It doesn't freeze, Bob. We call anything we put on patches, "Lube", spit, plain water, oils, greases, whatever. What this concotion does or doesn't do is freeze on the muzzle or part way down the bore when we are loading it, as spit or plain water does during the "cooler" months, up here, so we started using winter windshield washer fluid + a bit of oil many years ago and if it ain't broke - kind of thing.
Some guys were using Windex, but that was a lot more expensive than WWWF. A gallon lasts a whole year, or more depending on the amount of shooting one does, of course.
I use pre-cut, pre-lubed patches nowadays, although I used to always cut at the muzzle, long time ago when I had lots of spit. Now, I find it's easier to use precuts, prelubed.
The mount of oil introduced will vary with each person - I add the oil as it seems to slow the evapouration in the summer time and will remain in the patch to help 'lube' if the patches do dry somewhat. Having the lubed patches stored in a more water proof container in the summer time is a good idea - Speer bullet boxes in the smaller sizes work very well but are bright yellow plastic, a bit hard on the eyes.
I use about 1 ounce of oil per 10 ounces of liquid. Shake to blend then pour over the patches - pour out the excess back into the bottle, gently squeeze out the excess with a finger and pour that back into the bottle- done. The patches are wet, but not dripping-out-of-the-box & into the pouch-type wet, but wet. If you are getting crunchy loading, your patch is too thin or not enough lube to clean each shot previously fired.
Note- If I had to wait 10 or 15 minutes between shots, I'd probably wipe the bore between shots when using water based lubes. If using oils or greases, I'd re-load right away and not have trouble with dried fouling. After the shot is fired, the fouling is soft, due to moisture from the previous shot. Reloading with a wet patch is easy as the fouling (of previous shot) is not completely dry and the wet patch easily pushes the previous shot's fouling down the bore.
Note, also - you can actually have a load combination that seemingly shoots "cleanly" with no fouling buildup yet is still blowing by slightly (brown scorch streaks on the patch from the grooves) or the patches are being stressed too much - ie: almost cut when loading, yet the load is not as accurate as it should be- as the patch is too thin.
I found this with my new .50, using an 8 ounce denim which I measured at .020" & a .495 ball. The combination shot cleanly, but there was some blowby - visible by a couple brown scorch marks on picked up patches. The next time out, I had switched to the heavier railroad ticking I measured at .0235", loading was still easy, patches were litterally re-useable, no scorch marks with perfect sealing & no stressing of the material by the lands upon loading. Upon cleaning the rifle & lock in the small stainless bucket I'm suing now, mind you I only fired about 50 shots using 3drams of 2F and the combination noted, the water was just a light greyish and still quite clear. I had fired the last load with about 15 or 20gr. of powder and a standard patched ball, thus cleaning out almost all of the fouling buildup in the breech area. The water only tasted slightly sulfurish - YES.
I currently use Sucrets tins along with the trackofthewolf fire-starter hinged boxes, their glasses boxes or the their (about 2 5/8"" dia.) snuff (or whatever they are) containers also make good patch containers for wet patches, especially for large patches.
I try to anticipate how many patches I'll need for any given 'shoot' and only lube up that number as applying lube several times increases the oil content with each re-application of 'lube' and thus has the possibility to change point of impact or accuracy. Some guns, like my 14 bore, do not seem to care what lube or how much is there.
