Patch material?

[musketman]

quote:Originally posted by Ironwood:
Musketman, I'm afraid you are in error about pure lead being harder than the cloth patch. The cloth of a patch actually engraves the lead of a ball. I beg to differ...

The riflings are what is compressing the patch to the ball and marking it, if you look at a pulled ball of recover a fired one, you will see heavy and light marks around the circumference of the projectile...

This is caused by the riflings via the patch, not the patch itself...

My smooth bore uses a tightly patched round ball, and there is no patch markings on them, except where a fold might be at the cut-off point, but that is from me, not the patch itself...

 

[Ironwood]

That is exactly what I'm talking about, those small indentations in the lead ball. If the ball was harder than the cloth the cloth would be destroyed. The cloth is strong enough to push the lead aside making those indentations. The patch grips the ball and the the rifling. The photo below is of a patched ball recovered after it was discharged with a CO2 discharger. The cloth made dents into the lead, not the other way around.

 

[musketman]

This is where the lands of the rifling compressed the cloth, the cloth is also compressed here too and is somewhat thinner (crushed) check out a patch with a micrometer...

Cut the patch along the area where it grips the ball, then measure where the land and grooves were, I'll bet the patch is thinner where it placed the marks on the ball...

The lead moved (compressed) the patch material too.

Still, my smoothbore should (by this standard) put a ring of patch markings around the ball, but it doesn't...

The mark is caused by the compression of the riflings, not because the patch is harder that the lead ball. If that was the case, then we could just shoot deer with lead patched cloth balls...

 

[Ironwood]

Musketman... now just what do you think the ballistic coefficient of a .50 cal ball of cotton is?? Sure we could hunt with a cotton ball if cotton was as dense as lead. Maybe you should look a little closer at a ball pulled from your smoothbore... or maybe you just need a thicker patch,

 

[musketman]

OK, thanks...
I'll do that...

 

[Deadeye]

You folks can argue about which is harder but steel barrels do get worn by the patches and the NRA did some tests to see if shooting lead bullets polished the rifles bore as some people said. After 10,000 bullets(and these were harder than pure lead) they concluded there was no wear at all. Not even any polishing of the bore. When a barrel is new and the rifling sharp the patches will be cut by the rifling after shooting for awhile the patches will have worn the sharp edges away.
Deadeye.

 

[Stumpkiller]

Not just the patch material. If you carry pre-lubed patches in your possibles bag or in a loading block you pick up dust and grit. This will wear the barrel.

Musketman/Ironwood: If you fit a ball to the smoothbore the same as a roundball is fit to the lands of a rifled bore, you'd get impressions in the lead then, too. After you were done pounding the ball home with a three pound mallet. Water is softer than lead, but it is not compressable. You can dip your hand in water effortlessly, but if you slap the water's surface as hard as you can it hurts. Lead reacts the same way. A t-shirt won't stop a lead bullet well at all.

Using a hardness streak test (remember Earth Science) the lead marks cotton cloth, so cotton must be harder. Paper (like cotton - a cellulose fiber product) is also harder than lead - that's why lead, and now graphite, pencils work.

Gee, I miss Mr. Wizard.

 

[musketman]

quote:Originally posted by Ironwood:
Musketman... I was just jerking your chain.That's OK, I have a self jerking chain...
Must be why my eyesight is bad...

Back to topic:
So, what about Kevlar cloth for patches?

The Carbon Fiber Cloth as also known, it is durable and highly temperature proof...

Of course, it would be hard to cut at the barrel...

 

[Ironwood]

Stumpkiller..... I really like that nickname... I've killed a few stumps in my time. Many on purpose and a couple by accident!

To tell the truth I was wondering how hard it would be to get a tightly patched ball down a smoothbore.

Thanks for the Earth Science lesson. You explained things much better than I ever could. I'm afraid my schooling took place long before there was such a thing as "Earth Science".

Musketman... I was just jerking your chain. I really know nothing about smoothbores. I'm sorry I got this thread way off the original topic.