[Jeff Higgins]

I've fired hundreds of rounds of paper patched bullets in several different calibers, and not all of them black powder. For anyone interested in reading up on how to make them work, I would highly recommend the late Paul Mathews' book The Paper Jacket. It's the most exhaustive treatise on the subject I have ever read.

It's a very tedious process, to be as kind as possible. It only enjoyed a very brief moment in the sun before ammunition manufacturers abandoned the concept. Even though conceived in the early black powder cartridge rifle era, in my experience, it is actually more suited to use with smokeless powder.

Black powder loads absolutely require that something be included to help keep the fouling soft. They cannot be successfully shot "dry", as modern smokeless jacketed bullets loads are assembled. Grease groove bullets carry this fouling softening agent in the form of the bullet lube in their grease grooves. Paper patched bullets can't do that. Our solution, then, is to place a "grease cookie" of bullet lube under the bullet. The stack-up in the case (from the bottom up) is then powder, cardboard wad, grease cookie, another cardboard wad, then the bullet. The idea is to have this grease cookie atomize in the bore to be absorbed into the powder fouling in an effort to keep it soft.

Well, it just doesn't seem to work very well. You still wind up wiping the bore after every shot in an effort to maintain any sort of accuracy. The "blow tube" we use when shooting grease groove bullets, with which we puff a few deep breaths down the bore between shots to help keep the fouling soft, is not as effective on the much drier fouling left behind when paper patching. We try in vain to add more lube to the grease cookie, but all that does is ruin accuracy in its own right.

Where paper patching shines is with modern, high velocity loads when you want to use a really soft bullet alloy. The expansion of a pure lead, heavy .45 caliber bullet driven out of a hot .45-70 load or .458 Winchester Magnum load is something to behold. I used to shoot a 500 grain bullet from an old adjustable mold, cast from pure lead, at over 2,000 fps from my Ruger #1 .458. It was absolutely devastating on larger, soft skinned game - it was like a .458 caliber varmint load.

The very serious downside of paper patching is barrel wear. With the pressures generated in even a black powder cartridge rifle (mid 20,000 psi range), not to mention modern loads exceeding 40,000 or 50,000 psi, the paper becomes very abrasive. Guys who have done this far more than I have have reported barrel life as low as a few thousand rounds, which in a match rifle, sure isn't much. Might be o.k. in a hunting rifle but, hell, I shoot most of mine more than that. I know most folks don't, but there is still the tedium of assembling these loads. Lots of extra fooling around that other techniques simply don't require.