All the ladies look at me weird when I come in carrying a dial caliper & start micing the cloth. Usually when I find one I like I buy the whole bolt. Found a 30 yard bolt of .018 at Handcock Fabrics a while ago. It is stiff as all get out but I just wet it with my liquid lube & it works fine. I never wash the material because after having done it several times, I can see no diff whatsoever except it is allot harder to cut after it is washed.
Now & then find some at Walmart but their pillow ticking is thinner than most, compressed at .011 to .014 so you want to find the one you want. They usually have red striped, blue striped & no stripes all there together. And you cannot go by the numbers or bar codes of them being the same thickness, as I have tried that & they will vary 4-5 thousands per bolt. One day found some .015 there in red & bought the 15 yd bolt, went back to get a friend a bolt of it & same number but it was .011 So take a mic or dial caliper. Also check it at one edge , middle, other edge. I found some one day that was .020 on one edge 2" wide the entire bolt, but all the rest of the material ws .017, so check it in several places.
I also know that people mic them different. I mic my crushed with a dial caliper. A friend of mine mics his light & what I say is .018, he mics at .020, so you kinda have to be your own judge on the material. Most of the Oxjoke material they claim is .015 mics at .012 to .013 for me. The reason I like the compressed mic is because you are going to conpress it, makes no dif what it mics at when fluffed out.
It is good to have an assortment of materials for dif balls & dif rifles. And if you find one you really like, I suggest you get allot or it.
As for cutting it, a rotary cutter & board will make some patches up fast. I can cut 10,000 1" patches in about 15 minutes and that includes getting out the material, board, cutting them & putting it all away. You lay out 36 x 36 sheet of material 8 layers thick, put the rule on it for a cutter guide & take the cutter & start rolling & in 5 min you will have enough patches to last you for 5 years. The nice thing is the board has increments on it, so it is easy to do 1", or 1 1/4", or 1 1/2" or whatever. One day I set it up & cut 10,000 patches in 1", 1.25", 1.5", 1.75", and 2" and it took me about an hour. It takes longer to rough count them & separate them into bags of 1000 than it does to cut them out. ( CAUTION: This rotary cutter WILL relieve you of your fingertips too before ya know it, as it is basically a rotary razor blade.........)
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