Linen Patches

[ericb]

After shooting up all my Paper Cartridges for the Charleville today, I did some work with Patched Balls. The .018 Ticking was pretty tight, but I have some .010 high quality linen given to me long ago, and had it in my Range Box. My experience with cotton patching this thin has never been that good (tears, blow through, etc) but this linen was really tough - all patches survived completely intact - could almost use the patches over.

Not sure how it would fare in a Rifle, but Tough Stuff.

Eric

ps - Accuracy was quite good - gonna do some more patched ball work next session.

 

[Flint311]

Cotton drill cloth? (like in blue jean pockets?)

 

[Zonie]

Cotton drill cloth is not linen.

Real linen is made out of the fibers of the flax plant instead of cotton.

There are some different cloths that are made of cotton but called linen because they were woven with the style of linen cloth.

For a better explanation than I can give follow this Wikipedia link. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linen

You may find it interesting to find that Flax seeds are the source for linseed oil.

 

[zrifleman]

The very best patch material is 60 weave Irish linen. It is about as hard to find as real whale oil. Some of the better fabric stores sell what looks like a 45 weave pure linen.

 

[ericb]

Not sure what the percentages are in the Linen I have, but was given to me many Moons ago, and reminds me of the Dress White Linen Napkins my Mom used to only use on super special occasions. That may have been the use for which it was intended, as it came to me in a pack of unhemmed Handkerchief sized squares...

Eric

 

[CoyoteJoe]

Linen is not only much stronger than cotton but also much less compressible so if you buy linen for patching go at least .005" thinner than your normal cotton patching. You can find pure linen online but you're buying a pig in a poke because they really don't provide any information as to thickness or tightness of weave, I've gotten some that was almost fish net. :haha:

 

[ericb]

Yeah, the Linen material I've been refering to is really nice, like an Aristocrat's Hankie or formal Dinner Napkin, with a very tight weave, as opposed to the rougher, more open weave stuff you see in "primitive" shirts, etc.

Gonna go cut & lube some patches out of it now...too rainy to cast Balls.

E

 

[ericb]

Also - re: "compressibility" of Linen vs Cotton: Not all that scientific, but I just took my dial indicator and put it on the .018 Pillow Ticking, and with a little squeeze could compress it 7 to 8 thousandths. Using the same amount of squeeze on the .010 Linen I could only get it to compress 2 to 3 thousandths. Granted the Ticking is thicker to start with, but interesting...

E

 

[BrownBear]

Linen is not only much stronger than cotton but also much less compressible so if you buy linen for patching go at least .005" thinner than your normal cotton patching. You can find pure linen online but you're buying a pig in a poke because they really don't provide any information as to thickness or tightness of weave, I've gotten some that was almost fish net. :haha:

My first pick when I need a thinner patch is to locate smaller balls so I can go back to a thicker patch. But forced to use thin patches, there's nothing like linen.

One of the reasons I prefer thicker patches is that lots of cotton materials are available to do the job, and it's generally a whole lot cheaper than linen. I won't order linen mostly cuzz it is so variable and I need to see it first hand before I'll buy it.

 

[DanC]

Heck, it's all variable. The best shootin'ist stuff I've found around here is some of my wife's dishrags!

Following that line, I also checked around and found some different dishrags at th' dollar store that shoot almost as well.

Kinda makes a feller wonder about how hard it was when th' fronteer was still a fronteer ...

Dan

 

[Paul R]

I have two old linen tableclothes that my grandmother made. My wife complains a lot whenever she uses them; something about having to dry clean them every time they are used, and how hard it is to get the wrinkles pressed out. I suggested helping her out by cutting them up into patch material. She got almost hostile. There was something about them being in immaculate condition and all the hand-done counted-crosstich embroidery. There's just no accounting for some women......

Paul