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Thread: Paper Patched Bullets Don't Work

  1. #21
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    Quote Originally Posted by ndnchf View Post
    I'm not a competitive shooter, just a plinker. There are many folks far more knowledgable about paper patching than me. But with a little work, I found them to be very accurate in my Shiloh Sharps .40-2-1/4" rifle. I know there are many others that can shoot better than this. But iron sights and aging eyes limit my abilities.
    hmmm just a plinker eh? some of the hotshots gonna get a surprise when ya decide ta get serious! I make that one 'bout inch and eighth x seven eighth OR SMALLER . There might be a few fellers shoot better than that - but there wont be big mobs of em.

  2. #22
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    William Ellis Metford proved with his extensive testing that the heavy paper patched BORE size bullet expanded instantly upon firing to fill the grooves of the barrel. It was in a 2004 Double Gun Journal that Ross Seyfried wrote about using a Metford/Farquarsan single shot in .461 Gibbs No.2 cartridge and wrote about Metfords barrels and loading the paper patched .461. There is lot of old information that has had to be relearned from the old masters.

  3. #23
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    Quote Originally Posted by indian joe View Post
    hmmm just a plinker eh? some of the hotshots gonna get a surprise when ya decide ta get serious! I make that one 'bout inch and eighth x seven eighth OR SMALLER . There might be a few fellers shoot better than that - but there wont be big mobs of em.
    That's about the right group size Joe. I don't know if I could repeat it, my eyes are not what they used to be. The rifle is nothing special, just a standard #3 I bought new in 1990. It's a good rifle/cartridge combination that is plesant to shoot. But it shows that properly constructed paper patch bullets can shoot fairly well.

  4. #24
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    All boolits leak. Not much usually, and the most leakage is right when they are fired when pressures are at their peak. It's a matter of degree, and this accounts for the powder gasses that visibly exit the bore before the boolit does in high speed films. The seal is generally not perfect, but it holds up long enough for the short duration of the trip through the bore. Numerous times I have picked up strips of paper from the outer layer of the patch and large intact pieces from the inner layer and there was no evidence of scorching, clean, white, with the watermark still visible. If the PP boolit isn't large enough or doesn't obturate sufficiently to seal, there will be considerable blow-by which will act as a torch on paper or lead. In fact, there was a fellow at the range some years ago who had a jacketed bullet stuck in the barrel throat that did not seal and the resulting blow-by eroded the copper jacket and to a lesser extent, the barrel steel, leaving a hideous divot when viewed through the boroscope, so your surmise about damage can be correct when there's enough leakage to subject the exposed area to sufficient heat. A lot of fire went out through that spot. The specific heat of gasses is actually very low compared to other materials like metals, hence, to transfer enough heat for damage to occur, there has to be a lot of gas rushing past the spot in question. This is why the base of a boolit shows no evidence of melting, but the sides of an undersized boolit will show what looks like torch cutting on the portions which should have been sealed against the bottom of the rifling grooves.

  5. #25
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    That story began not with the honeybee, whose airworthiness has never been in doubt, but with either the European bumblebee (which looks fatter than those in these pictures, although it is mostly hair), or possibly the American academic bumblebee. To find misconception which attracts more sympathy online, we would normally have to talk politics.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bumble...n_about_flight

    Scientists find fact contradicting their calculations all the time. Standard procedure is to track down the incorrect data, the incorrect formula or the incorrect application of the formula. In this case the inconsistency seems to arise in the fact which aeromodellers know, that air has greater viscosity for a small object than a large, and that a stalling aerofoil produces the momentary vortex which makes a stalling aircraft turn upwards. The difference that the bumblebee can repeat that stall hundreds of times a minute, but the aeroplane only gets to stall once.

    I do agree, however, that there is no just argument against paper patched bullets working exactly as planned. It forms the needed heat barrier, it produces the spin, if correctly done it allows the centre of mass to be centred on the bore axis, and if correctly done it detaches as planned. There is more?

  6. #26
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    Quote Originally Posted by ndnchf View Post
    That's about the right group size Joe. I don't know if I could repeat it, my eyes are not what they used to be. The rifle is nothing special, just a standard #3 I bought new in 1990. It's a good rifle/cartridge combination that is plesant to shoot. But it shows that properly constructed paper patch bullets can shoot fairly well.
    One plinker to another - 1876 Uberti 45-75 - 100yards - heavier Grease Groove boolits single loaded (this rifle keeps teasing me like this!!!)
    The wide shot in both pics is first up cold after a clean, (4 shots each not five) LEE 500-3R with a little flat turned on the nose, and CBE 470 (their version of the Lyman 535 Postell with the base band and bottom lube groove turned off) - 70 grains FFg + juice box wad (top target is LEE bottom is CBE - had to come back to 100yards cuz I cuz I altered the staff on my tang sight and needed new settings worked out)
    Click image for larger version. 

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    Am picking up my wads about 8 to 10 paces out front but they waaaaaay to tight from the looks - cutting with a 12mm wad punch - when loaded they cup towards the open mouth - picked up they are distinctly cupped the other way - towards the powder charge - make a new correct size punch this evening and will try some newsprint wads -- still convinced if I can wring the best out of this barrel it will be pretty darn impressive (for a lever gun) - the question then is, how do I convert that back to a load that will function through the magazine??? I enjoy shooting it so not gonna be a problem.
    Last edited by indian joe; 06-25-2018 at 02:17 AM.

  7. #27
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    That's some mighty fine shooting Joe. The .45-75 is THE M1876 cartridge, and a fine one it is. I also have an Uberti M1876, but I'm fond of 50s, so mine is a .50-95. It's not as accurate as a .45-75, but its just as much fun to shoot. I haven't tried a PP bullet in it, but just for fun I might.

  8. #28
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    Quote Originally Posted by ndnchf View Post
    That's some mighty fine shooting Joe. The .45-75 is THE M1876 cartridge, and a fine one it is. I also have an Uberti M1876, but I'm fond of 50s, so mine is a .50-95. It's not as accurate as a .45-75, but its just as much fun to shoot. I haven't tried a PP bullet in it, but just for fun I might.
    Yeah that bottom target is kinda tantalising hey! I look at that and .....wonder can I do that again ?
    Hangin out on this forum has been good for me - Its challenged some ideas that were turning into excuses for me.
    Mid 1970's I bought a Model 70 winchester in 22/250, ten power redfield scope once I got it tuned up (free float barrel and decent handloads) I would expect to be able to put three at 100yards and on a good day cover it with our ten cent piece - about a three quarter inch centre group - If I went outside an inch centres I wanted to know why - about all I was capable of with a good scoped hunting rifle in those times though. Forty years later we sittin here lookin at targets (yours and mine) not as good - but not so far away either - our eysight stuffed, hair gone grey, knees ache, shootin a blackpowder gun with iron sights -- whats that thing they say about old age and sneaky ????? .....maybe does make up for a lot.
    I wear 1.5x glasses to read the numbers on speed signs now, 3x for reading, two pair for fine work at the lathe - if we could get our good eyes back - we'd be downright dangerous!!!
    All the best

  9. #29
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    Quote Originally Posted by yeahbub View Post
    All boolits leak. Not much usually, and the most leakage is right when they are fired when pressures are at their peak. It's a matter of degree, and this accounts for the powder gasses that visibly exit the bore before the boolit does in high speed films. The seal is generally not perfect, but it holds up long enough for the short duration of the trip through the bore.
    Yes, the seal is important. Metford achieved good obturation in a target discipline that didn't allow of cleaning between shots, although their number wasn't great, although his alloy was fairly hard. His patents didn't include the rounded rifling which was given his name, as it already existed, but most of his developments were aimed at improving the seal. They included shallower grooves with sloping edges, and it might be argued that gain twist rifling contributed to it. He said that Whitworth's hexagonal bore, although it worked, gave enough twisting force to spin a field-gun shell, and he achieved bullet stability with rifling half a thousandth of an inch deep, and with "rifling" made with coarse emery on a lead lap. Neither of these would last well under bore erosion, though, which with his heavy charges and heavy bullets was high by black powder standards.



    Quote Originally Posted by yeahbub View Post
    If the PP boolit isn't large enough or doesn't obturate sufficiently to seal, there will be considerable blow-by which will act as a torch on paper or lead. In fact, there was a fellow at the range some years ago who had a jacketed bullet stuck in the barrel throat that did not seal and the resulting blow-by eroded the copper jacket and to a lesser extent, the barrel steel, leaving a hideous divot when viewed through the boroscope, so your surmise about damage can be correct when there's enough leakage to subject the exposed area to sufficient heat. A lot of fire went out through that spot. The specific heat of gasses is actually very low compared to other materials like metals, hence, to transfer enough heat for damage to occur, there has to be a lot of gas rushing past the spot in question. This is why the base of a boolit shows no evidence of melting, but the sides of an undersized boolit will show what looks like torch cutting on the portions which should have been sealed against the bottom of the rifling grooves.

    Could that hideous divot be the beginnings of an obstruction bulge? You may well be right, though. That flame may act like a torch on lead, but there would be a subtle difference on paper, in that those grooves would be an oxygen-starved environment, in which the gases would cut rather than burn. Unless, like muzzle flash, it happens once out in atmospheric oxygen, which is too late to matter.

    An interesting experiment is to get into a bath as hot as you can bear to sink slowly into. Make any fast movement and it will hurt, because that dispels the boundary layer of water adjacent to your sensitive spots, where it has been cooled by contact with your 98.4 degrees Fahrenheit. Gases up against the bullet base may have no movement at all, relative to that metal. But in loosely fitting grooves they do move, possibly much faster than the bullet. For a gas is a spring, and like the little spring which flies across the room from when you liberate it from inside your ballpoint pen, it is so light that it can accelerate very fast indeed.

    That stream of gas in a part-filled groove may be due to melting, like gas-cutting by torch. But it can also be due to what is sometimes termed wire-drawing, the squashing of that ridge of bullet metal to approximately land diameter. I used to have some .308 solid-based boat-tails (excellent when used as intended, but very bad at upsetting) which were fired in a P14 Enfield, mostly much deformed because they tumbled. A few performed perfectly, but some had the metal in the grooves reduced and stripped, while others were pressed tightly against one side of the bore, with the odd effect that one side stripped the rifling and the other was deeply engraved.

    When I dissected those bullets and measured the jacket thickness, it remained about the same all round their circumference. The parts engaging with the grooves weren't gas-cut, but pressed down by pressure.

  10. #30
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    You got that right Joe. I get great satisfaction from bringing old rifles (and new rifles of old design) back to life. I've been fortunate to wring pretty good accuracy out of some old oddballs. A model 1871 Springfield Spencer 2 band rifle, an 1877 Evans repeating rifle, a #1 Remington rolling block in .58 Roberts, and other smaller rolling blocks by making reloadable .32 rimfire cases. Its all great therapy for the soul.

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Abbreviations used in Reloading

BP Bronze Point IMR Improved Military Rifle PTD Pointed
BR Bench Rest M Magnum RN Round Nose
BT Boat Tail PL Power-Lokt SP Soft Point
C Compressed Charge PR Primer SPCL Soft Point "Core-Lokt"
HP Hollow Point PSPCL Pointed Soft Point "Core Lokt" C.O.L. Cartridge Overall Length
PSP Pointed Soft Point Spz Spitzer Point SBT Spitzer Boat Tail
LRN Lead Round Nose LWC Lead Wad Cutter LSWC Lead Semi Wad Cutter
GC Gas Check