Paper Patch Removal From Bullet

[Sharpsman]

Here's an extraction from one of the Dan Theodore Tech articles:

Visualize if you will a PP'ed bullet exiting the muzzle. At the instant the bullet base clears the crown, all of the paper-patch should be completely off the bullet. If it is not, a flyer is likely to occur. Quite a bit of discussion was undertaken by some of The Cup marksmen, paper-patch and grease-grooved users alike, concerning why the paper was not coming off some bullets in a consistent manner. It would seem, to the casual observer, that the high speed air moving over the bullet from its forward motion would rip the paper off the bullet upon its exit from the muzzle. My current thinking is that when bullets spin at high rotational speeds and are moving forward at high speeds non-intuitive things happen to the paper-patch, caused by the airflow around and over the bullets as they start their journey down range. A 45-cal bullet exiting the muzzle at 1,350 fps is spinning at 54,000 rpm when launched with an 18-twist barrel. That high rate of spin drags air around the bullet due to surface friction. The airflow from the bullet flying down-range streams over the air dragged around the bullet due to its high-speed rotation. The interaction between these two air flows might act to hold the patch on longer than one would intuitively think if it is not appropriately torn and/or cut as it exits the muzzle. When the paper-patch does not instantly depart the bullet upon its exit from the muzzle, aerodynamic drag must increase and thereby slow the bullet more than usual, which in turn causes the bullet's short impacts.

Note

What I'm wondering is if anyone has ever thought about using something akin to an Exacto blade to make four concentric cuts through the patch paper down to the exterior of the bullet shank on a loaded round back to the case mouth to see the results thereof on the target??

[country gent]

WHen I find patches they are with in 3-6 feet of the muzzle. Outer wrap is in confetti under wrap is showing engraving and base fold over is usually attached. Some of the problems with patches not coming off is the "wetting agent" used by some dries and acts as a glue holding the patch to the bullet or making the paper stiffer hindering the unwrapping of the patch. The old egg white water mix worked very well in the old days but ammo loaded for a longer period may become ripe in warm weather. I have used a 4-1 mix of lee sizing die wax and water ( 3 parts water 1 part lee sizing die wax) to wet patches wth decent results. I now dry patch as repition has made it much easier to do. My patches come of at the muzzle and I seldom find any during a session. My spotter sees the confetti at the muzzle but its gone with a light breeze. Cutting/ scoring the patch may allow pieces of the patch to remain in the bore or slip when firing. Another would be doing it concentrically. With bore riding PP bullets most shooter hae around .25 or less bullet in the case the rest sits in the bore. Once the right paper is found and correct bullet the patch comes of like it should.

[BrentD]

What I'm wondering is if anyone has ever thought about using something akin to an Exacto blade to make four concentric cuts through the patch paper down to the exterior of the bullet shank on a loaded round back to the case mouth to see the results thereof on the target??


a solution in search of a problem I think. If one uses thick paper, then perhaps this could be helpful I suppose, but I don't think it is likely to makes much difference. I use thicker paper from time to time and don't notice much effect on accuracy. But if one is using thin paper, then the slicing is done by the rifling. No need to do it prior to loading too.

This is what really happens to a paper patch at the muzzle. This video has been all over the net and discussed ad nauseum. I think it gives a very good picture of what happens in the first few feet beyond the muzzle.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCJnYh9UVMg

[Gunlaker]

Rick, I have read in a few of the older books of people slitting the patches. I don't remember where I read that. My .45-90 makes such fine confetti though that i can't imagine it would help.

In one of my .45-110's ( the C. Sharps ), I use a bit thicker paper and the inner wrap doesn't alway shred completely. Maybe it'd help there, but i'd be tempted to just use thinner paper if I was concerned about it. Maybe I should be :-)

One thing I have noticed about my .45-90 is that, when fireforming with a lube cookie, the patch fragments were always a little bit further from the muzzle ( 5 to 10 feet ), whereas when using LDPE wads the patches were right at the muzzle to about 5 feet. In both cases the patches are all groove sized strips, no chunks.

Another thing I've noticed as I've been shooting from under trees in the last while. Very often small branches and leaves fall out of the trees after each shot. I think the wads go flying up there and cut down the leaves :-). Sometimes the wads land at my muzzle. They are neat to see ad they always have perfect imprints of the patch from the bullets base on them.

Chris.

[.22-10-45]

Alot of the original rifles designed for paper-patch had shallower rifling than todays barrels. I have an original Ballard A-1 Mid-Range .40-70, with a groove dia. of .4094" & bore dia. of .404. Thats a groove depth of .0027". I'm not sure a patch would be shredded as completly with this setup as a modern bore..anyway..I'm soon to find out this shooting season.

[Gunlaker]

I imagine you'd have to use thinner paper. The bullet would probably seal the bore just a little quicker though I'll bet, given that it has to bump up just a little bit less.

Chris.

[Good Cheer]

Here's an extraction from one of the Dan Theodore Tech articles:

Visualize if you will a PP'ed bullet exiting the muzzle. At the instant the bullet base clears the crown, all of the paper-patch should be completely off the bullet. If it is not, a flyer is likely to occur. Quite a bit of discussion was undertaken by some of The Cup marksmen, paper-patch and grease-grooved users alike, concerning why the paper was not coming off some bullets in a consistent manner. It would seem, to the casual observer, that the high speed air moving over the bullet from its forward motion would rip the paper off the bullet upon its exit from the muzzle. My current thinking is that when bullets spin at high rotational speeds and are moving forward at high speeds non-intuitive things happen to the paper-patch, caused by the airflow around and over the bullets as they start their journey down range. A 45-cal bullet exiting the muzzle at 1,350 fps is spinning at 54,000 rpm when launched with an 18-twist barrel. That high rate of spin drags air around the bullet due to surface friction. The airflow from the bullet flying down-range streams over the air dragged around the bullet due to its high-speed rotation. The interaction between these two air flows might act to hold the patch on longer than one would intuitively think if it is not appropriately torn and/or cut as it exits the muzzle. When the paper-patch does not instantly depart the bullet upon its exit from the muzzle, aerodynamic drag must increase and thereby slow the bullet more than usual, which in turn causes the bullet's short impacts.

Note

What I'm wondering is if anyone has ever thought about using something akin to an Exacto blade to make four concentric cuts through the patch paper down to the exterior of the bullet shank on a loaded round back to the case mouth to see the results thereof on the target??


I've done that with .69 caliber boolits in a relatively slow twist shallow groove barrel at low velocity.
The paper really needed some help tearing along the dotted lines!

[.22-10-45]

Yes, I am experimenting with Tom Ballard "slicks" of .396" & .398" dia. Using .0018 to .002" paper. Going to try with G.G. first time out..I can seat a .409" dia. in Bertram case..might send some fire formed cases to RMC for some everlasting cases with I.D. closer to patched O.D.

[dromia]

The Enfield Pritchett cartridge had three slits on the paper patch and finally ended up with a fourth cut made when the wrapping was done.

I use the three slit version and it works very well, I will get round to putting the fourth slit on some of my next batch of cartridges to see if it makes a difference on the target.

[Buckshot]

.............Nothing like a picture (video in this case) to relpace a thousand words :-)

.............Buckshot

[River]

I paper patch my 577/450 rounds for my 1887 Mk IV Martini-Henry, I double wrap with 80g/m2 copy paper. Always keen to look for the patch remains and see how they look! You can see the clean paper that was folded underneath the bullet. The has 7 grove rifling and you can see where it has cut the paper.

145428

[johnson1942]

when you dry patch the bullet comes off right now. when you wet patch and it shrinks dry nicely on the bullet take a knife as you suggest and cut 3/4 of the way down the bullet through both wraps to the lead. this is called the single wrap double wrap system. it also comes off right now. dont lube the paper. if your going to lube, use moly powder of graphite powder. if you can stand the mess in your gun room.

[Sharpsman]

My 'stack' is highly complicated! One .030" Walters wad atop the powder, one .060" Walters wad atop a .340" BM lube cookie....530 gr. BACO PPMB of .446" diameter at 1-40 L/T and it'll do this or better quite often from 600 yards.

https://farm1.staticflickr.com/435/19995455308_92c7049b2a_b.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/wsVWes)600tgt2 (https://flic.kr/p/wsVWes) by Rick Mulhern (https://www.flickr.com/photos/61286670@N08/), on Flickr

[13Echo]

Rick from everything I've read I didn't think a Money Bullet would work with that soft an alloy. Sure looks good in your rifle.

Jerry Liles

[Sharpsman]

Jerry

I've been shooting this same load and L/T alloy now going on three years and it's holding true!

Oliver Wendell Holmes stated...."Catch phrases and rumors can prevent thinking for fifty years!"

[13Echo]

Well heck. I have some gg BACO Money Bullets cast of 20:1 for my 38-50 that I haven't tried since Dan T just about had me convinced they were too soft. I guess I'll have to try them after all.

Jerry Liles

[Don McDowell]

20-1 does work with the money bullet, but I've had groups tighten up by going to 16-1.

[Lead pot]

Nothing wrong using 1/20 for the MB it just makes it look like a postell when it gets kicked in the b-hinder when the charge goes off. A potell flies pretty darn good!

[Gunlaker]

I think that harder is better for the Money bullet, but I can say that my .38-50 shots a 20:1 Brooks elliptical PP bullet very well. It's a schuetzen rifle ( 200m ) so long range performance is irrelevant though. I suspect it is at least as prone to slumping as the Money bullet. Like Kurt says they probably have a different nose profile by the time they clear the muzzle. Probably less good for longer distances. Rick sure has posted pictures of nice long range targets with the soft alloy though! Pretty hard to argue against that.Chris.

[BrentD]

Chris, 600 is not long range. Most of the weird stuff happens after 800 or 900. And it might only be once in 20 shots. Dependable accuracy is not determined by a handful of good shots, but rather the absence of a single bad one over many shots.

[Gunlaker]

Brent I understand what you mean about the absence of bad shots. I've run into that sort of problem before, and I imagine that I will again :-). My reference to Rick's long range targets was to the pictures he used to post of his 1000 yard gong a couple of years ago.

Is it likely that a load that is reliable at 500-600 will be reliable at longer distance assuming that: 1) the bullet has been fired from a barrel with sufficiently quick twist
2) the load gives low single digit muzzle speed standard deviations.
?

I can say that loads that I develop at 200-300 seem to work well at 500-600. Beyond that it's hard for me to say. The load I'm going to take to Byers seemed to group well to 800m, but I've only put a small number of rounds beyond 500m with this particular ifle.

Chris.

[Huvius]

Most of my PP shooting has been in period rifles with Metford or Henry rifling.
There is no way Metford will cut the patch and I doubt that Henry will either. Original patched boolits don't have any slits in the patch and some that I have taken apart appear to have some sort of lube on the patch which has dried to a laquer like finish, not just on the exposed patch, but where the patch is contacting the inner wall of the neck too. The paper does not stick to itself however. I have tried to replicate this patching on my own boolits but am not lubing the patch with anything.

I point this out just to get myself thinking of just how the patch releases in these guns. My fired paper is in strips too but it is apparent that the patch is tearing into ribbons and not being cut. Even in River's picture above, you can see that the patch is tearing and not really getting cut. I think it is the airflow over the ogive of the boolit which is peeling the patch off of the boolit as it exits the muzzle and it tears along the thinned, most compressed sections of the patch. Sort of like folding a paper and tearing it along the fold.
Also, maybe not worth mentioning, make sure that in a righthand twist barrel, you patch with the nose pointing to the right and patch rolling away from you. I figure that helps the patch unravel off of the boolit in the event it isn't shredded.