During a major rearrange of a storage room to gun room, I discovered a device I bought probably 20 years ago. It was called, I think, a "something??? Dimpler". Its principal is based on a proven, demonstrably effective principle. While I do not remember the physics fundamental for its effectiveness, millions of people use it every day on a single device called a golf ball. In the 19th century golfers used round balls. It was noticed that used golf balls, scuffed and roughed up from use, traveled significantly farther than new unscuffed balls. Presto, we have modern golf balls.
Roughened surface causes balls to become less effected by air resistance. The Dimpler causes stochastically dimpled surface on muzzleloading round balls. If it works, device-dimpled round balls will have point blank range and retained ball velocity/penetration significantly improved just like golf balls.
Things are a little different in muzzleloading because larger diameter round balls are less affected by air resistance than smaller ones. Dunno why. But even a .72-caliber round round ball loses perhaps 40 percent of its muzzle velocity at 50 yards or so. Smaller diameter round balls are even more affected.
I immediately recognized a difficulty in using a dimpled round ball. Lubricant from usual patching procedures will almost certainly ruin the effectiveness of dimples by retaining some slight amount of lubricant irregularly. Think of the difficulty as what happens when an otherwise perfectly cast bullet's base is notched. Accuracy goes down the drain.
To finally make a long story less long, I'm looking for pre-made patches that have some sort of lubricant that is dry or doesn't come off [on the ball's side of the patch] or patching material satisfactory for my cutting my own patches. What's supposed to happen is that this patch functions as a round ball's patch should during its travel down the barrel, leaving the ball immediately after. Meanwhile the stochastically dimpled round ball is unaffected and travels downrange with the same degree of accuracy as the usual ball and lubed patch — but much farther.
So, what's available that might do the job? I remember that Teflon® patches were available when I probably found an advertisement in an old NMLRA Muzzle Blasts. But that was decades ago and I have shot only cast bullets since I don't remember when. For my testing I need this sort of special patching or patch material. If the device works, that's great. If the device doesn't work, my rifle will shoot patched round balls as it will. . . . It would be nice, though.
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Originally Posted by GL49
