Anyone hunt with paper patched boolits ?

[Wolfdog91]

Anyone here happen to hunt with paper patched cast boolits ? If so what are you using ? Details please !

[MichaelR]

45-2 7/8 SS. Load is 45-110-500. 2fg black powder. Very effective

[sharps4590]

Not if there is any way in the world to keep from paper patching. I guess most have one loading chore they despise and that would be mine. Kinda wish it wasn't but I do not like doing it.

[MichaelR]

Personally I prefer patching bullets to greasing them. For hunting, paper patched bullets have some advantages over GG bullets.

[beltfed]

I have used PP bullets in my 358 Win for many years:
WW cases expanded from 308W/WLRprimer/43 gr IMR 3031/ LYman 358318 @250 grains 9+1 COWW/Lino
paper patched with 100% cotton bond paper. Clocks 2350 FPS. Killed many deer with this load
from my Savage 110 CL /Douglas 14 twist barrel. Quick one shot kills and you can "eat" almost up to the bullet hole
even with shoulder shots.
beltfed/arnie

[Wilderness]

Anyone here happen to hunt with paper patched cast boolits ? If so what are you using ? Details please !

Wolf: I did some for .32-40. Mould was #311407HP, casting .314" in soft alloy. Groove diameter of rifle is .321". Patching material was Onion Skin Air Mail writing paper, with patch cut on an angle, providing two thicknesses of material on each side. Tail of patch is twisted and folded flat against bullet base, with no gas check. Gas check shank makes patching easier, and ditto bullet seating. Patch went far enough up the nose to enter the bore of the rifle. Patched bullets were rubbed with Castrol LMM grease (soft grease with Moly) and bullets run through Lyman 450 .321". Groups were about 1.0" - 1.5" at 50 meters. I shot a few pigs with these by way of blooding the rifle.

I have used the same method to patch up hard cast .452" .45 ACP bullets for .45-70 - about 2" at 50 m from a friend's Marlin Cowboy. I have also patched hard cast #358009HP (without gas check) for a .35 Rem with .361" barrel (sized bullets .354" before patching), and for 9.3X62 - same friend in both cases. The .35 Rem shot well. The 9.3s shot well in one rifle and poorly in another.

My impression is that these paper patched bullets can be driven every bit as hard as jacketed bullets, as per the Beltfed post.

And leave off the gas check.

[Dan Cash]

I have been using PP 205 grain bullets in my Win 1895 .30-40 rifle with great success on deer and antelope for the last several years. bullet is sized to .303 and wrapped with .002 thick tracing paper to .312. Patch is twisted and tail snipped upon loading. This bullet is seated over 42 gr of Reloader 19 and chronographs at 2250 more or less. It prints 5 shots in 4 inches at 200 yards and animals shot fall down and stay shot.

[popper]

Tried it in 30/30 marlin. Hunting? Nope, second shot would jam on the paper. Half the time you get confetti to pick up -paper either comes off or stays on to the target. Not worth the trouble.

[Larry Gibson]

Tried it in 30/30 marlin. Hunting? Nope, second shot would jam on the paper. Half the time you get confetti to pick up -paper either comes off or stays on to the target. Not worth the trouble.

Had the same problem with several magazine fed rifles of different calibers. Tube fed and staggered magazines were the real offenders as the PP would always snag on something during feeding. I have had good success with PP bullets in SSs and rifles with inline magazines [Argentine M91s, MNs and a M98 Mauser with a Gibbs inline removable magazine] which also feed WFN bullets quite reliably.

[Reverend Recoil]

I killed some big hogs with my Ruger No.1 9.3x74R. Load was a pp 250 gr 0.358 bullet with 60 gr of IMR 4064.

[Digital Dan]

Ruger 77/44 with 300 gr pure, .422” RNFP and 9# onionskin. Boom-flop every time. Sub MOA at 100 yds. Never had a problem of any sort.

[yeahbub]

I hunt with soft PP in .43 cal. I wet patch conventional full diameter cast boolits of 1:1 WW:soft lead, mostly with .0025" 100% cotton drafting vellum cut in long strips across the grain and trimmed to length with a cardboard trim fixture set for 15 deg end angle. Width adjusted to allow ~.10" overhang at the heel (folded over) to halfway up the ogive to ensure smooth feeding without hanging up on chamber edges, etc. (I sometimes swage them before and after patching to produce a near-perfect dimensionally consistent paper-jacketed boolit.) They are tumble-lubed in LLA (pretty much water-proof) or rubbed with Emmert's or Carnauba Red and sized to finished diameter, usually .002 over groove and seated to an OAL to ensure contact/slight resistance in the throat on chambering in rifle cartridges, conventional book OAL for pistol. In slow twist barrels (pistol cal. levers), the limitation is safe chamber pressures rather than RPM rate. Fast twist barrels like 1:10" .30 cal., etc. will generally achieve their rotational limit for accuracy with cast somewhere around 2200 - 2400 fps. The .32 Win Spl with it's 1:16 twist is a rifle caliber that's perfect for full velocity PP boolits. Conventional .30 cal. cast are the right diameter to patch up for finish sizing to .323-.325 for the Spl (or 8mm too).

[303Guy]

I have hunted a few turkey with paper patched cast. Kill them dead! 208gr semi-round nose hollow point. Got to make sure you have enough boolit! :mrgreen:

I've also used 220gr wide hollow nose on turkey. That puts them down on the spot! So does the 208gr but the 220gr makes a bigger hole. Or does it? Hard to tell when the bird is blown to pieces. Well, not really but they do make big holes, either going in or going out.

The idea of the wide hollow nose at 220gr was to have enough expansion on turkeys and to have enough penetration on feral hogs. I never did get to try them on feral hogs. Not for lack of trying mind you.

One of the problems with hunting feral hogs was rain. Wet paper patched boolits don't work so well. So I tried various ways of waterproofing them. I don't remember whether I succeeded. I mean, I waterproofed the patched boolits but I don't remember whether they shot well or not.

I am now developing a waterproof boolit using hard waxes melted into the patch. I've had some success and some failures. The idea of the hard waxes is that the patch would fracture on firing but at higher velocities, the wax softens in the bore and causes the patch to cling to the boolit. It also raises pressure if there is insufficient boolit jump. Other weird things happen too. One day I'll do a thread on my patching experiments.

For now I am testing STP soaked patches and those seem to work the best but I don't know how waterproof they are.

That reminds me, winter is upon me and winter is wet! I had forgotten that I was to try ordinary candle wax. I'll go do that right now.

Edit to add;

Tried one. The result is not definitive. I did not recover all the patch fragments but there was also no patch stuck to the boolit. I need to recover most of the patch to be able to say. But it is waterproof.

What I did was to melt the wax with 30% STP for lube then soak the patched boolit in the molten mix then wife off any excess. What I did not do was to melt the wax after seating so as to seal the boolit in the neck. I would do that for hunting.

[dverna]

I have hunted a few turkey with paper patched cast. Kill them dead! 208gr semi-round nose hollow point. Got to make sure you have enough boolit! :mrgreen:

I've also used 220gr wide hollow nose on turkey. That puts them down on the spot! So does the 208gr but the 220gr makes a bigger hole. Or does it? Hard to tell when the bird is blown to pieces. Well, not really but they do make big holes, either going in or going out.

The idea of the wide hollow nose at 220gr was to have enough expansion on turkeys and to have enough penetration on feral hogs. I never did get to try them on feral hogs. Not for lack of trying mind you.

One of the problems with hunting feral hogs was rain. Wet paper patched boolits don't work so well. So I tried various ways of waterproofing them. I don't remember whether I succeeded. I mean, I waterproofed the patched boolits but I don't remember whether they shot well or not.

I am now developing a waterproof boolit using hard waxes melted into the patch. I've had some success and some failures. The idea of the hard waxes is that the patch would fracture on firing but at higher velocities, the wax softens in the bore and causes the patch to cling to the boolit. It also raises pressure if there is insufficient boolit jump. Other weird things happen too. One day I'll do a thread on my patching experiments.

For now I am testing STP soaked patches and those seem to work the best but I don't know how waterproof they are.

That reminds me, winter is upon me and winter is wet! I had forgotten that I was to try ordinary candle wax. I'll go do that right now.

Note to self....if I ever go to New Zealand...bring enough gun.

[303Guy]

Note to self....if I ever go to New Zealand...bring enough gun.
:mrgreen:

And to come and see me! :drinks:

We do have big reds and I believe there have been some monster feral pigs. Nothing like our Ozzie mates though.

[BadgerShooter]

350-480 grain swaged paper patch in the 45-70 Marlin. My bullet is a flat nose truncated cone that I can seat the patch in pretty far so there is no feeding issue. Plenty of 4198. It's an utter smasher on deer in the North Woods. Massive expansion and very minor weight loss with 1% Antimony lead wire.

[303Guy]

Here is the recovered waxed patched boolit.

https://i.postimg.cc/VNWKcpj8/DSCF5383.jpg (https://postimages.org/)

That strange ridge where the expansion ends is a mystery. Something not right anyway.

This is a 194gr patched boolit soaked in STP with the same powder charge. This would take most small to medium sized critters. Mild recoil, good penetration and 99% weight retention. Penetration not enough for a Texas heart shot. Twelve to sixteen inches I think.

https://i.postimg.cc/636Y6c0G/DSCF5381.jpg (https://postimages.org/)

You can see by the primer that pressure is mild.

[303Guy]

350-480 grain swaged paper patch in the 45-70 Marlin. My bullet is a flat nose truncated cone that I can seat the patch in pretty far so there is no feeding issue. Plenty of 4198. It's an utter smasher on deer in the North Woods. Massive expansion and very minor weight loss with 1% Antimony lead wire.

That would take a Zebra! (Seen a video of a zebra taken with a 45-70).

[Castaway]

I’ve been patching a Ruger #1 with surplus 4895 and a 420 grain, 1:20 Hoch bullet (0.452”), launched at 1850 f/s, for 25 years. I’ve only recovered two bullets, both were the size of a quarter.

[popper]

303 - that ridge is normal, difference between 'flowing' and non flowing expansion. One state is 'liquid' and the other is plastic. Energy from impact heats the nose which flows real well, base doesn't get as much heat energy so doesn't 'flow' as well and gets some 'fracture'. Interesting, glass is technically a liquid. Dope with enough metals and it is 'metglass' with properties of both.

[Rick B]

Hunted with PP in an original SS for years in Alaska. Load was a 45-2 7/8" case, 550 grain PP bullet with a healthy dose of 1fg black. Shot two Dahl Rams with the load. One at a decent distance. That shot was a Texas heart shot. Bullet exited the chest. Over four feet of penetration.Worst part about using PP was the rifle weighted 11# 11 ounces. Not what you would call a mountain rifle.
Rick

[gutshot_again]

When I first got my 9.3x57, moulds were hard to find, jacketed expensive. Swaged pure lead in a CH/4D .358 dies with 1/2 jackets (after casting cores myself). Then patched up to .368. Very accurate with full or reduced loads. Devasting on deer, but labor intensive. Perhaps if can get out chasing elk I'll use them again.