Help Needed for Torn Patches

Howdy Folks,

I've recently been going through Dutch Schoultz's Black Powder Rifle Accuracy book/method and running across issues with torn patches. Shown in the attached pictures are the patches recovered for both denim and pillow ticking. The rifle is about a ten year old 50 cal. Lyman GPR and all shots were performed on a rest with the following process: Swab the bore with moose milk, load 75 grains of 3FG Swiss, cut patch at the bore, shoot target at 50 yards. For what it's worth the group was about 1.5" but I'd really like to have this dialed in before hunting season. The patches were soaked with a 6:1 ratio of Ballistol and water.

My first thoughts are to either switch to 2FG and see if that makes a difference, or run some steel wool in the barrel.

Any further thoughts and suggestions would be much appreciated.

First thing to check is the crown of the barrel, the patches may be getting cut from the rifling lands upon loading. I love a coned barrel for that very reason and being able to thumb start the patched ball.

I would try a thicker patch lube/grease like beeswax and olive oil, bear oil or something similar. A grease patch lube seals the rifle groves better by preventing a powder/flame blow by.

bacarper said:

The rifle is about a ten year old 50 cal. Lyman GPR

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It’s not the age of the gun, it’s the shot count that matters. GPR were notorious for needing a couple of hundred rounds shot through them before settling in. Other option is to use some elbow grease the crown and bore to speed things along. I’d start with the crown.

SDSmlf said:

It’s not the age of the gun, it’s the shot count that matters. GPR were notorious for needing a couple of hundred rounds shot through them before settling in. Other option is to use some elbow grease the crown and bore to speed things along. I’d start with the crown.

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What would I need to do to crown the bore? The rifle probably has about 200-300 rounds through it.

bacarper said:

What would I need to do to crown the bore? The rifle probably has about 200-300 rounds through it.

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Quick answer and what I would suggest starting with, is working the crown with fine wet sandpaper under your thumb. Plenty of folks like this approach and it seems to work for them.

Now a bit longer answer and process….. I like to cut a 60° chamfer with a lathe, then polish. Belts and suspenders approach proven to work. Without or without a lathe, I would have used the ball bearing process I have posted about here a number of times.

Using a series of ball bearings (guess you could use glass balls or marbles), from about one and half times the bore diameter, to right around bore diameter, and using sandpaper of different grits from 120/180 up to 320 or finer (I take it up to 1000 grit
if I want a mirror finish, think working on someone else's gun). A couple of turns of the muzzle over each ball bearing with progressively finer sandpaper over them gives a smooth barrel crown to bore transition.

Basic idea is to hold the sandpaper over the ball bearing (you can place ball on the floor and hold paper with your feet, maybe on a pad or thin carpet if you don’t have a lathe to chuck up the barrel in) and rotate the barrel bore on the bearing with the sandpaper on it. Easy to keep barrel square with the floor. I’ll start with the larger diameter bearing and roughest grit paper and end with a smaller ball bearing near bore diameter, repeating with progressively finer grit sandpaper. I stop when I have a slight chamfer on bore and rifling lands that is highly polished.


I use Dykem (or a Sharpie) to mark the inside the bore so I can easily see when I starting to clean up everything without going too far. Note the 60° chamfer in the photograph was cut on a lathe, I just use the ball bearings to break up the lumps and sharp edges and polish the crown.


Note that with any method involving sandpaper, and your barrel is already finished, you are going to remove finish from the face of the bore if you don’t protect it. I’ve used ‘masking’ tape with a hole punched through it (use a wad punch), but only on other people’s gun’s, not worrying about the finish on mine.

SDSmlf said:

Quick answer and what I would suggest starting with, is working the crown with fine wet sandpaper under your thumb. Plenty of folks like this approach and it seems to work for them.

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Yep, the only thing I do is to rotate the barrel a 1/4 turn after about 10 passes, then do another 10 passes and rotate the barrel again. Keep at it till the lands are smooth. That usually will correct the lands cutting the patch. Also try different lubes.
Edit: I have also used a round ball stone with my die grinder, but you have to be very careful not to over do it, doesn't take long or much downward pressure.

bacarper said:

What would I need to do to crown the bore? The rifle probably has about 200-300 rounds through it.

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As far as the smoothing up the bore of your gun if it is difficult to load or rough on patches, here is video from forum member @duelist1954 video showing the process he used on a difficult to load GPR.

I have used a similar method with Scotch-Brite for some time, but Mike explains his very well. I started doing it after speaking to Don Getz (Getz Barrel) years ago before he passed, and he recommended using the green (600 grit) Scotch-Brite for smoothing up barrels that were cutting patches. Said it wouldn’t hurt the barrel. There are other methods

I have used that method to smooth the barrel, the only thing I do different than Mike is to clamp the barrel in a well padded vise, makes it much easier when making the long strokes.

SDSmlf said:

Using a series of ball bearings (guess you could use glass balls or marbles), from about one and half times the bore diameter, to right around bore diameter, and using sandpaper of different grits from 120/180 up to 320 or finer (I take it up to 1000 grit
if I want a mirror finish, think working on someone else's gun). A couple of turns of the muzzle over each ball bearing with progressively finer sandpaper over them gives a smooth barrel crown to bore transition.

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That's great advice and I think I'll be ordering some ball bearings from McMaster tomorrow. I'll post a picture of the bore when the light is better tomorrow, but at a quick glance it's definitely far from smooth and polished, although there aren't any obvious sharp spots.

My only other question is, what is it about the patch pictures says that it's a rough crown? When trouble shooting patches, what in particular are you looking for to tell a rough crown vs. rough rifling farther down the barrel?

bacarper said:

I think I'll be ordering some ball bearings from McMaster tomorrow.

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Using your thumb and some fine wet/dry sandpaper should give you a big clue. And you are going to pay top dollar to McMaster for ball bearings. I have quite a collection of ball bearings, but have never purchased one, rather I have just found and salvaged them from different mechanical devices over the years. Maybe start with looking for some marbles.

bacarper said:

My only other question is, what is it about the patch pictures says that it's a rough crown? When trouble shooting patches, what in particular are you looking for to tell a rough crown vs. rough rifling farther down the barrel?

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Your patches, based on your photographs, look pretty roughed up, and it could be a number of things causing it. Loose weave, older prelubed patches, patches that are too thin could be candidates. An ‘easy’ check is to use a 6” to 12” long brass or copper rod of a diameter that easily fits the bore. Drop it down the your gun’s bore. Load the patched roundball (no powder) a few inches down the bore. Tilt the barrel from breech down to to breech up, using that rod as a slide hammer, as many times as it requires to get the latched ball out if the bore. If the removed patch is roughed up you know you have a crown problem. Guessing that is contributor number one, but could be wrong.

Gonna be the oddball on this one...

How old is your patch material? Are they pre-lubed?

I ask because these patches look like some I had back a few years ago after shooting. Older patches, while not pre-lubed they did sit in a place with variable humidity for 2 years. And when I prepped them out I probably had some grease on my hands. Went with some new patches and it worked great again.

I will agree...
The crown does look a little sharp, the fellas already gave you good fixes. So nothing to add there.

cynthialee said:

How old is your patch material? Are they pre-lubed?

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Yep, a real consideration. Old known issue.

bpd303 said:

First thing to check is the crown of the barrel, the patches may be getting cut from the rifling lands upon loading. I love a coned barrel for that very reason and being able to thumb start the patched ball.

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Yep, cone the barrel and be done with it. By doing so it should rectify the issue plus makes it much easier to load with no deterioration in accuracy whatsoever. No short starter needed either. That’s a major factor in why I prefer to cone barrels. Using steel wood or bore paste can help also. I used bore paste compound in my GPR due to it cutting cleaning patches. Recovered shooting patches have frayed edges but I’m getting holes touching from 75 yards. In the picture below, the shot to the left was my fault. I wasn’t settled in yet before I put too much pressure on the trigger.

Also, the frayed aspect around the edges of those patches means absolutely nothing. It’s the cut places inward more that could be a concern, but not necessarily.

Perhaps I missed it but how thick of patches are you using?

BTW, some GPR that I know of, including mine, performs best with a maximum charge of 3F.

If you have two or three hundred balls down the barrel already, well, then maybe you've just about got her broke in. As far as my crystal ball knows maybe you have a Great Plains that had bigger burrs than usual. My twenty year old lefthanded .54 flinter never has had the burrs completely worn down, not completely.
How does it feel when you're running a tight patch through it?

Have you ever seated a ball into the rifling just like when you load the piece but then used the gathered up patch material to pull the ball back out? That'll let you check the patch condition at loading. If the patch material tears off and leaves the ball in the bore then you have part of your answer. If it shows cuts when you pull it out then there's more hard data.

Have you ever used the same powder charge that seems to work otherwise but seated a card on top of the powder, then a column of corn meal or cream of wheat (about half an inch tall for a fifty caliber) and then seated your patched ball on top of that? If gas blow by is part of the problem then the meal should show you some different looking results with less destructive effects on your patches. Sometimes you can even put a glob of grease lube on top of the corn meal. It works the same way as stem packing in a gate valve.

What is the ball diameter and what is the thickness of the patching.? The patching would have to be stored in an environment of high humidity for the material to deteriorate. I am shooting cotton drill I have kept stored for over 5 years and not seeing deterioration. I bought a lot of it on sale. I have linen that is older. I use a damp lubrication method similar to the method used by @bacarper.

Crown cutting will be a semicircular cut at the ball's circumference. The small holes at the lands indicate cutting on the sharp lands. As said earlier, 200 rounds fired is just getting started on smoothing the sharp corners of the lands. Doing the crown smoothing will make loading easier and a few hundred passes of steel wool won't hurt either. Change the steel wool after every 50 to 75 passes.

One method to reduce cutting of the patches is to use a smaller ball and thicker patches. The lubrication stated above is fine.

I've never cared for denim the weave is to loose and tends to blow apart.
This is what I use on muzzleloaders.
The round ball style. Well oiled!
You may have to look around for finer stones.

bacarper said:

Howdy Folks,

I've recently been going through Dutch Schoultz's Black Powder Rifle Accuracy book/method and running across issues with torn patches. Shown in the attached pictures are the patches recovered for both denim and pillow ticking. The rifle is about a ten year old 50 cal. Lyman GPR and all shots were performed on a rest with the following process: Swab the bore with moose milk, load 75 grains of 3FG Swiss, cut patch at the bore, shoot target at 50 yards. For what it's worth the group was about 1.5" but I'd really like to have this dialed in before hunting season. The patches were soaked with a 6:1 ratio of Ballistol and water.

My first thoughts are to either switch to 2FG and see if that makes a difference, or run some steel wool in the barrel.

Any further thoughts and suggestions would be much appreciated.

Click to expand...

Looks to me like you’re blowing through it from using too heavy a load. Try dialing it back to 60 grains and see what happens.

#blackpowderbill said:

I've never cared for denim the weave is to loose and tends to blow apart.
This is what I use on muzzleloaders.
The round ball style. Well oiled!
You may have to look around for finer stones.

Click to expand...

the rubberized balls work better for me then the stones I also never use anything but the ball shaped ones the tapered or cone shapes are to easy to cut off to one side or the other but can be used to make shifts in point of impact but that is a hole nother subject

A friend brought me a new .58 cal. plains rifle with the worst crown I've ever seen on a production rifle. There was no way the rifle could have been loaded w/a patched r/b and expect any accuracy. The bore at the muzzle had a .060 " half moon of metal , at the edge of the bore where the crown should have started. I have always used the Greg Dixon book of crowning a muzzle w/ an exception. Instead of using a "brace and bit" , I use a drill motor w/ slow variable speed trigger. I like the dark color mounted stones because they are harder , and give a smoother finish than the white colored ones , and the white ones are too soft to use over and over. The Greg Dixon method shows the operator of the tool making a circle motion w/ the drill motor and changing position where he stands to give an even cut all the way around. I like the Emory cloth finish w/ thumb pressure using 400 grit or higher to polish the crown. I've only done a hundred fifty + , w/ good results using this method. If I really get psycho , I have a block of wood w/ 5 different sizes of ball bearings glued to it. A little valve grinding compound and rotating the gun barrel between my hands while it's sitting on the muzzle crown , ads an even nicer touch. Hope someday to get it right.