Designing the 2-diameter paper patch bullet.

[Don McDowell]

I do dry patch from time to time. But when I load for serious accuracy I wet patch.

When I wrap the dual diameters I try to keep the leading edge of the patch pretty square with the nose, much like you would with a straight shanked bullet.

[Distant Thunder]

Gavin,

You are correct about the twist vs. length thing. I had a .44-100 Remington in an 18-twist and that's a bit slow for a .44 caliber much over 485 grains and it preferred fairly blunt bullets even then. It did well out to 600 yards with my 485 grain bullet, I don't recall the length, but nothing worked well past 800.

[Distant Thunder]

Don,

When I dry patch these 2-diameter bullets the patch is a bit loose on the front end but tight on the base band. I don't see where it hurts any and I actually think it helps. Once the powder goes off everything pretty much assumes groove diameter any way so as long as it chambers without problems and that's how they are in my .40-65.

If you wet patch these I'm sure the patch is tight on both diameters due to the paper shrinking some when it dries. Either way will work and with wet patching I'm sure you can stretch the paper enough to keep the front edge square.

I put one of these new bullets in a fired case from my C. Sharps .45-70 and it fits nice and it appears as though I may still have some bullet left in the case when the groove diameter is up against the rifling. I'll have a closer look at that this weekend, I hope, and if that is the case I will have to give some a try. There won't be much bullet in the case but I can live with less if it will stays in long enough to chamber the round. It certainly won't hurt the accuracy any being shallow. This could get interesting!

I tried two different papers I have on this 2-daimeter bullet and the diameters checked the same as with Matt's paper, but my patches fit the bullet better.

[Don McDowell]

I've been using the Seth Cole 55w, which is an 8 lb paper for most things.
But then I got to messing with the SC 55Y, a 7 lb paper, and it seems to be working better with the bullets that are closer to bore diameter. It did take a bit of learning curve to wet patch with it, but once I got that down it hasn't been any more trouble than the 55w or the paper mill 9 lb cotton rag paper. When I wet patch I set the bullets on one of those cup/candle warmer's you plug in. By the time I get a line of bullets all the way around the thing, the first half dozen are dry enough to load directly into a case if need be. By using that warmer it really shrinks the paper evenly and you don't get paper slump on the base or the nose, makes a nice tight paper jacket.

I had one of my Shiloh's rebarreled and chambered to a 44-90 st, using a Green Mountain barrel I got in a drawing someplace. The reamer is one that Dan T designed, and it shoots paper patch really well. Sadly (or not?) it has shown a definite preference for the .434 470 BACO bullet cast from 16-1 over the dual diameter. Hope to have it all rung out and planning on taking it to Phoenix this March. Big push now is to get sight settings to 1000 without having to cast to many more bullets before time to pack and go. I do think that loading the dd's for a silhouette match would be fine.
Interesting thing with my 45 dd most rifles shoot it really well, but I do have one that absolutely hates the thing..
Still haven't had time to work with the dd 40 I had Brooks make, but I'm thinking that 7 lb paper may be just the ticket with it.. Have about 20 rounds loaded for the 40-70 and maybe if the weather holds I can get those shot before Phoenix. Also thinking that bullet might really shine in the 40-90 bn.

[Don McDowell]

Hoping to get some time to shoot the 45 dd in my original military Borchardt, but haven't even shot that rifle since I finally got all the lead and dried oil and crud out of the barrel.

[Distant Thunder]

Don,

That's kind of what I'm wondering on this whole wet vs. dry thing, I know my wet patches were tighter than my dry patches even on my bore diameter straight sided bullets. I also know my scores with the dry patched bullets are much improved over what they were with wet patched bullets. So I wonder is a tighter patch what we really want or need? It's just a question, I don't have the answer.

Is it the dry patching or is it something else? I don't know. Could be my barrel is finally broke in or maybe I've just gotten better at this after 25 years of competition? Or maybe it's because I just stopped fiddling with all the variables and finally stuck with one load? Whatever it is you won't see me going back to wet patching while things are working as good as they did in 2018.

I am not trying to stir up any controversy over wet vs. dry, both work and I can't say for sure one is better than the other. I have won long range matches with both.


Just so you know why I'm believing that dry patching works best for me I'll relate the following.

I don't remember exactly when I started dry patching my bullets, but I could look it up. I've been doing it for paper matches for a few years and it was working so I stayed with it. My prone rifle is a Hepburn with a Brent Danielson .45-70 pp chamber, in it I shoot a bullet just like this one I made for Matt only it is a straight sided bore diameter design. I dry patch these. The rest of the load info is just specific to my rifle and not important here. I shoot 3-4 paper matches a year, mostly at Lodi, WI.

In 2017 a good friend invited me to get back into BPCR silhouette after I had been away for 4 years. I have always enjoyed silhouette but due to having to travel too far for my taste I had only shot one match a year for several years before stopping altogether. I thought about what rifle I would use to shoot silhouette with and my .40-65 was my choice. I started to work on loads with GG bullets and just couldn't get anything to work as well as I'd like.

I was having some success shooting ppb at long range and Arnie Seitz asked me about helping him develop a 2-diameter .40 caliber ppb for his long throated .40-65. I was happy to work with him on the project, but I also saw an opportunity to try the design in my long throated .40-65. Arnie designed a very nice elliptical bullet of high BC for his 16-twist barrel. It shoots very well for him and Bob Wood, but I knew it was too long for my 18-twist .40. So I took the 2-diameter design and shorten it to 1.250" OAL and beefed up the nose to maximize the weight in hopes of knocking over rams more effectively than if it were lighter. I gave up some BC to get knock down at 500 meters.

I rebuilt the rifle doing everything I could think of to help accuracy and improve the appearance. If you going to shoot poorly you might as well look good doing it and I need all the help I can get! I also put a scope on the rifle, but I had used a scope on my C. Sharps .45-70 for silhouette before with little change in my scores over iron sights, so I took it off.

It took me a year to get the final bullet design and in August of 2017 I debuted this 2-diameter bullet at Alma, MI. Usually I will shoot something the upper teens on the first day and mid 20s on the second day. With my loosely patched PPBs I shot a 26 on the first day, but I only hit 1 chicken. I am not a good chicken killer! Then in a bad turn of events I got food poisoning that hit me about 2 am Sunday morning and I was unable to even sit up without very bad results, needless to say I did not shoot on Sunday. A big disappointment after all the time I put into preparing for that one match. Shit happens!

In May of 2018 I return to Alma with the same bullet and load. Now I was a AA shooter going into that May weekend, so I do ok for an occasional silhouette shooter. That weekend I shot my first two master class scores (32 & 31) and won the two-day aggregate, 2-diameter PPB with loose patches and all! There were a lot of firsts for me that weekend and I have no doubt much of it was due to the PPB I was shooting. Some of it was that I hit 3 chickens each day.


Wanting that 3rd Master score I returned in August, but the Master score was not to be, I shot a 30 and a 28 to finish 2nd overall. I only hit 1 chicken on Sunday as I caved to the pressure of knowing I had to hit 3 or more. And the rams gave me trouble both days hitting only 8 each day. Missing a pig, I missed a pig!, on Saturday didn't help either. I did shoot two "good for me" scores and none of the missed critters could be laid on the bullet or patches, it was all on me. So still and all 2018 was my best ever silhouette year, August to August.

In paper matches at Lodi starting in September of 2017 shooting my loosely wrapped .45-70 PPBs I narrowly beat Mark Schuenke by 3 points and a few Xs to win the Fall Classic.

Then in May of 2018 I decided for the first time ever I'd shoot my .40-65, of course it would be with my new PPB and loose patches, in the NRA Regional Championship match to see if my short, blunt little .40s would hold up beyond the ram line. I had been using my Hepburn in past years for mid range as well as long range. I also decided to shoot with the scope. We had only 16 shooters, but 8 of them used PP bullets. I ended up with the highest aggregate score after two days, but because there were only 3 scope shooters that fact got kind of swept aside and the match went to the high iron sight shooter. That is the rule and I have no problem with it except to say that if there is more than one scope shooter some sort of trinket should be handed to the scope shooter with the highest score. This isn't for me, I don't like a scope for paper matches and do much better with irons, but some of the scope shooters are just trying to continue with shooting even with eyes that are not what they once were and a little recognition would be nice. We are all getting older!


Then in June last year we had the 2nd American Creedmoor Cup match held at Lodi. After day one I lead Mark by an X! After day two Mark had beaten me by 9 points. I struggled at 900 yards, again! Mark is one of the better shooters I know and anytime I am nipping at his heels I am happy. And I'm doing with it paper patch bullets so I win on style points!

We have had the Cup for two years now shooting it on Thursday and Friday, then shooting the Mid-states Regional Championship on Saturday and Sunday. Last year we had rain on Sunday and could not shoot, so right or wrong I won that match having had the high score at the end of day one. Mark finished second by only 3 points and a couple of Xs.

The Fall Classic was in September again last year and I won that over Cliff Gregg by 20 points with those same dry patched bullets in my Hepburn.

That is 5 1st place finishes and 2 second place starting in late 2017 through 2018. Why would I do anything other than dry patch?

2018 was without a doubt my best shooting year in my 26 years of BPCR. So, was it my PP bullets? I think so. Was it my dry patching? You can decide that for yourself, I've already decided for myself.

This got long, but history is important when deciding what is working for you and what isn't. Everybody's journey is different, this is mine.

[Don McDowell]

Jim I think that especially in threads like this an honest and open discussion is a very good thing to have.
Certainly no complaints on my end.
I do add a swipe of jojoba oil to the exposed patch, and I think that helps with a number of things.
Now if you want some stuff that will drive some folks crazy. If you look at Eddie's scores at Lodi, and then fast forward to July when he won the Dean Scoggins memorial match , or back to 2017 when he came within a hairs breath of setting a national record at 500... He does it with a grease cookie, under the bullet and jojoba on the patch, shooting a bullet that looks like it has the ballistic qualities of a john boat.


That's also one of the fascinating things on this paper patch journey there are a number of ways that work for any given number of folks.
Keep the info coming.

[Gunlaker]

Who are you guys getting to make these 2 diameter molds? I imagine Jim that you are still making them for yourself, but is BACO or Steve Brooks making them? I'm not sure if and when I'll try them as I am happy with the bore diameter bullets, but you guys have me thinking about them for sure.

I'm not 100% sure about dry vs. wet. I think each has its advantages, but the thing that got me started dry patching is that I noticed that every now and then, if I try to peel the patch off an old wet patched bullet, it will stick to the bullet like it was wallpapered on. Most of the time it doesn't do that, but a few out of every batch of 50 seem to. That's wet patched 8lb Seth Cole and air dried. Dry patching never does that for me of course.

Don, I also have to try your jojoba oil trick.

I've also had some super results in short range ( 200m ) testing with lube cookies under the patch. My .45-2.4" highwall with the Dan T PP chamber has shot sub-moa at that distance on occasion. I once won a local gong match to 800m using lube cookies under a patched bullet in my .45-2-7/8" C. Sharps rifle.

Jim, it's interesting to hear about that .45-70 C. Sharps that doesn't like patched bullets. I owned one and it didn't either, although the .45-110 loved them. That .45-70 had a massive .463" diameter freebore though.

Chris.

[Distant Thunder]

Don,

With Eddie's john boat bullet believe me I understand that if you know your bullet and can read the conditions you do not have to be some super duper high BC boat tailed piece of lead to shoot good scores. There are advantages to a higher BC no doubt, but accuracy will win the match when combined with good spotting and knowing your bullet. A high BC bullet may be more forgiving in a misread but in this game misread by much and your off the paper. A miss by an inch is no different than one by 3 feet.

Do my blunt little 40s drift more in the wind? Yes, but if I steer them right they go to the same spot every time.


The only time I have used a grease cookie was with pp in my .44-100 and there it was needed too get any kind of accuracy at all. I think there are benefits in the bigger cases just like the wad stack that some shooters use. I have had good results using just one wad and no cookies in all my other chamberings. Most often it is a .060" LDPE wad, but in my .45-90 I had to used a .060" HDPE wad for best accuracy. You don't really know what will work until you try it.


Chris,

I have other C. Sharps rifles that do very well with pp, it's just the one that is playing hard to get with pp. It has about 3/16" freebore at .460 diameter. I'm hoping a 2-diameter bullet will be the answer.

I'm pretty sure Brooks will make 2-diameter to whatever you need. One size does not fit all, but it should be a simple matter to figure out what diameters and lengths are needed for any rifle. That is what I have tried to explain in this thread.

[Don McDowell]

Chris, Brooks makes the dual diameters to your specs. Can either get a fixed length or the nose pour adjustable. If you do try the jojoba oil, don't use much just a small drop on your finger tip, and wipe the excess off with a tea towel.
Jim the 45 rifle that shoots the dd bullet the best is the CPA 45-90 , their chamber has a bit more freebore than other's , but it will shoot that dd better than it will a greaser.