i need to try those bristled wipers like brent makes and uses. bristle, felt, washer, and dry patch - seems like the best way to mitigate fouling in one fell swoop.
i need to try those bristled wipers like brent makes and uses. bristle, felt, washer, and dry patch - seems like the best way to mitigate fouling in one fell swoop.
Don,
As long as you are organized and everything is in easy reach I don't think it matters how your patches are arranged. For silhouette I actual like to lay out my dry patches ahead of shooting a bank so I can just grab them one at a time. My popper will often feed more than one patch and it takes time to twist on the knobs.
Everything just has to be simple, I good with that, and organized, I struggle with that at times.
Jim Kluskens
aka Distant Thunder
Black powder paper patching is a journey, enjoy the ride!
TNX guys. I think I will make some but a neoprene bib washer I will cut 1/8" leather washers, they will conform the bore better and push more water and grid.
That is a lot of felt Rob, any problem getting them started past the lead?
Jim the flannel and arsenal patches can be a pain from the popper. The lennon patches that Paul sells to go with his popper work well.
Kurt I think using leather washers will be a step backwards as the leather will soak up the moisture and not dry out, where the neoprene does not absorb the moisture.
Long range rules, the rest drool.
I don't know when Brent started using bore pigs. I know when he first showed me one he had it was the kind with the Scotch Brite washer on the back end and I had seen those before. There was just something about running an ABRASIVE thru my bore that made me cringe! The concept was a good one so I made up my first set using brushes and the rubber washer. I just wrapped a cleaning patch around the brushes and put them all in a little plastic tube then hosed them down with my solution and they worked very well. That was in the spring of 2011.
Then for some reason when I started working with a new rifle, my Hepburn in .45-70 Danielson, I convinced myself that I didn't like them in that rifle and that one wet and one dry patch was working best.
The problem with that idea was that, yes it worked most of the time, but when the humidity would drop below a certain point I was leaving just enough fouling in my bore that I'd start dropping points. In the heat of battle it went unnoticed, but in hind sight it cost me enough points to hurt my scores and probably lose matches.
When Zach told me what might work better and be more consistent I realized the error of my ways. Now I'm back to using my pigs and if I was a rearward looking kind of person I'd be kicking myself in the *** over what could have been, but I'm a forward looker and see it as lessons learned. It's just like when I'm shooting a record string and have a bad shot, I've learned to very quickly put it behind me and concentrate on the next shot because it is always the most important shot of the match.
Some years ago I was shooting in a mid range match at 200 yards the first morning and I crossfired, at 200 yards! Of course it was a 10! I was beside myself and could NOT let it go, a crossfire at 200 yards! The next shot was a 9 on my target! That's when I decided to settle down and shoot like it mattered. In the end I lost that match by 11 points, those same 11 points that I gave up at 200 yards on the first morning. First by doing something stupid and then by not letting it go. The next shot is the most important, the shot before it is done, it's in the books and there is no reason to let it disrupt your concentration on the next shot. That's just my way of thinking and it helps me stay in the game then things go wrong and they do.
Jim Kluskens
aka Distant Thunder
Black powder paper patching is a journey, enjoy the ride!
same thing happened to me in our 200 yard fall match in 2015 - i scored a 10 on my neighbor's target that yielded me 3rd place when that 10 would have had me 1 point above the guy who won with his 277 to my 268. not at all a good feeling for being so darn dumb. still bugs me a bit to this day. never made that mistake again.
Crossfiring happens. there are two types of shooters in the world. Those that have crossfired and those that will crossfire (again). But that doesn't make it any easier.
Brent, I can remember about 10 years ago at a Lodi shoot; I think it was the last match Ernie put on. I shot a 135 at a thousand the day before & cross fired on your target the next day with a 10. I still had enough lead to hang on to the 1000-yard award but lost the match to none other than JK. He was on fire that weekend so my mistake didn't mean the difference in the match but it sure had me thinking. Jeez, that was good fun back then.
Bob, it's always good to help out your neighbor My last match I shot at Lodi I gave your partner Mike a X and in return when his target went down he put a hole in my target LOL.
Last edited by Lead pot; 01-20-2019 at 11:26 AM. Reason: Jim was the wrong name
We all have our crossfire memories and stories. Part of the game.
I recall giving my partner at Raton a hard time about crossfiring on Turkeys or Rams or something and then we went on to chickens where I crossfired. Then crossfired again, and then, just for good measure, crossfired again. About that time I finally decides that maybe my footwork wasn't really up to snuff. But I got some raspberries in the meantime.
Seems I recall shooting someone's chicken at Miller last year in the icebowl opening match.
I don't crossfire often but when I do I can keep pace with the best of them! Though I know a couple of shooters how seem to hit other people's targets more than they do their own.
I have had a really hard time reading the numbers at Lodi over the past several years. I can not see the black numbers on the white boards at all and can just make out the white numbers on the black boards sometimes. A lot depends on which target position I am assigned to. Luck of the draw.
Jim Kluskens
aka Distant Thunder
Black powder paper patching is a journey, enjoy the ride!
Yep, you did Brent.
Scopes can help prevent crossfires when the number boards are hard to read. I'm sure that my scope has saved me more than once.
In silhouette I used to crossfire on my own targets quite often. Once I hit five of my chickens but only two counted as the others were out of order. I was still quite happy as every one I aimed at went down
Chris.
crossfiring is kinda like muzzleloader dry balling - it's a question of when it will happen, not if it will happen.
What is really interesting is the number of times I've sighted in on a turkey and started to break the trigger when all of a sudden the target disappears. I start to yell, "who crossfired!" only to realize that all my targets are right there in front of me.
I know this thread is a little dead, but a thought hit me, and this seems as good a place as any to put it. The OP asked what reason pp bullets were introduced for. Here's my theory.
I can't recall what resource it was in. I had the book downloaded, but the file was lost. I should have printed it.
Extensive testing was done on the accuracy of GG bullets and PP bullets sometime in, I believe, the late 1800s. The conclusion was that there was no difference in accuracy between a PP bullet and "a bare bullet cast of the proper alloy and sized appropriately."
I believe the answer lies in that last phrase, "cast of the proper alloy and sized appropriately." The proper alloy and appropriate size are different for every rifle. This was especially true for rifles of the BPC era. Bore and chamber dimensions varied widely, even from the same manufacturer. PP bullets make that more or less irrelevant as far as leading is concerned, and an undersized bullet swaged from plumbers' lead will still give enough accuracy for most practical applications. I think that's probably why they were used in military ammunition of the day. The vetterli, the martini henry, the Beaumont, the early 7.5mm Schmidt-Rubin rifles, and probably some others I don't know about used PP bullets.
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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 |