My thoughts of Moose Milk Patch Lube

[frontier gander]

Got out this evening with the Kentucky flinter and decided to try her out again with the 90gr 3f Olde Eynsford powder, .020" patch, home cast .490" round ball at 50 yards. My first 3 shots I used the same patches I lubed when I first treated them with Moose Milk. That was on Monday evening. Today my groups were 3 1/2" at 50 yards!

Great reloading, no trouble at all! The patches I did recover were torn up pretty bad. I went inside and got the bottle of Moose Milk and lube one patch at a time. My final 2 shots they were touching as usual! Patches were also in perfect shape again and no tearing or rips.

My thoughts right now is that Moose Milk makes a beautiful target range lube, possibly even a short day hunt lube, but not a lube that should be trusted after a few days in the field with the same load in the barrel. I feel it dries out to quickly for a longer period hunt where the hunter may not shoot after a few days.

I did make a couple short videos of me firing the gun, mainly so I could see how quick my ignition is and to watch the end of the barrel. It looks like Moose Milk may be contaminating the powder where the patch sits and giving me the pretty sparks at the end of the barrel. Who knows, All I am wanting right now is superb accuracy and so far, I've achieved just that.



I'll add the videos to the post tomorrow for all to see. I am extremely happy with how quick this Traditions lock is! I had an issue where a fat chunk of flint in the middle dulled down and wouldn't fire. I knapped that section off and bam! Back into action and throwing thick sparks into the pan.

[Dphariss]

If you allow the water in moose milk to evaporate you need to perhaps change the load. This is similar to what I use for match loads which is WS oil 1:5 with water then the water dried away. Its a medium friction lube at 5 to one and higher friction at 7:1.  I have one rifle that likes a patch over the powder with a dry lube. Also a lube that is less slick may shoot better with less powder. Or the barrel might like a slick lube. A drier lube can result in the patch being damaged when started if the fabric is weak

Weak...
Unless using denim or some other tough fabric that has been carefully tear tested blown patches may be the fabric.
I used blue stripe ticking for decades with no complaints.
However, recently the imported and "finished" in the USA stuff has proven to be so poor as to be useless.
Try tearing it for an inch or so down the stripe at several points across the fabric. I found a bolt yesterday that was impossible to tear in one place and tore easily in another. Not even suitable for its intended use much less patching. So its possible to make patches from the stuff and have only a few fail in use and cause fliers. It can drive a person to distraction since the patches found are generally the good ones so its thought to not be a patch problem leading to "#$! over? " situation resulting in various things like rock biting, head banging etc when accuracy fails.
I have switched to some linen I have and things are looking better.

Dan