Wet Patches
 

I have started shooting with patched round ball out of my Hawken. Working over here in Iraq and my working partner says he use to wet his patches in his mouth before loading his Hawken. Does this get the patch wet enough for using or is it better to use something else?

Its ok to use on the shooting range but when hunting the spit will dry out and you'll have a dry patch.

Bore butter, crisco, bear fat, deer tallow, thats all good to melt down and dip your patches into. Squeeze out the excess oil and let it dry and you'll be good to go.

Good old olive oil works excellent as a patch lube. Ray

thanks that helps. Now I understand better what he was talking about. Works for me!

Now you can use spit as the lube when you set a roundball, and they work just fine. Also spit can be used when you swab the bore of the rifle. Spit actually works really well. At shooting matches you often see an old timer with a chunk of cloth in his mouth.

I used to shoot spit patched roundball all the time and had good accuracy. Then bore butter came and we went to that. Now I use moose milk. But in a pinch, I have often resorted back to a spit ball for shooting and for swabbing.

When I shoot black powder at the range I almost always put a patch in my mouth after loading. By the time I shoot the patch is moist enough to use to swab the bore using both sides of the patch. Then I reload and repeat. The good old spit patch keeps fouling down to a minimum. After about two groups (6shots) I swab the bore out with a couple of patches dampened in Turkey Tracks BP cleaner followed by an alcholol patch.

So for hunting I should use lubed patch and spit at the range?

If you want to use spit patch and ball for hunting, that's fine. Nothing wrong with that. I use moosemilk only because I prefer it.

A patch lube should be found that provides the best consistency with the powder and load that's being fired, whether at the range or in the field.
To switch around the patch lubes doesn't make much sense because that's altering the load and possibly its performance.
And spit is only really used much by those loading with real black powder and not with the sub powders.
There are much better lubes than spit. Spit is only used because it's better than using nothing when loading a ball down a barrel that's fouled with black powder residue.
A good lube should help to keep the barrel clean by effectively swabbing the barrel during the process of ramming each subsequent PRB.
It helps to soften the fouling so that it can be partially pushed down into the breech during ramming.
That allows many more shots to be fired in a row without needing to swab the barrel as frequently in between shots.
The frequency of swabbing is determined by the amount of powder loaded and the resulting accuracy. The more powder that's loaded the more fouling that's produced. Loading more powder often leads to needing a more effective patch lube than spit to continue shooting without more frequent swabbing.
Swabbing some barrels clean can sometimes hurt accuracy as much as having too much fouling.
Every gun barrel and loading are different and so is each patch lube.
If the right patch lube is used the amount of fouling in the barrel stays pretty consistent for a lot more shots and so will the performance.

I once tested several lubes for accuracy out to 50 yards. I tested Moosemilk, Olive Oil, Bore Butter, my home made lube, and spit. The two top shooters were Olive Oil and moosemilk. The test was done with black powder as Arcticap noted. It was in the fall. But an amazing thing was with spit, accuracy was still more then acceptable. And the fouling was not all that bad for loading the next round.