Paper Patching...my way.

[montana_charlie]

Charlie I'm to lazy to go to all the trouble of making my own wads.

Ok, so describe the lube that is in them...as much as you are able.

If you squeeze a wad, does the lube come out like an oil or grease...or something waxy like (say) SPG?

If it IS like an oil, does the felt seem to be heavily saturated...or just wet through?

And (final question) do any of your six senses (including 'gut feeling') give you a hint about what the lube is made of?

CM

[Don McDowell]

It's just slick sort of powdery stuff.
Don't have a clue what's in it, but I'm pretty sure its the same thing as their muzzleloader patch lube.

Give it a try. Neither the lube nor the lubed wads are so terrible expensive its going to break anybody.

[montana_charlie]

Give it a try. Neither the lube nor the lubed wads are so terrible expensive its going to break anybody.

It isn't the cost of store-bought wads that sets me back. It's that when my wife gave me a nice press-mounted wad punch (a couple of years ago) I went out buying a variety of materials to run through it.

So, I have this nice big piece of felt...and would like to come up with a suitable use for it.

CM

[montana_charlie]

A lot of priceless information from the BP school.

Shucks, Hassgropper, you're gonna get me all misty-eyed...instead of just mystified.
CM

[Don McDowell]

Charlie just rub some muzzleloader patch lube, like bore butter, or some of Sagebrush's lube into those felt wads you punch then. Should work like just fine as long as you get the felt saturated , but not to the point where it starts to come apart.

[twoguns]

Charlie just rub some muzzleloader patch lube, like bore butter, or some of Sagebrush's lube into those felt wads ...

Yeh, When I use TC Bore Butter I warm it up in the Micro first...

[montana_charlie]

Charlie just rub some muzzleloader patch lube, like bore butter,

Yeh, When I use TC Bore Butter I warm it up in the Micro first...

Okay, boys...
Looking through my old bag of muzzleloading stuff, I have a big fat tube of Blue and Grey Minnie Ball Grease that I bought (in '73) to use on Maxi-Balls.
Never used much because I had a 'blue ribbon' patched ball load that kept me in the running at our matches in Germany.

I'll try mashing some of that into little felt discs and see what happens. It has a 'thinner consistency' than the cookies I made, so it may not even require heat.

Surprising what you can find when you start digging in the back of the closet...
CM

[leftiye]

CM, I used to make wads for my muscleloaders from feltan Bluestreaks (shotgun wads), and melt natural Lube 1000 into them FWIW.

[twoguns]

Okay, boys...
... big fat tube of Blue and Grey Minnie Ball Grease... '73...
... 'blue ribbon' patched ball load that kept me in the running at our matches in Germany.
CM

I thought I was cool because last year I got to stand on the refueling floor of the Unit 3 reactor at Chernobyl while on an IAEA inspection and peer review visit. Shooting in Germany is much more cooler MC!...

I wanna go to Germany

Ken

[montana_charlie]

much more cooler

I dunno. Chernobyl is probably quite cool, too...by now!
Those matches were many moons ago, and the laurels are too dry and crumbly to rest on.
CM

[twoguns]

...and the laurels are too dry and crumbly to rest on.
CM

Hmmmmmmnnn, I think that was a fly-by over my head. Anyway I want to go to Germany some day.

[montana_charlie]

Aw, don't worry about it, Ken. It was a poorly constructed bit of nostalgic humor.

But, I did manage to make some lubed felt wads...though not the way we discussed.
I (long ago) made up a cup (or so) of an SPG look-a-like lube, but never tried it. Then, when I needed some grease cookies, I melted that stuff and modified it a bit to make it 'greasy-er'.

I read a post a yesterday from Dale53 where he mentioned a 'cup warmer' he planned to try for melting lube. That reminded of one that my wife offered me about two years ago.
Turns out the offer was still good...so I melted my cookie 'grease' and tossed some punched felt wads in. They sucked it up like Obama floating in a vat of taxpayer's money.

It was an easy job by any standard, and those cup warmers are a great idea for a small batch. I left the lube on it for over an hour, after it melted, and it never got close to 'smoke temperature'.

CM

[montana_charlie]

This thread may get some age on it before I ever have a chance to post some shooting results. Judging by today's weather, it may not happen until August!
But, I will resurrect it whenever I have something to add...

Well, it's August.
Went out to shoot today, for the first time since there was snow on the ground.
Back then, all I did was fire four bullets into a late season snow bank to see what they looked like...and it wasn't pretty.

Those loads had eighth-inch lube cookies under the bullets, and I fired them with no fouling control measures. Just load and shoot, like while hunting.
The cookies didn't appear to do anything good, at all. The first bullet looked fine, with clear rifling marks, and obvious lines showing where the paper edge was.
The following three got sequentially more scruffy, with the last one looking awful.
In the ogive area, the lead was heavily 'scuffed' all the way around the nose, and the rifling marks looked 'gouged' into the lead.

The educational benefit was in the first bullet. It showed that my patches were too narrow. As the nose bumped up some, the rifling was able to engrave about a tenth of an inch ahead of the front edge of the patch.

So, I changed the patch size to make it (both) wider and longer. Wider to cover more of the nose, and longer so that no stretch is needed to make the ends meet.
I pulled five bullets from the remaining loaded rounds, wrapped them with the larger patch. I did it without wetting the paper, which resulted in no thinning of the patch due to being stretched.
This got a tighter fit in my fireformed case necks without having to look for a thicker paper.

Surprisingly, dry patching is just as easy as wet patching...maybe even easier.
Only difference is, you twirl the bullet into a waiting case as soon as it is wrapped. And, there is no 'drying' step in the loading sequence.

I really wanted to capture these bullets undamaged, but refused to wait till the next snowstorm. So I fired them at a paper target today to check the terminal performance.

It was a hundred-yard group, and it measured 1.25". Bore was wiped between shots with two wet, and one dry patch.
Yeah, everybody has told me that shooting patched-to-groove over black powder will require wiping, but I was determined to try without it. Now, I have to agree it's necessary.

The group is only so-so as far as it's size, but the load stack in the cartridges got modified as changes in patch kept them from chambering. That involved pulling out the lubed felt wad so the charge could be compressed some more to get the stack shorter. This happened twice before a usable COAL was found...and resulted in much more powder compression than seems reasonable.
Added to everything else, the bullets were not visually 'perfect' examples nor were they ever weighed.

Considering the mid-course modifications, and all of the variables which were not being controlled, performance was good enough to convince me this can be made to work reasonably well.

I'll do a few more sessions to look at groups...after I refigure the proper height for the load stack. Come winter, I'll recover some bullets to evaluate when there is some snow to shoot at.

Patched-to-groove over black seems to be doable...

CM

[montana_charlie]

Patched-to-groove over black seems to be doable...

RATS! I may have spoken too soon.

Fired twelve of the re-figured loads into a 100-yard target, and got a crappy group. Actually, it looked like three nice connected-hole groups, separated by intervening flyers. The whole 'pattern' was three inches wide and four inches high.
Barely good enough for close shots at deer, and way too poor for target work...

I had added more powder to make up for removal of an eighth-inch lubed felt wad, and adjusted the charge to obtain .350" of compression on a settled charge of Goex Cartridge.
That came out to 88 grains in my 45/90 cases, for a COAL of 3.290". Thing is, I get good accuracy (with other types of bullets) with considerably smaller charges.

Wiping with two wet and one dry, the bore stayed in nice condition for each shot.

I collected a handful of patch shreds afterward, and found some undesirable 'big pieces' that seem to be made up from 'most of' the inner wrap.
They appeared to come off right at the muzzle, but it's not the uniform 'confetti' you would hope to see.
It would be nice to examine fired bullets to see how the paper impressions looked...just not possible without snowbanks...but, the inner wrap didn't seem to get cut all the way to the leading edge of the patch.
Either the nose isn't bumping as much as expected, or the patch is too far out on the ogive.

Looks like it's back to the drawing board on patch width and charge size...

CM

[montana_charlie]

I guess I'll use this old thread to act as a history of my PP-ing, in case my computer bites the dust, someday. If the information also helps someone working along the same line as me, that's great...or if he finds a different 'secret magic' he might post it here.

Keep in mind this is about patching to groove, with soft alloy smooth-sided bullets, fired with black powder. Comparisons resulting from using smokeless might be informative, perhaps even helpful, but probably won't apply directly to the stated goal.

After a couple of do-overs, I found a patch width that seems to cover enough of the ogive to account for some nose bump, without going so far beyond the ogive as to make chambering difficult....or prevent the paper from being cut all the way to the leading edge. Turns out, a 1-inch width does it very nicely when .150" of the patch is turned under the base.

The thing that kept nagging at me was the realization that these 85 to 90-grain charges I have been trying are all larger than the ones which have always produced best results with other bullets...all other bullets I have used.

I suspect that the increased amount of compression required is messing with my previously achieved 'consistency'.

So, I made up a load stack that looks like this.



It gets me back down in the 75 to 80-grain range where my best 100-yard accuracy has always occurred, and provides an opportunity to start using some of the felt I bought a couple of years ago. The felt wad is primarily to take up some space in the case, as a means of getting an appropriate amount of compression on the 80-grain charge under the veggie wad, while maintaining a suitable COAL.

This one produced 1.25" groups at 100 with between-shot-wiping using two damp patches...then drying the chamber with paper towel on a 'chamber rod/nylon brush' combination.

This sequence left the bore slightly damp when the next round was fired...a bit like blow tubing does...but the bore was quite clean of fouling.

Wind was 12+ mph from 4 o'clock, so finding patch remnants in a cow pasture was a painstaking process. But I recovered enough pieces to convince me (for now) that it was working as desired. When we get some snowbanks, I will try for some representative bullets to examine.

The ultimate goal is to get accuracy of (at least) this level while 'shooting dirty', but I will continue to wipe if that is the only option. If this level of powder charge continues to work well, I'll probably play at saturating the felt with some form of lubricant which is 'softer' than the last stuff I tried. I do have room in the stack for a waxed paper wad between the bullet and the felt if that seems necessary.

But, I'll shoot this load, unchanged, for a couple more sessions to see if it has the 'consistency' to keep after it...and try it at some longer ranges, too.

CM

[montana_charlie]

Continuing the odyssey of trying to successfully mix black powder with patched to groove bullets...

Having waited all summer, I fired some bullets into a snowbank back on the fifteenth...and went to dig them out, today.
By the time I got the two 'shallow ones', the snow was tracked up so badly I couldn't tell where the others went in. So, I left them for later.

The two I recovered are .452" Money bullets, patched to .457", fired in a modern (stepped) chamber, into a .450" bore with a .460" groove diameter.
If you care, the lead/tin alloy is 7.8 BHN, and they penetrated about four feet when fired at 1200 fps from 75 yards.

The first bullet fired came out looking terrible. The patch had been scrubbed off of one side, and there was lots of lead to steel contact. The last cleaning patch run through the bore was soaked in turpentine...back when I was getting some lead flakes out. Residue from that cleaning, or simply an extremely bare bore may have caused destruction of the patch.

I wiped between shots with moose milk-dampened patches.
To save time (because it was cold on the 15th) , I used a jag to shove two stacked patches through the bore in a single pass, then dried the chamber with paper towel on a nylon bore brush.
The stacked patches make for a pretty tight 'package' which requires a strong arm and a stiff rod to get it moving. Once in motion, it goes through with reasonable ease...and picks up a heavy load of grunge.

That wiping method must work, because the second bullet came out looking like this.


There is absolutely no injury to the shank caused by the sharp chamber step...or anything else.
More specifically, there is no 'wiggly wrinkle' showing where the patch got rumpled at the case mouth...no 'wasp waist' showing where a lead ring got 'stolen' by the chamber step...and no cupping of the base showing where lead extruded into the chamber step gap and got redeposited, leaving a rim around the base.

If one bullet can get through in such pristine condition, I would imagine all of them can. Effective wiping seems to be the trick.

Now to find out if this is repeatable...then on to trying to get reasonable performance while 'shooting dirty'.

CM

[montana_charlie]

Having figured out how to get a nice-looking bullet out of the muzzle, I acquired a mould which casts at .454". This is the diameter which mates up perfectly with the paper if have on hand. It is a discontinued 9 lb. onionskin, but the two reams I found on eBay will provide 26,000 patches...enough for the rest of my life.

After toying with the components sufficiently to get the best fit, I have made up an image which shows the loaded configuration...lying in a chamber with a 45 degree step, .100" freebore, and a 1.5 degree leade angle.

The patched to groove bullet is seated on a .030 veggie wad .670" down from the case mouth.
In my Bell 45/90 cases, 86 grains of drop tubed Goex Cartridge packed down to .670" makes a compression of .380" while 85 grains would yield a compression of .325".
86 grains works well in my rifle, and I haven't yet tried 85 grains.

The patch extends .040" forward of the start of the ogive, and this combines with the seating depth to place it's leading edge halfway into the leade. This seems to adequately 'shoehorn' the .460" package into the rifled bore with no damage...to either the patch or the bullet.

In summary, results have satisfied me that patching to groove diameter is a viable option, and may be preferable to bore diameter (in some ways) when shooting from an unmodified modern SAMMI chamber.



Thanks to all who participated...
CM

[Don McDowell]

Well you going to post some targets of your efforts, or do we wait till they publish the scores from the Quigley?

[montana_charlie]

I only shot one target so far this spring, and it was back when there was still a snowbank to retrieve bullets from. I knew I posted it in a thread somewhere, but I had to go searching to find it for you.

This was shot with the .452" Money bullet, and I have yet to fire the new .454" ones that I just got loaded up.

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...3&postcount=26

CM

[45 2.1]

In summary, results have satisfied me that patching to groove diameter is a viable option, and may be preferable to bore diameter (in some ways) when shooting from an unmodified modern SAMMI chamber.



Thanks to all who participated...
CM

Charlie, you are very close to patching the smokeless way. I've used 0.454" base diameter slugs with 9 Lb. onionskin and BP before with excellent results. Since your wiping and have a clean bore, go up to 0.0005" under throat diameter and seat to touch/engrave lightly with your loads. I never had as good of groups with a lot of wads under the patched boolit either. Good Luck........