With the talk about swabbing after shots, or not needing to.
Does anyone use a lubed "wad" under a patched round ball in there rifle?
I searched, but never really found an answer.
Something that would not contaminate the powder when left loaded.
Would card stock under a lubed felt wad work?
Something so that you could shoot all day without swabbing.
How about a wafer of black powder bullet lube?
Thoughts or ideas?
Where you live will have some effect on this as well as the powder used. Where I live humidity on a summer day will drop to around 10% sometimes less.
Water based lubes will work for long strings of shots but I stopped using them in the 1970s. Others love them so your mileage may vary.
I can shoot a pretty long string of shots with properly prepared tallow, beef smells better than deer, and a blow tube (at matches) using Swiss powder. In cold weather I use Pure Neatsfoot oil.
Soaps are corrosive to a greater or lesser extent and may attack stock finishes. It's really easy to over think this.
I could pass on some horror stories about "Moose Milk" etc. from back in the day (to the 1970s). If the rifle will shoot with a felt wad soaked in SPG Lube or tallow this might help. Using a better quality powder might help as well. However, some bore sizes/powder charge weights/granulations can produce hard fouling no matter what. I am told its a result of temperatures produced and some other factors. I ran into this in testing a 58 caliber with FFF Swiss. I think with this powder FF is a better idea over 54 caliber. My large bore rifle which uses a .662 ball and 140 gr of FF Swiss hardly fouls at all. My 50/54 calibers shoot abut 1/2 ball weight of FFF Swiss with no issues.
Powder quality.
At the time of the F&I War and the American Revolution powder quality, for the most part, was poor by modern standards. Much of it was not even press cake powder. But this was undergoing change from about the 1760s onward and by the late 18th c the powder was better and the improvements continued so that by the time of the American Civil War the best grade powders were much better than most powders used today. Swiss the only modern powder that is close to the better than the best powders of the second half of the 19th c.
The poor quality of powder in the 18th c was likely the reason that riflemen in the 18th c wiped every shot. Match shooters wiped every shot anyway to this day depending on the targets used. String measure or scoring ring targets require better accuracy than hit or miss steel targets to win. And remember that most matches in the FL era at least were shot from a rest and were closest to center scoring.
Dan
