• 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
  • Friends, our 2nd Amendment rights are always under attack and the NRA has been a constant for decades in helping fight that fight.

    We have partnered with the NRA to offer you a discount on membership and Muzzleloading Forum gets a small percentage too of each membership, so you are supporting both the NRA and us.

    Use this link to sign up please; https://membership.nra.org/recruiters/join/XR045103

Silk as patching

Muzzleloading Forum

Help Support Muzzleloading Forum:

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

Twalling

ElishaWallen
MLF Supporter
Joined
Oct 30, 2021
Messages
43
Reaction score
24
Location
Virginia
Researched Last of the Mohicans, guess I never caught it or was otherwise distracted, but Nathaniel was loading in the fort, he was questioned about his patching and replied silk it'll get me another 40 yards. Truth? Movie myth? I've NEVER seen or heard anything regarding silk for patches
 
Nothing adds range to a ball. Shoot at 2200 fps it slows to 1100 at a hundred yards and about 3-400 at three hundred yards. Shoot at 1100 fPS it will be within 50 fps at three hundred yards.
Silk is slippery. Hang a silk neckerchief up by top two corners and shoot it it can let the ball slip through with out holing. It can’t ‘grip’ the ball.
 
Silk almost evaporates when exposed to flame. You might find fragments downrange,,,,,but not much.
 
Everybody’s missing the crucial part of the scene. Hawkeye isn’t imputing some mystical property to the material. The actual dialogue is the key.
Uncas: “Tight weave?”
Nathaniel: “Mm. Silk. Another forty yards.”

You can try this at home with different weaves of cloth- loosely woven fabric makes terrible patches. You won’t get the same accuracy from cheesecloth that you will from shirting linen.He’s not saying the ball goes farther, he’s saying that the tightly woven silk allows him to be accurate at greater distance.

I’ve used several feet of silk as patches over the years, and have found roundballs patched with tightly woven silk to be satisfyingly accurate. The big issue is the stink.
Jay
 
Funny, this is one of those things I just had to try out in the 90s... If I recall it right I did try out couple of different silk patches, they all made a mess and it was just treads after they had left the bore. found out I`d better stay with pure cotton or linen.
 
I am sure to the director, it sounded cool to be using the silk from Cora's petticoat as a patch material. Most likely out there on the frontier, Cora would have been wearing linen petticoats. Cooper never described the sisters' undergarments. Michael Mann just made it up. Even Mark Baker never affirmed the use of silk patching to increase range.
 
Silk is similar to spider web which disintegrates with fire. I was at the gun range some years ago and heard a guy shooting a new muzzle loader make the comment, he was couldn't figure out why his gun wouldn't group he was using silk :dunno:. Movies you gotta love'em. Went over and handed him some pillow ticking and said try this.. I think he at least had a group after that. DANNY
 
Back
Top