Silk Patches?

[mcawful]

Okay, alot of you know I'm new to Muzzleloading, so I'm going to ask a question that may seem pretty dumb to you seasoned fellers.
I was watching "The Last of The Mohicans " and the main guy ( Hawkeye, Nathaniel, etc) cut some silk for a patch and said it would give the ball more distance.
Hollywood B.S. ?

[cayugad]

While silk would work since it is somewhat flame resistant material, where it would give himmore yards, I doubt it. A ball and patch is only as accurate as the load worked up. To simply pick a different kind of a patch seemed kind of strange to me. Besides that, silk is a much thinner patch material them most of the old pillow tick and muslin. So by decreasing the thickness of the patch they would have decreased the barrel pressure, which should have meant less power.

Considering when that movie time frame was, most of the rifles I would have thought would have been muskets. Notice there were no short starters in the movie, simply patch the ball and drive it down the barrel with the ramrod.That is a loose patch and ball combination. Seeing they were muskets, and no rifling, their over all range of accuracy again would have been effected.

I would write the thing off to movie magic.. but it might make for a fun experiment. Now where were them old silk shirts of mine...

[nchawkeye]

All of that movie, and most of The Patriot are Hollywood BS...

Funny thing about The Last of the Mohicans...the late John Bivins built the first rifle to be used in that movie...he built one historically correct for the time period....The director didn't like it...that's why Hawkeye is carring a rifle from 1790 or so in a movie set in the 1750s....

[MO Archer]

ORIGINAL: cayugad

I would write the thing off to movie magic.. but it might make for a fun experiment. Now where were them old silk shirts of mine...

Just write it on your honey-do list to take one of your wife's to the range next time.....

[mcawful]

ORIGINAL: cayugad

While silk would work since it is somewhat flame resistant material, where it would give himmore yards, I doubt it. A ball and patch is only as accurate as the load worked up. To simply pick a different kind of a patch seemed kind of strange to me. Besides that, silk is a much thinner patch material them most of the old pillow tick and muslin. So by decreasing the thickness of the patch they would have decreased the barrel pressure, which should have meant less power.

Considering when that movie time frame was, most of the rifles I would have thought would have been muskets. Notice there were no short starters in the movie, simply patch the ball and drive it down the barrel with the ramrod.That is a loose patch and ball combination. Seeing they were muskets, and no rifling, their over all range of accuracy again would have been effected.

I would write the thing off to movie magic.. but it might make for a fun experiment. Now where were them old silk shirts of mine...

I was thinking the same thing. My wife has some leftover silk (just scraps) from a quilt she was working on and I purloined them.
For you folks north of the mason-dixon line-that means i stole 'em.

[TUK101]

One thing to consider though, silk is very slick, and at the time they where using spit patches so a dry silk patch over a wet spit patch might have some validity. I am not saying that it does, just that it may be something to consider.