How Do You Find the Perfect Size?

[Themoose]

I'm still getting ready for my leap into paperpatching ML's and thank all who have helped me so far.. especially johnson1942 and Idahoron... Forgive me if I'm too premature, but I am curious as to how you find the right diameter of sizing die if needed without trying multiples...

I am not expressing myself very well...... I know that accuracy is paramount to anything else I am trying to achieve, but I also want to be able to reload in the field easily and I would probably like to continue using BH 209 which requires a tight fitting bullet for the needed pressure for good ignition. I'm thinking of some obvious steps, trying an unsized bullet and patch to try. If the fit is too loose add an additional layer of patch? or beagle the mould to increase the size of the bullet. If the original bullet patch combo is too tight then I will have to make smaller with either thinner paper, less wraps or tighter sizing die, or running patched sized bullet thru the die again...I'm also pretty sure that I could get by with a less tight fit for black powder or pyrodex and could always use them if nothing else.

I am starting first with recommendations of some pretty experienced folks, but I have run into "Murphy" for many many years and he always seems to throw a wrench into things to make them more challenging.

I would welcome the experiences of others in finding the right combination of bullet/patch fit to the bore.

Thanks so much,

TheMoose

[johnson1942]

this is what i would do. your barrel is probably .50 plus a thousands or two. you must have a true 1/2 drill bit around your place. insert that in to the barrel and see if it is tight or wiggles a little. that will tell you what to do next. if it is tight and your barrel is right at about .50 , then you need a .492 reduceing die, as with two wraps of number nine paper will bring it up to going down easy. now that is reduceing the bullets so you dont have to do it later. now again if it is tight but not forced in and out the barrel you could make a .499 or .498 reduceing die and reduce the bullets after wrapped and that is good also. the .499 may be best if the the shank of the .50 drill bit goes nicely into your bore with out slop. now if it wiggles, the .50 shank of the drill bit in your bore. you can go to a .493 or a .50 reduceing die to either size the bullet unwrapped or wrapped. dont loose the drill bit all the way into the bore as getting it out could be a major problem. use number nine onion skin paper found on the internet. use all wood fiber paper as it is cheaper and easier to find that 25 percent cotton. dry wrap the bullets with out water. the 25 percent cotton wet wraps very well but is a lot weaker than 100 percent wood fiber paper when you dry wrap it. the 100 percent wood fiber paper it tough to wrap when wet but is very strong when dry. to lube or not to lube. go with what idaho ron says. lube with chap stick just as your ready to shoot them. also dont worry about the 209 powder, it will go off with a 209 shotgun primer. i use it in all of my sidelocks and my sons smokless in line. the magspark nipples set it off with out diff. and i just set the bullet on the wad which is on the powder. no special hard pushing on the powder. now hear is the other thing because of you keen interest pm me you name and address as soon as you read this and i will send you five bullets i have swaged to the right length and weight for your 1/28 twist .50 cal inline. they will be .492 diam. and unlubed. if they fit and shoot just right just go with that diam. thanks for your interest as once you get this down you will be shooting paper patch all the time. dont use more than 80 grains by volume of black horn 209 powder as the bullets will weigh a little over 500 grains and recoil will be too much if you go above 80 grains. it still will be as powerful as a 50/90 sharps.

[Themoose]

Thanks Johnson1942 for the very kind offer... PM being sent

[Nobade]

This is good info - I have been wondering if Blackhorn 209 would bump boolits and work with PP in muzzleloaders. Thanks Johnson 1942!

And Themoose, if you have access to a machine shop with the right size pin gauges you can measure that bore exactly. I use a .493" boolit, and it patches up to .499" to fit my .500" diameter bore on the Ruger 77/50. The paper you use will determine exactly what size boolit you need, if you take some of your current paper and wet wrap it around something like a piece of bar stock you can tell exactly how much it is going to add to your boolit once it is dry. I find the best accuracy with the biggest boolit/thinnest paper combo I can find, which is usually 9# onionskin paper that adds .006" to the final diameter. That kind of paper isn't always easy to find, but it pays to get your hands on some.

-Nobade

[johnson1942]

a fair while back when idaho ron posted that p pydrodex bumped up paperpatch bullets i thought, why not blackhorn 209. it snaps more and is less of a push then pryrodex. all my sidelocks are now useing it. it is neck and neck as accurate as blackpowder. it took the powder industry years to finally come up with a blackpowder sub that really works as a clean accurate and consistant sub. blackhorn 209 is all of them. the 25 percent cotton number nine paper is hard to find and probably years old paper on e bay is about the only place. i hve one ream and rarely use it. i dry wrap even my 45/70/s and the number 9 onion skin all wood fiber paper is very tough dry wrapped and can be still found. if not got to transparent traceing artist paper. it is very available and as stated above poss. slightly thinner than number 9 paper. dont discount the single wrap chase paperpatch method, i just started useing that on a fast twist .50 and i use number 18 paper for that. number 18 is easily avail. on the internet. you just put the patch on as you load as you would to a roundball. with that in mind, does any one out their still shoot the picket bullet? to refresh everyones memory on the picket bullet, it is a cast bullet usually about twice the length of a round ball and inserted into the barrel with a thin tight weave cloth patch just as a round ball is. ned roberts mentioned it as quite accurate.

[Themoose]

Thanks for the help folks... as I told johnson 1942 in a pm, I did have a problem with one of my ML's(a Knight .50 Disc) with BH209... it had a more loose fit than my other Knight Disc in .45. Luckily it was not a problem while I was hunting, but on the range... I had shot quite a few with no issues, then had one kinda make a "woosh" noise and spew out a lot of smoke... the bullet barely exited the bore(you could see it wobble downrange about 20 yds). I never had thought about paper patching the thing but kinda did by going away from the plains style bullet and went with one in a sabot and added teflon tape to the bullet within the sabot to increase the bore size... I had it up for sale and ended up giving it to my cousin, complete with a Toby Knight scope... have told him about the Paper Patching that I will be trying out and maybe work something up for him that will work 100% of the time. He said he would do it, but he gets tied up in other things and it is unlikely he will even pull a trigger on the rifle until a day or two before his hunt... guess since I gave him the rifle, I should give him a "cure" for it. Thanks for the info about the pin gauges.. I have a mold now at a local shop getting repaired... I also have a .54 Renegade, a 35 yr old .50 TC Hawken, a .50 TC Hawken Flintlock, a .45 TC Hawken with Green Mtn LRH barrel and a .45 Knight Disc to play with.

Thanks again,

TheMoose

[johnson1942]

themoose. you may not realize it but that 1/48 twist thompson hawken .45 cal. is a tackdriver with a paperpatch bullet. i had one and i shot a 250 grain .440 bullet swaged my self. it was a kieth flat nose with a cupped base and weighed 250 grains. 2 wraps of number nine paper and a fiber wad between powder and base of the bullet. that gun would shoot 100 grains of real black 2f and cut center every time in a small tight group at 100 yards. im selling the barrel now as i put a 1/18 twist .45 douglas barrel on the gun for shooting a much larger bullet. their was nothing wrong with the barrel as it is like new and shot perfectly but i wanted a larger bullet to shoot. if it doent sell i may just build a gun around it when i get it back from the guy who is selling it as that 250 grain .440 bullet shot really well. that thompson barrel was a true .450 and no larger. come to think of it i may just call him and tell him to take it off of the market and use that barrel as a winter project next year. that paper patch would get up to about 1700 to 1800 ft per sec. and thats a real deer killer. i think with a 500 yard sight a could shoot it to that for fun. dont sell that gun.

[Themoose]

Johnson1942,

It is not the original .45 barrel in 1:48. I bought it as a replacement barrel for a .50 that was showing some age... I was at the rendezvous in Friendship and ran into a deal on a slightly blemished maple stock... ended up buying parts and making the gun during the shoot. I will be PP for that and the Knight .45 both are tight bores and are 1:30 twist.

[johnson1942]

then its even better as it will shoot up to a 330 grain .440 bullet. im building a .45 1/30 twist as we speak and the bullets are already made and are 330 grain. you have some real paperpatch canidates. the .45/s in 1/28 and 1/30 twist in inlines are really getting popular as they shoot so well and are perfect for paperpatching. mine is a sidelock but it will have a magsprak 209 primer ignition. just got the lock inletted and tommorow is the trigger, then it is down hill after that.

[Omnivore]

The standard procedure would be to first slug the bore and measure the bore diameter. NOT the groove diameter, but the bore diameter, which is the smaller of the two.

I assume you read idahoron's stickies on the subject of paper patching, so there's really very little, to nothing, left to wonder after you've read through all the comments, questions and answers in those threads. The relationship between the finished, patched boolit and the bore diameter is subject to some preference and some experiment, but if I'm not mistaken idahoron came up with a finished, patched boolit being the same as the bore diameter, or about one thousandth smaller, and obtained superb accuracy for a hunting muzzleloader (again though, that's all discussed at length in those sticky threads, so I could only repeat what's already there). Running the patched boolit through a sizer of that diameter (bore size or a thou under) as he is doing, seems to be a pretty good idea. All the nuances involved are discussed at length in the stcky threads.

You can slug a tratitional ML bore by dropping a section of brass rod down the bore first, so it can be used as a driver to shake out the slug, then drive in your lead slug, then shake it out, then measure it. That's the standard technique. An inline can typically have its breech plug removed easily and so the slug can be driven out from the breech. If you have an even number of lands and grooves, you can also measure the bore using a telescoping gauge, A.K.A. a "snap gauge". Snap gauges are cheap and readily available from any machining supply company. That's it; you don't need any fancy pin gauge sets or anything like that, or drill bits that only come in certain sizes. You can know your bore diameter to within a thousandth of an inch using either a lead slug or a snap gauge, and a dial caliper or a micrometer.

[johnson1942]

thanks for the really good post omnivore