I did some experimenting on my own today, and I'm Excited at the results.
I wanted to test for myself the reports of being able to shoot all day, without swabbing between shots. I also hypothosised that it is less important what you moisten the patch material with, as long as it is appropriately moistened.
To test my hypothesis, I put up a five bull target at 50yds. I took an empty musket cap tin and placed 5 patches in it. Then without swabbing anything, shot a group in the center with spit moistened patches. Accuracy wasn't quite as good as my Dutch's dry patches, but close enough. The group was high and right, bud didn't want to change my sights yet.
Next was upper left, shot a group using patches moistened with my Moose Milk, similar results. The group was even higher, so moved the rear sight ten clicks down.
Next went to the upper right and shot a group with patches moistened with 50/50 Simple-Green and Alcohol, this was the best group of the day. The group was still high, so went another ten clicks down on the rear sight.
Next was bottom left, using patches moistened with 40% Dawn and 60% water. This group opened up. Not sure if it was me or the lube.
Finally, went bottom right, and shot a group using patches lubed with commercially prepared Thompson T-17 patch lube. This was clearly the worst group of the day, all over the place, and by the end of the group was starting to feel hard fowling in the bore. This quickly resolved once I moistened a couple more patches with Simple-Green/ Alcohol and shot a group off-hand at a steel spinner target.
So, analyzing the results, I conclude using moistened patches, instead of swabbing between shots works, as evidenced by 30+ shots without swabbing, no increase in loading effort, and no misfires.
I also concluded my hypothesis was correct within reason, the commercially made oil/wax lube was worst accuracy, and started to fowel after five shots, but returning to moistened patches eliminated the fowling issue. My Favorite cleaner Simple-Green and Alcohol gave best accuracy, does a phenomenal job keeping it clean and de-greased, and doesn't put any significant amounts of water in the barrel to cause rust. After shooting, the third cleaning patch came out as clean as it went in, followed by a patch dampened with Barricade.
Need to do some more testing, but am really excited about the results so-far.
[ATTACH=full]363160[/ATTACH]
