Paper patch bullets

[Don McDowell]

Gert, that is the classic example of figuring out how to work with what you have, and not what you wish you had.. I always enjoy your threads on working with your Martini's.

[Lead pot]

Shooting "dirty" I have worked out pretty well. I have shot over 80 rounds with out using fouling control and held 2MOA @200 yards short of 5 rounds that wandered out to 3MOA. It can be done but I would not try it for a match It ls a combination between a proper wad stack that holds a very soft lube wad, very soft, and bullet.

I tried DD bullets Don sent me a couple years ago to try and I did not see the accuracy working them up with ladder loads using the 50 bullets till I ran out of them and they would not chamber in the rifles I use for the matches that have tight chambers with the compound funnel throats will not except a base diameter in the case and get it chambered patched .004" over bore diameter. The way I look at it with my match chambers with the concentric compound throats a bullet patched one thousand over bore diameter when that charge goes off the bullet fills the throat very fast making that bullet like a DD and this helps seal the gas behind the bullet very fast where I get very low mid single digits SD's and I feel this is what keeps my verticals flatlined. I have never looked at a recovered bullet that has any distortions from getting mauled going through the throat. A DD bullet shot in a GG chamber is a plus from what I seen with few recovered patched bullets the DD bullets are a plus looking at the bases.........Kurt

[Don McDowell]

I've yet to find an accurate load with any sort of patched bullet using a "lube" wad. A simple felt wad and maybe a thin card wad is sufficient. I also use thin paper with the dual diameter bullets.

[Distant Thunder]

"I have often wondered about using a shallow seated lighter bullet in the 40/72, and replacing some of the powder space with grease wads and/or greased felt for chickens, in the hope of sometimes shooting dirty. failing that, minimal blowtubing."

Bruce,

I have been working on that idea since early spring this year. So I have a mold that casts a short and light groove diameter bullet that I'm using for offhand. It's almost a semi-wadcutter type of bullet and I cast them from the same 16-1 alloy as my prone bullets. I seat it about .150" the case to help reduce the powder capacity. I also seat two .060 wads ( a card wad & a ldpe wad on top) to reduce it a little more. I also just dump the 62.0 grains through a short funnel to help "fluff" it up some and it has very little compression. The accuracy is super great, but it's not bad at 200m. At 100 yards it will put 5 shots right around an inch, but it is closer to 2 minutes at 200m. It's working well for me but I'm far from a great offhand shot. If it will hit with 2 inches of where I break the shot I can live with that.

I have been looking for a way to make a light bullet work for a long time, I may finally have something.

[Lead pot]

It can be done over 80 shots in that hole shooting at 200 yards.

[Distant Thunder]

One thing I tried with this chicken load was to include a grease cookie with hopes of just being able to run a single dry patch thru between shots for maybe 7 shots. It worked for about 3 shots but the bore had already started to tighten up and accuracy went bad. I didn't have time to fiddle with it any more, it was time to load something for Sundays match.

Best results I had Saturday was with no grease cookie and wiping with just one damp patch. In Sundays match I wiped between shot the same for both bullets, 1 wet and 1 dry. I never had trouble with fouling but it wasn't exactly a dry day either. With my .45-70 I have been able to keep up with the fouling while using 1 wet & 1 dry by varying how wet my patches are. I've been able to run them pretty wet as long as the dry patch takes away any fluid in the chamber and bore. The dry patch becomes a damp patch by the time it gets half way up the bore, cleaning out any fouling remaining in that last 6" of the barrel that seem to be the first place to get crusty. It appears as though my .40-65 will be even easier to get "clean enough" with 1 wet & 1 dry. I will revisit this idea later this summer.

[Distant Thunder]

Bruce,

If JK2 continues to shoot as well as he did on Sunday at Lodi and I get bumped to the JK2 spot and he is JK1 I'll be very proud. He was pretty good about beating me for the first time, he never said a word about it. That may change if he repeats. Either way I don't see him wanting to shot any other than my Hepburn and paper patched bullets. I am already giving though to putting together another rifle chambered the same way so we can each have a rifle to call our own, but I'd have to get my Hepburn back or no deal.

JK1 (At least for now!)

[beltfed]

See attached pic of the Excellent work Jim has done on mold cutting.
beltfed/arnie

[BRUCE MOULDS]

kurt,
thay target raises a good question.
in the real world, how many guys could sit down at a bench and shoot 80 shots straight into a group like that wiping or blowing?
my guess is not a lot could beat it.
an 80 shot string is very tiring.
I would be happy to accept that for shooting offhand, as I can nowhere near shoot that well.
being able to just load and shoot would give more opportunities to NOT shoot when the sights are not quite aligned perfectly.
also, you have to count along the bank of missed chickens to shoot the correct one, and this takes time also.
jk1, jk2 or whatever,
I designed a greaser for dirty shooting, and it worked well until things got hot and dry.
it might be a candidate for oil soaked felt wads but not yet tried.
it uses 70 gns of powder in the 40/72, and the felt wads would reduce that charge even further.
keep safe,
bruce.

[BRUCE MOULDS]

arnie you wiley old dog,
you have probably more experience with d.d. bullets than any of us.
you have been reading this all along and not posted some of your other wonderful pictures of these bullets.
keep safe,
bruce.

[Distant Thunder]

Arnie, those are some sharp looking bullets! The one I'm using ain't near that pretty, but it does shoot well.

JK1

[rfd]

One thing I tried with this chicken load was to include a grease cookie with hopes of just being able to run a single dry patch thru between shots for maybe 7 shots. It worked for about 3 shots but the bore had already started to tighten up and accuracy went bad. I didn't have time to fiddle with it any more, it was time to load something for Sundays match.

Best results I had Saturday was with no grease cookie and wiping with just one damp patch. In Sundays match I wiped between shot the same for both bullets, 1 wet and 1 dry. I never had trouble with fouling but it wasn't exactly a dry day either. With my .45-70 I have been able to keep up with the fouling while using 1 wet & 1 dry by varying how wet my patches are. I've been able to run them pretty wet as long as the dry patch takes away any fluid in the chamber and bore. The dry patch becomes a damp patch by the time it gets half way up the bore, cleaning out any fouling remaining in that last 6" of the barrel that seem to be the first place to get crusty. It appears as though my .40-65 will be even easier to get "clean enough" with 1 wet & 1 dry. I will revisit this idea later this summer.

have you tried the BACO bore wipers/gophers/pigs for fouling control?

[MaxJon]

It can be done over 80 shots in that hole shooting at 200 yards.

Thats awesome! Love that heavy barrel! What rifle is that?

[Lead pot]

BB that is a Shiloh with a .44-100-2.6 caliber. That barrel is 1.3 untampered round 35" long. Comes in close to 25#


Bruce I don't shoot that rifle off hand to often. If I don't get a shot off in 5-6 seconds I put it down
The day I shot that hole it was in January and fairly cool. I was fitting new cases for the chamber and all hundred rounds where loaded with 2F KIK and rounds were loaded like for a hunting load for shooting with out fouling control in mind. That 100 round box was full but I shot a few shots at a steel swinger also. It really is a pleasant rifle to shoot.

[Distant Thunder]

have you tried the BACO bore wipers/gophers/pigs for fouling control?

I made up a set of "bore pigs" several years ago and they worked very well in my Shiloh .45-90. That rifle shot PPBs best with a squeaky clean bore.

In my .45-70 Hepburn they don't work so well because that rifle likes the bore a little dirty so 1 wet & 1 dry works best. I don't know yet if my C. Sharps .40-65 will shoot as well with a squeaky clean bore, but I do know it shoots very well with 1 wet & 1 dry patch. I'm going to explore the idea of one wet patch alone because that seemed to work well in the one limited test I recently did. The fouling seems to be much less or much easier to push out for some reason in my .40.

I did make a set of pigs for my .40-65 with the idea of shooting a silhouette match with it, but in their debut on Sunday I wasn't able to push them through without more effort than I would be capable of in a 40-shot match, or even a 10-shot string. I'll need to figure out what's up with that and correct it. I did test a few when I made them and they worked ok then or so it seemed. I'll tract down the problem soon.

JK1

[BrentD]

There are a lot of ways to deal with fouling. Damp patches followed by dry patches have been a go-to for me in Schuetzen and BPTR for about two decades now. Back when I started, I drew a lot of stares, but now, wiping is the rule by a large margin.

The same is becoming true of silhouette, where abut 99% of the shooters flat out disparaged paper patching and wiping between shots. The former couldn't possibly be accurate and the latter simply wasn't possible. Today, there are still very few paper patchers in silhouette. Some years, I am still the only one at Nationals, but slowly the numbers are growing there as well so there are generally a few others. Meanwhile, wiping has taken a huge turn upwards. Where it was "impossible" it is now being done by at least 1/4-1/3 of the shooters at nationals.

Bore pigs have been around a long time and super effective. I am somewhat surprised to see folks jump on the BACO wipes like they are something new, but whatever it takes... Meanwhile, there seems to be a mystique surrounding wiping fluids that is not unlike the bullet lube secrets that were the topic of great interest a decade ago. Yet, plain ol' dihydrogen monoxide continues to do just fine. Don't sell it short. I have never used anything else.

Time to load chicken bullets. Interesting discussions here about them. I have been working on my own version lately. Just one diameter however.

[martinibelgian]

Actually, a few years ago I experimented with blowtubing with PP bullets, no grease cookie: this did work quite well indeed in the 45-70 I tried it in. It is a mistake to think you need lube to combine with powder fouling to make blowtubing possible. After all, BP fouling is hygroscopic, no reason why it shouldn't work...
Haven't tried it since though, with the no.2 Musket I wipe with bore pigs and VFG felts afterwards, pushed by a patch. But I'm sloooowww.... That might just be me though.

[rfd]

... I am somewhat surprised to see folks jump on the BACO wipes like they are something new, but whatever it takes...

it's good BACO marketing for PPB newbies like me to get sucked in and drop yet another hundred buck$.

although i had been curious about those texas bore pigs i'd seen advertised in BPCN for the last few years, but never saw a need for them with greasers and a blow tube. PPB's are just a diff'rent story, at least for me.

[BRUCE MOULDS]

rfd,
they both work well,
bore pigs are easier to push.
keep safe,
bruce.

[Distant Thunder]

My reason for including the grease cookie was an attempt to be able to shoot and when wipe with a dry patch . I was hoping the lube would soften the fouling enough to make any blow tubing or wet patch unnecessary. Just one dry patch pushed through and load and shoot the next round. I was hoping to do that for no more than 7 shots. This would give more time for shooting in timed events and less time used up in wiping with additional patches or huffing and puffing.

It work well enough in my test that I think I can get it to work like I want it to with a change in my lube cookie. I think Kurt could help me with that, but I don't want him to give away any trade secrets.

When I have time for wiping with one wet and one dry it is not a problem and I've gotten pretty quick at it. I'm looking for something even faster when there is only one minute per shot.

I've got until July to work out the problems with my .40 caliber bore pigs, there's plenty of time to panic later.