[rhead]

I size mine to .462. To fit the chamber. Itis around .oo4 over bore dia. 1.5 to 1.75 at 100 from my marlin. (Off the bench and shooting slow.)

[charger 1]

So what was your base boolit size?

[Lead pot]

This paper patch in the last year or two has been getting popular again and that is good.
I shoot paper patched bullets and grease grooved bullets about 50/50 and have for a long time.
Things I read that now is posted on PP bullets kind of makes my hair stand on end.
I read patching bullet .002 or .003 over bore diameter and shooting them with a smokeless load in a .308.
That is like using a .311 bullet shot through one of those commie guns in a .308 caliber rifle just think what the pressure spike is, well paper will raise that spike just as high as a guilded jacket will.
The PP bullet pretty much died out shortly after the smokeless and semi smokeless powder was developed and guilded jackets came out and GG bullets bullets came in stronger with the use of this new powder because repeating rifles and the problems that developed with this new powder.
Chambers make a big difference how you patch a PP bullet and how it is loaded in the case.
FPMIII posted a very good picture of a chamber cast down from here on the paper rings left in chamber, that photo looks to be a bottle necked chamber, most likely a .40 or .44, .40-70bn or .44-77bn
If you look at the throat, there is no abrupt chamber end like a 45 degree or 90 degree like I have seen.
That chamber will except a PP bullet wrapped to groove diameter or a bullet at bore diameter seated way out.
There is no chance for the paper to get cut at the case mouth and the chamber end leaving a paper ring or lead ring if your shooting a GG bullet..
The Question should I wrap with two or three wraps, well both will work as long as you dont get the wrap to much thicker than the groove is deep.
Most grooves now days are .004 deep. My preference is 1/2 to 1 thousands thicker than the groove is deep. This will cut the bottom wrap enough that the patch will release from the bullet as soon as it clears the muzzle.
Using paper .003+ thicker does a couple things, one is the bullet might not get enough rotation because the patch will hold in the grooves and slip on the bullet side wall especially using smokeless powder because of the slow obtrusion, but that is just an assumption on my part because I have never shot a PP bullet using smokeless powder and never looked at a bullet that has been shot using a PP and smokeless powder.
Black powder you might get by using a thick patch because of the severe obtrusion that black has.
I know that there are a lot of different thinking on this and I will most likely get rocks thrown at me for what I put down above but this has worked for me for 50+ years and I still change things as I go along because I'm still learning.

[longbow]

charger 1:

Is your barrel standard deep rifled or microgroove?

I find for smokeless powder and "standard" rifling my guns like a bore size boolit +/- a thou or so then patched to a thou or so over groove diameter. My microgroove Marlin likes a well undersize boolit at 0.421" for 0.425" bore size amd patched to a thou or two over groove size. I have gotten poor results with larger boolits and thinner patches in the microgroove barrel.

My thinking is that the microgroove rifling doesn't give the paper enough room to move in. Similar to muzzleloaders ~ smoothbore takes a smaller ball or thinner patch for same bore clearance as a rifle.

Just a thought.

Also, I generally find I get better performance with thicker paper than most here. I usually about 0.003" paper.

I am certainly no expert here, this is what has worked for me.

Longbow

[leftiye]

I have seen several posts lately that say that sizing smaller than bore and using thicker paper is the way to go in a marlin barrel with the .0025" deep rifling. They guesstulated that the shallower grooves were cutting or tearing the paper when onion skin was used. It might well be that we sholud try to create a substantial compressed and lubed layer of tougher paper around the boolit.

[charger 1]

I have seen several posts lately that say that sizing smaller than bore and using thicker paper is the way to go in a marlin barrel with the .0025" deep rifling. They guesstulated that the shallower grooves were cutting or tearing the paper when onion skin was used. It might well be that we sholud try to create a substantial compressed and lubed layer of tougher paper around the boolit.

Ya thats pretty much what I'm doing with the marlin ballard rifling. mimiograph paper then a fairly snug squeeze through a lee 459 push through, and presto. Now when I get onto the 458 douglas barrel I got comming I'm sure it'll be a different horse

[pdawg_shooter]

My 47-70 is a Marlin. I size .451, wrap with 2 wraps of 16# green stripe printer paper and load over 52 gr of AA2495. The bullet is a 430gr. Accuracy is just over 1 1/4 inch at 100 yds.

[charger 1]

"GREEN STRIPE"
Thats something I never heard of. Has it got a man. name or any other way to ident?

[pdawg_shooter]

Green stripe is the printer paper with the tractor drive holes on both sides. The place I work prints large reports on it nobody looks at. When they pitch it I grab a stack 4 or 5 inches tall to make patches out of. Works great.

[charger 1]

Would that not be fairly up there in filler,ie ashes,clays,etc?

[docone31]

No.
What it does, is compress under the load and make an hard jacket.
The flame front is so fast, with pressure, unless the paper is nitrated, it comes out relatively intact.
The green stripe paper is like the notebook paper I use. When it dries, it really makes a solid dense patch. It sizes really easily.

[charger 1]

Sounds like my mimio paper. When on ,dried and sized if I want to take it off just to keep practising I almost bust a finger nail getting under the edge

[docone31]

Same thing with the pathes I put on with my roller. It has layers, but is really tight.
With the onion skin paper as the thread originally started, it also hardens up real well. I went to the thicker paper so I could only wrap twice and used less paper.

[RMulhern]

This paper patch in the last year or two has been getting popular again and that is good.
I shoot paper patched bullets and grease grooved bullets about 50/50 and have for a long time.
Things I read that now is posted on PP bullets kind of makes my hair stand on end.
I read patching bullet .002 or .003 over bore diameter and shooting them with a smokeless load in a .308.
That is like using a .311 bullet shot through one of those commie guns in a .308 caliber rifle just think what the pressure spike is, well paper will raise that spike just as high as a guilded jacket will.
The PP bullet pretty much died out shortly after the smokeless and semi smokeless powder was developed and guilded jackets came out and GG bullets bullets came in stronger with the use of this new powder because repeating rifles and the problems that developed with this new powder.
Chambers make a big difference how you patch a PP bullet and how it is loaded in the case.
FPMIII posted a very good picture of a chamber cast down from here on the paper rings left in chamber, that photo looks to be a bottle necked chamber, most likely a .40 or .44, .40-70bn or .44-77bn
If you look at the throat, there is no abrupt chamber end like a 45 degree or 90 degree like I have seen.
That chamber will except a PP bullet wrapped to groove diameter or a bullet at bore diameter seated way out.
There is no chance for the paper to get cut at the case mouth and the chamber end leaving a paper ring or lead ring if your shooting a GG bullet..
The Question should I wrap with two or three wraps, well both will work as long as you dont get the wrap to much thicker than the groove is deep.
Most grooves now days are .004 deep. My preference is 1/2 to 1 thousands thicker than the groove is deep. This will cut the bottom wrap enough that the patch will release from the bullet as soon as it clears the muzzle.
Using paper .003+ thicker does a couple things, one is the bullet might not get enough rotation because the patch will hold in the grooves and slip on the bullet side wall especially using smokeless powder because of the slow obtrusion, but that is just an assumption on my part because I have never shot a PP bullet using smokeless powder and never looked at a bullet that has been shot using a PP and smokeless powder.
Black powder you might get by using a thick patch because of the severe obtrusion that black has.
I know that there are a lot of different thinking on this and I will most likely get rocks thrown at me for what I put down above but this has worked for me for 50+ years and I still change things as I go along because I'm still learning.

Lead Pot

Rocks thrown at you?? :mrgreen::mrgreen: You'll probably be OK....as long as you don't use these two icons: :groner::killingpc

Using those means that you're not being PC.....and you'll damage some of these poor darlins feelings!!:mrgreen:

[charger 1]

Lead Pot

Rocks thrown at you?? :mrgreen::mrgreen: You'll probably be OK....as long as you don't use these two icons: :groner::killingpc

Using those means that you're not being PC.....and you'll damage some of these poor darlins feelings!!:mrgreen:


Ya watch my tender feeling huh

[Baron von Trollwhack]

I would suggest the problem to be incorrect bullet diameter prior to wrapping and the wrap thickness. A thick wrap and an undersized slug is like an undersized RB with a thick patch in a muzzleloader. The RB takes too much windage in its journey and exit down the barrel, but still spins and groups just get bigger.

It is worse with the slug as it may not enter the bore true on its long axis. Maybe tip by the time it reaches the target. It would be better to size to groove diameter or slightly less, double wrap with high quality .0015 which will shrink tightly to .004 , giving a good fit in the throat, and still make it through the barrel intact, thus providing protection to the lead alloy slug. Bvt

[Lead pot]

FPMIII.

:redneck: :killingpc:groner:[smilie=b:do that in private off the Air:drinks: