Silk patches?

[Double Barrel]

So I saw the "Last of the Mohicans" the other day.  Hawkeye uses silk for ball patch claiming it gains 40 yards of range.

Any truth to this or is it more Hollywood hokum?

[Quartermaster James]

I've wondered about this too and struggled to figure out how it would give greater range. Now, I'm pretty new to this but it seems to me that greater range would be a result of greater pressure. This, of course, assumes charge and ball size and weight are constant. How does silk afford greater pressure? Does the thinner patch allow the lead to better fill the rifling grooves? Silk is pretty easy to come by today. If it gives that much improvement in range wouldn't we be using it today? Sounds like hokum to me.

[Three Hawks]

The accuracy of the whole Leatherstocking persona and story in both the books and movies is 98% wholesome, healthful bullfeathers.  The remaining two percent is openly in question.

The only reliable method of getting forty more yards using a round ball is to use patches woven from the webs of golden Himilayan snow spiders, lubricated with the tears of unborn unicorns.  The balls must be cast of rare and precious hyper-velocitized lead/titanium alloy.  

Movies are fun. Period.  For historical accuracy they are worse than useless.

YMMV.

Three Hawks

[BEAVERMAN]

Awwwwwwww come on Uncle Gerry, tell us how you really feel! :rotf  :rotf  :rotf  :rotf  :rotf  :rotf    

[Captchee]

The accuracy of the whole Leatherstocking persona and story in both the books and movies is 98% wholesome, healthful bullfeathers.  The remaining two percent is openly in question.

The only reliable method of getting forty more yards using a round ball is to use patches woven from the webs of golden Himilayan snow spiders, lubricated with the tears of unborn unicorns.  The balls must be cast of rare and precious hyper-velocitized lead/titanium alloy.  

Movies are fun. Period.  For historical accuracy they are worse than useless.

YMMV.

Three Hawks

 :lol:  :lol:

 ya fellas three hawks has it right ,  using silk wont get you anymore range or make you any more accurate .
 its Hollywood.

 Now there was something very factual that  folks miss . For some reason they over look   the first part of the silk  comment .
 When Nicholas sees Hawkeye loading  he questions s: tight weave ?
Hawkeye relies ; silk another 40 yards

 Now as was said silk wont make any difference. But a tight weave over a lose weave will .  So   Nicholas’s  notice that the martial was tighter in weave  the hawkeye normally used
  So if one had been say using muslin as patch material  and then went to a ticking , you would get higher breech pressures  which result from less blow by  .
 IMO the important part has nothing to do with silk  unless hawkeye was using a thin lose weave patch material and thus the silk was of better weave and quality .

 Would a marksman make such a change though at such a moment in time  when his shot had to count . NOPE im sorry  I would not think so .  He would have loaded the very  same load he was  used to shooting in that rifle . Thus knowing his point of aim and not questioning elevation or windage at longer distances . Thos 0 question in his mind as to the job being done

Again the movie is Hollywood and entertaining .  The books writings are fiction