Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Muzzleloaders Pillow Ticking

#3 son, Angus, has decided to go primitive with his muzzleloader. It's a custom 50 cal Hawken with a stainless barrel. He ordered the Lee .495 roundball mold and cast his first batch of balls last week. Prior to this, he's shot the .50 cal R.E.A.L.

I shot patched roundball for more than 20 years, but frankly it's been so long since I had to pick a pillow ticking, I've quite forgotten how. I got my TC Hawken in 1984, found a patch material that worked and stuck with it.

I remember that it needs to be 100% cotton and the end result need to be thin enough that the ball can start without resorting to a hammer.

Please refresh my memory.

That's pretty much it. But with .495 balls you may have trouble finding ticking thin enough to allow easy starting. If that becomes an issue, you might want to try a .490 ball.

I go to the local fabric shop and buy it by the yard. I take along a set of mics to measure the thickness. Wash the starch out of it when you get it home.

Cool. Thanks for the quick come-back.

What gnoahhh said. Go in with the mic and start looking. Also agree with him about finding ticking thin enough. Good luck. He'll find something. Like you said 100% cotton something! Heck I had issues finding some ticking THICK enough. So I completely disassembled a ticking hunting shirt I had hand sewn years ago, because it was thick enough!

Oops!!! An edit!!! Again as mentioned above wash fabric to remove sizing. Also will change thickness. Many cases Causes fabric to "swell" a big. But these days with quality control being the way it is, could thin a bit. Just have to experiment! Wishing you're son good luck in the upcoming season!

Patch and ball geometry orbits the bore dims, but I have found different frames of reference in different guns. My Turpin built .45 flinter is .45 in the bore and somewhere in the .46-.462" range in the groove. Green Mountain barrel. I shoot a .440" ball with .010" patch to good effect, or about 2" at 50 for 5 shots offhand. I can load it with a .445" ball and .010" patch w/o a hammer but it takes focused effort. Likewise with the .440 ball and .015" patch. The .445/015 combo is a non-starter. It is a hunting rifle, not a target gun, keep the load process simple.

Tell your lad to check his dims. If he cannot load 2-3 successive shots without wiping or a mallet he needs to reconsider his numbers.

I used a thin canvas type material. It was originally a cloth seed sack. Probably can't find seed sacks like that anymore but might find a thin canvas material.

Once I had a bunch of really fine .010", 10" squares of cotton fabric I got from an IBM service guy. Worked
damn fine in Douglas XX .32 I built. It was used in some machine they built. It was just like a fine canvas!

Tell your lad to check his dims. If he cannot load 2-3 successive shots without wiping or a mallet he needs to reconsider his numbers.

True words DD!

I used to get the striped pillow ticking (blue stripes on white cloth) from joann fabrics.

They have different weights (thicknesses), and you have to grease the cloth for patching - but it works fine.
You do need to make sure you have the right thickness for you ball / barrel bore size.

You can always buy some greased patches from cabelas to use until you get them figured out.

If you do start using patch cloth, then make sure you have a patch knife to cut the excess patch material off once you get the ball started down the barrel. Until you figure out what size you need it's common to have excess material that needs to be cut off before driving the ball home down the bore.

If you can't find WHOLE, rifling engraved patches downrange,.....nothing but scorched smoldering shreds, or patches cut into a flower pattern,..... your patch is to THICK.

GTC

What about lubricant?

As I remember, 50-50 beeswax and beef tallow was preferred back when I was roundballing.

I make my hunting lube out of beeswax and olive oil. Don't ask proportions! LOL! But a little Less wax than oil. Enough to get the mixture to harden a bit. When out shooting I just spit patch.

I like to wipe barrel with a weak solution of Murphy's oil soap and water.

All I have ever hunted with or shot (except in rifle musket target days) is round ball or shot ( in fowlers).

I just use spit. I hold the next patch in my mouth while loading/shooting the first patch, to get it good and juicy. I've always done it that way and have never felt cheated in the accuracy department. A bunch of match wins testifies to that. Also, in effect it cleans the bore after each shot.

When hunting though, I use bear grease soaked patches for not wanting the juicy wet patch to touch the powder all day and denigrate it. Not quite as good accuracy, but who cares- it's only a friggin' deer and not a dime-sized X-ring!

Ox yoke pre lubed patches work great and a pkg. of 100 lasts a long tine.

I have ran a .50 Hawken for the past 15 years or so. Maybe longer? .490 balls with a .010" cotton patch was my recipe. Every gun is different, but like the rest have said, if you can't load without a hammer then it's too thick of a patch.

Regarding grease, everyone has their own recipe. We've always used Murphys Oil Soap. It cleans going down, and as long as you scrape off the excess grease before you stuff it in the hole, your powder stays fine all day long. And when you soak a patch in murphys, it stays greased for a lot longer than just a spit patch. We carry 3 shot loading blocks for a fast reload, so that's a factor we try to cover.

Was looking thru my shooting stuff yesterday as I fabricated a few new items. Still have about 1/4 yard of flowery ticking (approx.016) I bought from
J CPenney in 1978! Good stuff and NLA! Gotta use regular striped stuff when it is gone!