Paper patch fliers.

[Keith]

Sorry, another patch thread
I need some suggestions here.
I have a Rolling Block I chambered a Krieger 1 in 16 barrel in 45-90 some time ago and now want to try PP,ing.
I bought a roll of Seth Cole 8lb sketch paper off Amazon and a Money mould off Baco and got into it.
When I patch I moistened the point to get it to curl, wrap the bullet , then moisten the fold at the base to hold it then stand them in a pistol ammo tray to dry. The patch is 1 inch wide and goes just over the ogive. I thought that would help it peel off, and allow for expansion due to bump up.
I had read that Money bullets may slump so bought a couple of bars of 1 in 16 mix from the foundry but on my Lee tester the dimple measures around .082 anyway, where I gather 1 in 16 should be .078 but that may be my measuring. I find it hard to get an accurate read and it changes as I rotate it.
The load is 100 grns weight of Wano FF which comes just under the mouth, then a thin card, compress a couple of mm, then a thin cork and another thin card ,compressing again the same amount.
I start to get a reasonable group then I get a flier.
I am trying to watch the patch and the flier seems to be when I dont see it flutter by.
The patch pieces look a bit big to me as you all speak of confetti and this aint that.
When patched I can breech seat the bullet and push it through the bore with moderate pressure and the land marks can just be seen, so I thought thats OK.
My thoughts are that its not bumping up but I hardly want to go softer do I?
I tried completely dry wrapping. It seemed better but still got a flier, and yet you all talk of putting oil and grease on the patch.
Does this make it come off easier and get cut by the rifling better?

Sorry for the long spiel.

Keith

[Gunlaker]

Are those burn marks on your patches? You might be getting some gas cutting.

I have not had luck with cork wads to date. On rifles with standard grease groove chambers I seem to get the best results with a lube cookie. I mostly shoot rifles with tighter necks and use LDPE wads. Even then you can get into trouble. I have a .45-70 and today shot some alloy that was bit harder than 16:1 with a Baco Money bullet and I recovered a bullet with a little bit of gas cutting on it. This rifle seems to like it's bullets a little softer.

My .45-90 likes 16:1 bullets with LDPE wads, but is quite picky about powder. It shoots very well with Swiss 1.5, like night and day over OE 1.5. I could only get OE 1.5 working well by using Kenny Wasserburger's wad stack. That fixed the flyers with OE 1.5 but I haven't measured velocity SD's. Swiss 1.5 was much easier to get working. I've used plain Goex and the results were not great unless a lube cookie was used.

I think it's often a delicate balance between powder charge, granulation, and bullet alloy with these paper patched rifles.

Chris.

[BrentD]

I think I agree with everything Chris suggests. I have no confidence at all in Wano powder. His ideas about bullets needing to be softer may be right and that may be because the powder is too slow and not bumping things up. 100 gr of Swiss will, for sure, obdurate that bullet just fine, but Wano, maybe not. Getting the best powder in Australia may be really tough but I would sure try if I were you. Trying the grease cookie is not a bad idea at all but start with getting that bullet to bump and faster powder (if you can't find Swiss, maybe 3f Wano).

[Don McDowell]

What about your fouling control? Are you leaving the bore in the same condition after each shot? When the barrel heats up the fouling dries quicker and while earlier in the string 1 or 2 damp patches might have been doing fine, later going to 3 or maybe even 4 might be necessary.

[Keith]

I think I agree with everything Chris suggests. I have no confidence at all in Wano powder. His ideas about bullets needing to be softer may be right and that may be because the powder is too slow and not bumping things up. 100 gr of Swiss will, for sure, obdurate that bullet just fine, but Wano, maybe not. Getting the best powder in Australia may be really tough but I would sure try if I were you. Trying the grease cookie is not a bad idea at all but start with getting that bullet to bump and faster powder (if you can't find Swiss, maybe 3f Wano).

I was trying to get Wano to work because its easily available here. Swiss and Goex are not although I do have some Swiss stashed away.
I tried FFF Wano Breech seating and posted the results in another thread here. Separated cases. So I thought not to try that again, but perhaps reduce the load and use more wads. Worth a try.
Chris. I cant see gas cutting. The fold over bit on the base is all there and looks OK.
Read on here about direction of the cut patch. I have the grain going around the bullet, perhaps I will try a few the other way. Be good to see confetti.
Don. I am wiping with one wet and two dry between shots. The last dry is pretty clean so shot to shot should be the same.

Keith

[Gunlaker]

Keith your story is interesting and familiar to me . Last year I got a rifle built in .45-90 thinking that I could use cheaper Goex Fg powder and shoot it with .45-70 ballistics. I can, but it will make a few flyers in each ten shot group unless I use lube cookies. When I tried OE 1.5 things got better but that powder is pretty fast burning I think. It only shoots well with Kenny's thick wad stack, and not the one with cork (that prevented bump up and accuracy went away), his newer stack with felt was much better.

But, as soon as I switched my LDPE load to Swiss 1.5 it was like someone turned on the accuracy switch. Now I have a couple of rifles that like the expensive Swiss powder . With that said, a 20:1 Creedmoor bullet with Goex Fg and a lube cookie has shot some excellent groups at 200. But the muzzle velocity SD's show it would not be worth shooting at long range.

I know what it's like living in a country where Swiss powder is harder to get. I am carefully budgeting my remaining supply for a couple of LR matches + practice next year.

Chris.

[Lead pot]

Keith I will put a little in this also.
I look at your patches and see that your only getting enough obduration on that bullet to cut the outer wrap. 100 grains should be enough to obdurate that bullet to completely fill the grooves. I don't know how thick that 8# paper is but I would imagine that it's less then .002" thick and it should be more then enough to shred completely. The cork wad may also be a factor. It acts like a buffer making a softer hit that does not help to expand the bullet. I found using a cork wad .030" or .060" I have to reduce the alloy hardness so the bullets obdurate fully. And if this fails it gives the gas a path past the bullet to give it some cuts. The wads alone wont in most cases will not seal the bore to hold gas leaks.
When gas leaks happen it will change the pressure behind the bullet and even if you don't get gas cuts it will increase the vertical.
Everything has to work together to get the most from your load.

Kurt

[BRUCE MOULDS]

keith,
it can be worth starting with 30/1 alloy, then going to 25/1, 20/1, 16/1 etc , testing for bumpup.
sometimes breech seated bullets with airgap require a softer alloy than fixed ammo for similar confetti shredding or cutting.
when the odg used 11/1 alloy in their long range rifles, they either used a pasteboard wad or even just a paper one.
could this have been to transfer more shock to the bullet in order to get good obturation?
the softer the alloy, the more you need to experiment with patch length, as the bullet will bump up further forward than with hard bullets.
if you patch too long, and the front of the patch is not sliced, you can measure back how long the patch needs to be on the bearing surface.
English powder took 90 gns to give the same velocity as 106 gns of hazard powder to a 540 gn 45 cal bullet.
the American powder still bumped up bullets, even though weaker.
chronograph testing has shown wano 1p to give very similar velocities to swiss 1f in the 45/2.4 for the same charge weight, so is similarly powerful.
swiss 1f has never failed to slice paper in my 45/2.4 badger barrel.
keep safe,
bruce.

[BRUCE MOULDS]

keith,
it can be worth starting with 30/1 alloy, then going to 25/1, 20/1, 16/1 etc , testing for bumpup.
sometimes breech seated bullets with airgap require a softer alloy than fixed ammo for similar confetti shredding or cutting.
when the odg used 11/1 alloy in their long range rifles, they either used a pasteboard wad or even just a paper one.
could this have been to transfer more shock to the bullet in order to get good obturation?
the softer the alloy, the more you need to experiment with patch length, as the bullet will bump up further forward than with hard bullets.
if you patch too long, and the front of the patch is not sliced, you can measure back how long the patch needs to be on the bearing surface.
English powder took 90 gns to give the same velocity as 106 gns of hazard powder to a 540 gn 45 cal bullet.
the American powder still bumped up bullets, even though weaker.
chronograph testing has shown wano 1p to give very similar velocities to swiss 1f in the 45/2.4 for the same charge weight, so is similarly powerful.
swiss 1f has never failed to slice paper in my 45/2.4 badger barrel.
keep safe,
bruce.

[Bent Ramrod]

My occasional, annoying flyers scattered around a core group showed their first significant reduction when I decided to clean the bore thoroughly between shots. I had been doing the two wets/one dry, three wets/two dries programmed wiping routine, but, inevitably, after some number of shots, the fouling would start to overtake whatever standardized wiping regime I was following and the "outs" would start showing up. When I decided to clean the bore before each shot to the point where the last wet patch came out a light gray color, and then dry with two sides of a dry patch, things started falling into place. The bore could look pretty shiny with the programmed cleaning and still throw a wide one. After four shots or so, the programmed cleaning would also show considerable black on the next wet patch, even though the bore looked clean. Getting all that crud out was the key for me. I could then concentrate on powder charges, paper thickness, boolit protrusion and all the reloading nuances, and know that any group reduction was a function of the load. Once that was optimized, then I went back to see how to make the wiping regime less laborious, knowing I had an accurate load.

In my shooting, the next most critical aspect is the temper of the lead. It can be anywhere between 8 and 12 Bhn, but much softer threw wide ones around the core group and much harder had few shots hitting paper at 300 yards. Your 16-to-one should be in the right hardness zone for the shooting I do. You might try wrapping the patches so they only cover the cylindrical part of the boolit, with no paper over the ogive and an open circle of lead in the center of the boolit base. Some people say no good comes of having the patch up over the ogive and the minimum paper covering the base reduces the possibility of patch sticking. What I work toward is the maximum chance of the paper coming off at the earliest opportunity once the boolit clears the bore.

I have only recently ordered a mould of such a size that thin paper will exactly patch the boolit to bore size, and haven't fired any yet. Of several more generic sized custom moulds, I found that thin paper, even if there was plenty of windage between bore and paper, seemed to work better than thick paper. I've noticed that "tracing" paper or "vellum" is thinner than "sketching" or "drawing" paper, regardless of the pounds weight advertised. I've had good luck with Strathmore Tracing paper, about 0.0015" thick, available at Wal-Mart, but anything up to 0.0025" or so seems to work well if the patched boolit fits easily in the bore.

I've pretty much given up analyzing the paper shreds. Our desert background hides a lot of the debris, the wind blows the smaller shreds away, and it's easier to see the results on the target through a scope than wander around ahead of a firing line looking for whatever selection of evidence that day's weather and conditions allow me. I found wrapping wet would result in boolits with paper still stuck around the base at 400 yards, so went to dry wrapping. There may be indications that thicker paper makes for larger shreds, and shreds further away from the muzzle than ten feet or so seem to be associated with larger groups on target, but conditions here render the evidence kind of inconclusive. I've never found any evidence of burning or gas blowby on the paper I see on the ground, though.

[Keith]

Chris, with the photo of the patches I notice I put one in that was a bit scorched. I was from a lot with a single thin card. The rest had cork wads.
Yesterday I found some poly wads I cut years ago and used with GG,s. I loaded some with 97grs Wano FF . A poly wad over powder and a thin card on top.
These are the two groups bottom left. One with a thin poly and one with a thick.
The other groups were with the cork wads and show fliers.
I did not get fliers with the poly and the patches show better cutting on the first wrap. Some cuts nearly get to the top.
I was worried about nose slump but as Kurt says I am not getting bump up even.
If I was getting proper bump up I think my patch length might be OK.
Bruce I have some Wano P I use in my 40-90 I will load some with that and also dig into my Swiss stash of FF and load some of that to compare also.

Keith

[BRUCE MOULDS]

keith,
yes it looks like more bumpup or shorter patches are required.
the patch top left could also have fouling marks on it.
1 wet through the barrel and out the muzzle will remove most of the fouling, and what is left will be wet.
a second wet, pushed to the muzzle, pulled back to the breech, and then out the muzzle, will remove fouling from both front and rear of the rifling.
the back and forth motion of the cleaning patches seems to be necessary for the best clean.
lubricating patches will minimize cutting of the paper. both with oil or tallow.
a lubricated barrel, deliberately or caused by wiping fluid not fully removed, can also cause this.
looks like the base bit is being removed from the strips, as often happens with 45 degree transitions and sometimes with flatter ones.
keep safe,
bruce.
nice confetti will have the strips joined to the folded under base.

[BRUCE MOULDS]

keith,
yes it looks like more bumpup or shorter patches are required.
the patch top left could also have fouling marks on it.
1 wet through the barrel and out the muzzle will remove most of the fouling, and what is left will be wet.
a second wet, pushed to the muzzle, pulled back to the breech, and then out the muzzle, will remove fouling from both front and rear of the rifling.
the back and forth motion of the cleaning patches seems to be necessary for the best clean.
lubricating patches will minimize cutting of the paper. both with oil or tallow.
a lubricated barrel, deliberately or caused by wiping fluid not fully removed, can also cause this.
looks like the base bit is being removed from the strips, as often happens with 45 degree transitions and sometimes with flatter ones.
keep safe,
bruce.
nice confetti will have the strips joined to the folded under base.

[Keith]

Hi Bruce, this has got me beat. I came back thinking I will chuck more lead in the pot to soften the mix up a bit then decided to test the hardness again.
With the Saeco tester I get a reading of 3 which is supposed to be BHN 6 approx.
With the Lee tester I get a dimple width of .086 approx which is supposed to be BHN 6 or 7.
This is way below Bent Ramrods BHN 8 to 12 so they should be bumping up at this hardness.
Stay cool down there, I see your temps are around 110 degrees in the old money.
Keith

[BRUCE MOULDS]

yes keith it is a bit cosy down here at the moment.
the Hahndorf kingship was meant to be on today, and has been postponed.
the thing about this sport is that you have to try stuff in as methodical a manner as possible.
in the end you get there, and that is what makes it interesting and satisfying.
the journey is the fun, although sometimes you wonder!
not a place for the instant gratification set.
keep safe,
bruce.

[Don McDowell]

well said Bruce.

[Keith]

True words.
I may be a little beat but not completely.
I will shorten up the patch.
Then if that does not work I will try a bigger diameter bullet and perhaps thinner paper if I can find some.
Keith

[Lead pot]

Keith.

Let me give you a little example of a alloy test I made with this PP bullet.
The alloy is my mix using virgin lead and tin 1/16 T/L and the bullet weighs 515 gr and it's .443" diameter. The paper is 100% cotton Southworth paper .0018" thick.
My Lee tester gives me a imprint of .080". Pretty close to what you have. I don't have much faith in the accuracy of any of these lead testers, Lee or Saeco. They all use a spring and who knows what the tension settings are with them. I use them just for a reference comparison and not for a hardness reading.
The bullets below are all of the same batch of alloy and cast during the same casting session and the powder was 2F Olde Eynsford that is very close to Swiss.
Left to right are powder charges starting at 70gr 74gr 76gr and the last on the right is a charge using the .45-90 with 82 gr. I was interested to see what the nose setback was and how far to hold the patch to keep bare lead off the bore.
This is just to show you what changes do to the way the bullet obduration is with different loads and alloy. You can control the expansion and setback by adjusting the alloy and wads you use. A hard wad gives a harder setback then a cork of felt wad as much as a higher powder load or alloy mix.

[Keith]

Good point Kurt on the hardness testers. Just use them for comparison. I will do a check on pure lead then another on my certified 1 in 16 and use that to gauge what I have in between.
Thanks.
Keith

[Keith]

OK lets ignore BHN. I chucked some more lead in the pot and cast a bunch to try.
Last weeks was .086 dimple diameter this lot is .090. I also shortened up the patch.
The first group RH top was with 100 grns of Wano FF. Nearly filled the case, 0.100 poly wad compressed 3/16 inch.
Next was top centre with 97 grns Wano FF same wad and compressed as the previous.
Good confetti on both these, I could not find a big enough piece to pick up.
Top left was a nearly full case of Wano P, 95 grains, back to a piece of inner wrap as last weeks even though a bit shorter so not getting bump up again. P is not as strong as FF but is supposed to be a Premium grade.
Lower left was three I had left over of the Wano FF with last weeks bullets but a short patch. Even with that I was still getting the stamp sized inner wrap so it looks as if the softer mix and the shorter patch is the way to go.
I think I will concentrate on that top centre load now. Move back to 200yds and put it over the Chrony.
These were all shot at 110 yds or 100 metres.

Keith