Originally Posted by
Bent Ramrod
How many patches do you use to wipe between shots?
Not that a magic number does the trick, but none of my paper-patch rifles really started sitting up and talking until I decided to clean (not just wipe) the bore between shots.
I found it might take as many as four wet patches, followed by a dry one, before the rifle started showing real target accuracy. But I didn’t limit myself to four, necessarily; instead I looked at the dry patch at the end. If it was any darker than a light gray, the chances of a flyer on the next shot started going up. I’d do another wet patch and another dry one if I saw that, and the dry patch was always light gray after that.
The grease-groove guys here “wipe” between shots: one wet patch to keep the worst of the fouling down to a consistent level, and a swab to get any moisture out of the chamber. The lubricant on the boolit takes care of any “issues” beyond that, but one wet patch isn’t near enough cleaning for paper-patch boolits. And grease cookies under paper patch boolits generally don’t soften the fouling enough to give target accuracy, although there may be exceptions to the rule. Definitely worth trying a few shots to see, though.
When I started using paper patch boolits in matches, I didn’t have the time for on multiple patches so went to what are called bore pigs, bore gophers, bore critters, etc. You wet them good, push one into your chamber, give it a klonk with the wiping rod to get it into the leade, put a dry patch over the end of the rod and push both out the end of the barrel. Unless there is something drastically wrong with your load, this should clean and dry the bore simultaneously, and you are ready for the next shot.
If you don’t want to buy or make the pigs, stick with the patches, but clean the bore good until you have a load that works. Once you have your load, you can see the extent to which your gun forgives less intensive cleaning. But the bore pigs solve a lot of problems, particularly if you are shooting under time constraints.