Synthetic patching? Why not?

[CoyoteJoe]

We've all heard the warning to never, never use anything but 100% natural fiber of patches. So why is that? I have always just assumed that synthetic would melt in the bore, fail as a patch and perhaps leave a nasty mess in the bore. But on reflection I realize that I have often cut patching form old clothing and some of it surely had some synthetic content.
I decided to put it to the test. In the Walmart fabric section I hunted up the thinnest fabric I could find. It is 65% poly and 35% cotton and measures only .006" thick. This stuff is so thin that when held up close to the eye I could easily identify objects among the clutter of my workbench.
Used this spit lubed and cut at the muzzle to surround a .526" ball over 55 grains of 2f Goex in my .54 smoothrifle, directly atop the powder, no wad.
I fired five shots and got the usual lousy accuracy I have come to expect from this smoothbore. I was able to find only three of the fired patches in the weeds where 3 of 5 is about my normal recovery rate.

I think you can see that 2 of the 3 have a large hole in the center. But looking more closely you'll see that the ragged threads around the hole appear to be torn, not melted. I could find no indication of melting at all. If the tiny threads of such thin fabric won't melt I think melting is just not going to happen with the 65/35 poly/cotton blend.
You would probably not want your girl friend to go out in public in a dress made of this fabric. In private it could be fun but no matter how hot she may be I wouldn't worry about her dress melting. :haha:

 

[Rifleman1776]

CJ, up front, I'm going to be partly cryptic but just to make a point. (and have some fun :wink: )
Some of us don't use synthetic for the same reason we don't wear pink tutus on the line, or dislike plastic stocked guns with stainless steel barrels, or use stuff out of plastic bottles bought at Wal-Mart, or put scopes on our muzzle loaders.......etc.
Most of us are not authenticity purists, but, for the most part, we do this ml avocation in an attempt to preserve the traditions of the past.
Using lubes we make ourselves from materials found in nature and pure cotton for patching is part of trying to preserve those traditions.
Not knocking your experiment......well :redface: ...maybe I am, Oh, well. Nevertheless, I'm confident you don't wear pink tutus at the range.

 

[MSW]

i think (as often as i am allowed to think, that is) that Rifleman's point is well taken ... while few if any would give up a steel barrel for the more HC iron, most of us give a nod (to one degree or another) to the historically accurate.

i eschew the plastic stocked thingies from WalMart not because of some HC/PC snobbery (my historical knowledge is embarrassingly poor), but because i just don't find them aesthicaly pleasing ... if you want to shoot a rifle which i think is dorky looking, go right ahead, but don't ask me to shoot it with you.

same with the natural fibers. am i some sort of back- to- nature, granola head tree hugger? nope, i just prefer to use linen or muslin as patching material. i did try synthetic blends once andthe results were a disaster: melted goo following huge groups. yuck, said i, who needs it?

so, if you can get a cotton poly blend to work for you, by all means go for it if this is what pleases you. But i did try it and i'll stick with the plain old linen.

Make good smoke (using whichever patch you like!)

p.s. pink tutu?? on the range??! who would say anything to a fellow wearing a pink tutu on a range? if he's eccentric enough to dress like that, how can you tell what else he might do?

 

[roundball]

Yet I think we hear that Teflon patches are all the rage with "match shooters"...

 

[CoyoteJoe]

I'm not twisting arms to force anyone to use synthetic patching, but it may be an option. The 65/35 blend is much stronger and tougher material than 100% cotton. So if a fellow has to use thin patches of .010-.015" and it isn't holding up for him the poly/cotton blend just may be the ticket.
As for PC/HC you can't tell by looking any more than you can tell a steel barrel from wrought iron or a coil spring lock from a flat spring lock. And why do your open sights stand 3/8" above the top flat when NO 18th century rifles had sights more than 1/8" tall. Infantile!

 

[Zonie]

IMO the biggest problem with using synthetic fabric for a shooting patch is that most of the material made from it is, as Joe found, very thin.

Whether synthetic fabrics are stronger is debatable but there is no denying that pure cotton and some linen fabric is offered in thicker weaves and this thickness is needed to fully seal the rifling grooves when the shot is fired.

 

[CoyoteJoe]

No, not quite so Zonie. I purposely looked for the thinnest fabric I could find for that test, reasoning that if it were ever going to melt that .006" stuff would be the first to go.
I also shot some fabric cut from the lower leg of an old pair of Dickies' work pants. Label says it's the same 65/35 poly/cotton blend. That mikes .020" and the only reason I limited it to one five shot group was because it was quite hard to load in my Rice .45 caliber barrel with the .445" balls I had on hand. The 50 yard group was about 1 1/2", or about the same as most I have gotten previously. Again no sign of melting and no unusual residue in the bore.

 

[roundball]

I'm not twisting arms to force anyone to use synthetic patching, but it may be an option. The 65/35 blend is much stronger and tougher material than 100% cotton. So if a fellow has to use thin patches of .010-.015" and it isn't holding up for him the poly/cotton blend just may be the ticket.
As for PC/HC you can't tell by looking any more than you can tell a steel barrel from wrought iron or a coil spring lock from a flat spring lock. And why do your open sights stand 3/8" above the top flat when NO 18th century rifles had sights more than 1/8" tall. Infantile!

Thanks for going to the trouble of running the tests and sharing the results...I too had always heard that the synthetics would melt...evidently not the case in this situation...hands on experience trumps anything & everything.

 

[necchi]

5 shot's is 5 shot's.
I wonder what would happen during a day's worth of range or comp shooting with 50-60 shots?

I guess I'm content with the cotton stuff I use, there's plenty available and the price is right.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it?? :idunno:

 

[ohio ramrod]

My one time use of a cloth from the wifes sewing cabinet with out knowing if it was cotton or synthtetic resulted in blown patterns and burned patches so I threw out that piece of clothe and never tried any other. But I assume different synthetics would give different results. :idunno:

 

[BrownBear]

Thanks for going to the trouble of running the tests and sharing the results...I too had always heard that the synthetics would melt...evidently not the case in this situation...hands on experience trumps anything & everything.

Amen.

I've tossed a lot of fabric based on hearsay, I think. The burn myth is busted to my satisfaction, and I thank you for that.

My only question now is how it will do in a rifle rather than smoothbore. I won't get to testing that myself for a while, but if you do so CJ, I'd love to hear about it.

Hats off to CJ! :hatsoff:

 

The burn myth is busted to my satisfaction, and I thank you for that.

My only question now is how it will do in a rifle rather than smoothbore.

Good question. A one-time, five-shot test from a smoothbore and everyone accepts that as the final word?

There might be a reason, beyond a "myth", that synthetics are not recommended. Do people think this is the first time they were used (tested) in the history of BP shooting?

 

[BrownBear]

Dunno. But I'm lots quicker to accept firsthand evidence over hearsay. So far CJ is the first and only guy I've ever heard of who actually tried it.

There's another lurking question: Which synthetics? They're not all created equally and they have their own burn temps. I have to guess that some are entirely unsuitable, but at the same time he's proven to my satisfaction that at least one doesn't burn in a smoothbore. That's a step toward the truth and one step away from unproven regurgitation, AKA myth.

 

[snubshooter]

Way back in the '70s, when going through the academy, all boots and shoes HAD to have leather soles. Synthetic soles would MELT if there was a fire below decks leaving you barefoot on very hot deck plating. Nowadays, I believe they try to build in heat and fire resistance to poly-fabrics. THAT being said, A poly stocked Kentucky rifle holds no allure and is not near as fetching as tiger maple or some other nicely colored woods. :v

 

[Stumpkiller]

Coyote - go dig those balls out and see if any of the material melted and is stuck to them.

:rotf:

Possible they treat them with so much flame-retardent anymore that the synthetics hold up. Might not have been so when the word was originally spread.

Does anyone have a list of synthetic materials. :wink: There must be hundreds of variations out there. Better get busy testing.

 

[BrownBear]

Come to think of it, after years of hearing about the evils of synthetics, I've never seen a single solitary photo of a melted patch.

 

[Stumpkiller]

we usd to be wurred that dental xrays wood mess up yur hed to hasnt hurt me non and iv had lotz

 

[CoyoteJoe]

Thanks for going to the trouble of running the tests and sharing the results...I too had always heard that the synthetics would melt...evidently not the case in this situation...hands on experience trumps anything & everything.

Amen.

I've tossed a lot of fabric based on hearsay, I think. The burn myth is busted to my satisfaction, and I thank you for that.

My only question now is how it will do in a rifle rather than smoothbore. I won't get to testing that myself for a while, but if you do so CJ, I'd love to hear about it.

Hats off to CJ! :hatsoff:

Ah Brown Bear you are busted in not reading the whole thread. I DID post photos of "Dickies' work pants patches" fired from a .45 caliber rifle. They worked fine except for being a bit too thick and therefore hard to load with the .445" Hornady balls I was using.
I'm not selling patching, synthetic or otherwise. This test was prompted by a question asked some time back when the poster was concerned that the pillow ticking he considered buying showed 2% poly 98% cotton and replies from people who hadn't a clue warned him to avoid the evil stuff. So I took it to the extreme of trying very thin 65/35 blend.
Would it melt if you applied a blow torch to it? :idunno:
The heat of combustion of blackpowder would melt a steel rifle barrel if it were applied long enough. But a patched ball is out of a rifle barrel in something like .002 to .005 seconds.

 

[Bill Hall]

Yep, I have never seen ANYTHING melt that came out of a muzzleloader barrel, and I wonder if it's even possible. There are still alot of muzzleloader myths floating around out there, perpetuated by guys who strive to appear knowledgeable, and this may be one of them.

From what I've learned about sythetic material, the biggest problem is you really don't know what you're using. You may find a yard of something that works well, but if you try to replace it, are you getting the same stuff? I wonder if a 65/35 blend is the same at any store, or from any manufaturer. I doubt it. Way back when I thought cloth was cloth, I would sneak into my wife's cloth stash and look for anything I thought was suitable. Who knows what I ended up with. With some material, the patches would fail (never melted though), others would work better. Years later, I asked her if any of that cloth was pure cotton, and she told me it was all some kind of blend, as she didn't like to use pure cotton for her sewing.

Now with cotton, you get a pure product. It should perform the same every time. You may not get exactly the same thickness or weave from bolt-to-bolt, but you don't need to guess whether or not it's going to be stout enough to shoot. Sythetic blends are a manure shoot, whereas cotton (or flax) is is a reliable standard. Just one more variable out of the way. Bill

 

[Stumpkiller]

What were those little plastic "patch" thinghys shaped like back-to-back cups that T/C used to market? Had a cup the ball sat in . . . and occasionally wandered out of to become a barrel obstruction. "Poly-patch" or some such.

Also did little to reduce fouling.