I use a 24 # linen and soak it 10 minutes in cold water . It's amazing how thin you can stretch it if you want to.

Your welcome.

I have a ream of 25% cotton onion skin from the paper mill store. Here is the problem. The link Slow Burn has posted is 100% wood fiber. No cotton was used in this paper. I am not saying it is bad. I am saying I have not used it and it is not cotton. The paper mill store quit carrying the 25% 9#. I don't know why but they did.

I wrap mine on dry and size it to .501 this presses it on and it stays on very well. Soaking with water is another step that takes more time to do. Wetting is not needed if you making the Lee 500S&W bullet and your planning to size with the lee sizer.

Sharpsshooter, What is the thickness of that paper? That 24# paper is going to be seriously thick.
If flounder wants to use the 24# he is going to have to size the bullet down before he wraps and probably the bullet after it is wrapped too.

flounder, if you use paper other than cotton 9# the info I give you will probably not work. The info I give is for 9# onion skin 25% cotton. When wrapping paper on bullets thickness of the paper is a BIG part of the process. The paper thickness, bullet diameter, and the bore, and hardness of the lead all make up what works in a particular rifle. I personally think that the paper patched bullets made the way I do it would shoot very well out of your .504 rifle. Ron

hey guys,
buffaloarms.com website has the 9#onion skin paper and a lot of other stuff for shooting paperpatch.Go to the homepage and enter a search for paper patch.you'll get about 12 pages of stuff.

Ron
If I remember right it is .0045 . I will check and see . One thing I do know is that it's 30 bucks for a ream :biggrin:

Check out this article . It's amazing how thin you can stretch linen

http://www.swage.com/ftp/ppatch.pdf

Is that onion skin about .0020 or what is it? I never have tried it , even though it seems to be popular .

Yes the 9# onion skin is .002 for the stuff I have. That paper at .0045 would be a problem for me with my bullets. It would be skirting the law for Idaho bullets. In Idaho the bullet has to be within .010 of bore diameter. I have never used the heavier paper. Ron

I'd be willing to bet you could stretch it thin enough to meet the legal requirements, but then again if something works why change it. I might try that onion skin sometime. I was just always led to believe any wood pulp paper was bad and I thought onion skin was just a thin wood pulp paper. It's obvious that your paper patching is working good though , thats what counts.

Who the heck comes up with that sort of silly stuff?

Idiots who haven't a clue whats going on.

Original onion skin was 25% cotton. The older "air mail" paper was also 25% cotton onion skin. It is getting tough to find 25% cotton onion skin paper. Every time I find it I buy it. The 100 % wood pulp onion skin might work ok. The problem would be the ash content. It might be a little tougher on barrels.

The problem with stretching it to make it thinner is that is an unknown variable. Cutting the paper for that and installing it wet would be tough to get the stretch and make the ends meet.

The methods I have written about are repeatable by anyone that wants to try it. The biggest problem is finding the paper. I have had amazing luck with the paper patched bullets. Ron