• This community needs YOUR help today. We rely 100% on Supporting Memberships to fund our efforts. With the ever increasing fees of everything, we need help. We need more Supporting Members, today. Please invest back into this community. I will ship a few decals too in addition to all the account perks you get.



    Sign up here: https://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/account/upgrades

Did they use patches?

Muzzleloading Forum

Help Support Muzzleloading Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Buff

32 Cal
Joined
Dec 19, 2019
Messages
29
Reaction score
17
I've been reading a book about the Lewis and Clark expedition, and also a lot of mountain man era accounts.

My question is: did they use patches, especially when in a hurry to reload, or just seat the ball on top of the powder?
 
Hi,
Cloth patches were an expensive commodity, and inconsistent, especially ( think about it ) today we talk about our patches being .015", .018", .020" and so on.
Yes there are records of yesteryear shooters using thin strips of hide. Now how consistent was that?
More often than not, a tight fitting ball was used.
Many barrels were ruptured because the ball rolled partly down the barrel.
So to answer your question " did they use patches? " YES! maybe, sometime, could be, should have. OH RATS! I'll just bareball it. Maybe I'll hit something, like the last time.
So does that answer your question? And does that convince you of the often quoted mystical shots at 400 yards.
Fred
 
You can use a round ball in a rifle, and use a wad on the powder and one on top of the ball, and get pretty fair accuracy out to 25 yards if need be. I've tried it when I ran out of patched during a match.

What they used is uncertain. We do know they didn't swage the ball onto the rifling as some early books from the 50's 60's and 70's have claimed, and that such swaging had pretty much halted by the time the F&I War began.

I have tried thin leather, and it does work. That was on a modern barrel, so not sure if with the often thinner grooves found in a hand-rifled barrel, if the leather would work the same.

LD
 
More of them used smoothbore than we'd like to believe. Some would collect paper wasp nests, tear off a chunk, pulverize it between their fingers and drop that material down between powder and ball.
 
More of them used smoothbore than we'd like to believe. Some would collect paper wasp nests, tear off a chunk, pulverize it between their fingers and drop that material down between powder and ball.
That's an excellent plan....for civilian hunters. Let us remember the Lewis & Clark Expedition was a military unit, and the men were issued military arms and ammunition.
 
I took the question to mean, 200+ years ago, did folks use patches, not just/specifically Lewis and Clark. I'd presume most of the hunters in the Corps of Discovery did use patches. They had every supply they thought they needed, and other than against grizzly bears didnt do much "fighting" where they'd have to do fast reloading. Now something like the siege of Boonesborough, where men were shooting/reloading fast and often for days, I'd presume many of the guns were smoothbore and many shots were not patched. I could be wrong though.
 
Some did, some didn't it all depends.
As for Lewis and Clark, I think the Giradinoni air rifle got more action than anything. It used unpatched balls.
 
In Sarg. Gasse journal, he relates it took fourteen shots to subdue a grizzly bear. After the first shots, they were probably loose loaded without a patch as fast as possible, just my guess.
 
When I was younger I would have marathon plinking sessions. as the gun got real dirty I would quit using patches. i still hit everything I aimed at. I've been know to "speedball" in timed events too. When all you have to do is hit the target a patch isn't always necessary to do that.
But it sure makes a dirty gun even dirtier.
 
When reading the accounts of the mountain men and others there is little mention of the type of firearm and load details. If I were facing a grizzly or in a fight I probably would not take time to patch. I like to read their accounts yet am always interested in the more technical details.
 
I watched a demonstration at Dixon's once. It was a short barreled flintlock with the ramrod attached near the muzzle. The demonstrator showed us the round ball that had a leather patch sewed onto it. I believe it was a British rifle. I can't begin to imagine how they sewed the patch onto the round ball.
 
It's my understanding that a rifle maker would supply the buyer with a bullet mold for the rifle. Just thinking out loud, how would the gunsmith know the thickness of any patch the buyer would use. So then did he make the ball mold near the same diameter of the rifle so it would load a bare ball? Even pillow ticking probably varied in thickness by manufacturer.
 
Back
Top