I have always heard “recover your patches and they will help you determine why you’re having trouble making your gun shoot.” I am not sure I believe this to be the case entirely. The reason why I bring this up is my 50 cal, at 50 yds keeps 3 shots under 1.5 Inches every time unless I do something stupid. Because it always shot so well I never paid any attention to the patches, nor tried to recover them. A couple days ago while getting ready for ML season, I decided after a few hours of shooting, I would look for a couple of patches. I was shocked because my patches look like confetti. All my life I’ve been told that if your patch is cut, or comes out black you need a thicker patch because your gun won’t shoot well if you don’t. To test the theory I sat up set up 3 1 Ltr bottles at 100 yds and off the bench exploded all three. The chronograph says I’m averaging 1488 fps. I am a firm believer in if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. The load is 80 gr of Goex behind a .493 round ball, with 0.015 pillow ticking.