Home Forums Hunting & Shooting BPCR Paper Patch Performance

With my apologies for hijacking Pashooter's thread asking about 45-70 target bullets, I thought I'd start one reflecting my recent experience, including a bullet recovered from the sand at 1540 yards.

This is a 535 gr. Buffalo Arms money bullet, cast from virgin lead and tin at 16:1, .444 diameter, patched to .451, which is as close as I can measure the same as the bore of the Badger barrel on my Browning BPCR 45-70.

The load was 80.0 grs. of Swiss 1.5, topped with a a .060 poly wad and a .060 fiber wad. No deep science, just something I put together that worked out well. A successful SWAG.

I've never had a patch failure with this combo, knock on wood, and the accuracy is self evident. Patch releases at the muzzle, and the bullet slugs up to take the rifling engraving nicely.

One thing that is interesting is that the base of the bullet, in addition to being impressed with a perfect image of the twisted patch, also shows slight concave dishing of the original flat base. Obviously, it took a hard hit from the force of the charge. The bullet nose is too deformed to measure the effect of slugging on bullet length, but that would be interesting too.

Paul

Paul,
Thanks again for sharing this.

Do you wet patch or dry patch? What paper do you use and where do you get it?

Finally, would you mind posting a picture of your swab?

Ed

I dry patch. I haven't got the hang of patching smoothly and quickly, or perhaps I am dexterity challenged , but I get it done.

I've been using a stash of 9# blue paper from BACO that is no longer available. When it's gone, I'll have to try something else.

Here's a pic of my chamber swab tool. It is threaded for shotgun accessories, and you can use it with either a .410 swab or slotted jag and a patch. I prefer to use patches, and change every five shots or so.

Paul



Paul

Thanks Paul...for the one you sent me years back! It gets regular usage!!

Paul I've shot at least a hundred rounds patched both ways as in the pics below but have not noticed any appreciable difference in accuracy unless it should manifest itself at longer ranges...

If you're talking about wet vs. dry, I've only patched dry so I can't say. So long as the patched bullet chambers OK, and the patch doesn't strip in the bore, and releases after leaving the muzzle, I wouldn't think it would make any significant difference. I try to make the hole at the base pretty uniform, but mine do vary. I try to place the front of the patch just where the ogive starts, but it is hard to get perfect.

Paul

Started out dry patching but have gone wet lately..just haven't shot enough wet for comparison.

Recently ordered this book by Paul Matthews..Maybe some helpful info between the covers.

His book is a good foundation but probably not the last word. Got me started in any case.

I've always done wet patches when wrapping.

I think the type of paper makes the most difference when wet or dry patching. Cottonrag paper "sizes" nice and hard when wrapped wet and dried. Wood pulp seems to behave itself much better wrapped dry.

Paul you can shave several minutes off of your long range sight settings by patching short of the ogive.

Hmmm....think he did his 'work' with SP which isn't the same as BP!!

Matthews used both smokeless and black, maybe trying to cover all of the bases.

The Paper Jacket is a good read but Rick is right,Paul patched to groove and mostly used smokeless with his ppb loads. As he got into silhouette and blackpowder target shoots he used greasers and bp. It still is enjoyable reading with some good tidbits here and there. MM

Agree with that. I loves my cotton, truly.