by eddyb74
Patched balls used to be the only thing we were allowed to hunt with in Pa. I used Thompson Center Maxi Lube on my patches, which worked great. Pa. lossened up the rules and we are now allowed to use maxi balls and saboted bullets. I now use .44 pistol bullets in a plastic sabot. Much more accurate in my T/C Hawken .50 cal. The other thing I recomend is a solid brass ramrod. Heavy yes, but a godsend after a few shots.
What I thought he meant was that the heavy brass ramrod helped to keep the recoil down because it's in the ramrod well and also reduces muzzle rise. At least it did when I used a heavy brass one.
Then as another added benefit eddyb74 stated:
The nice thing about the brass is that it is heavy and you can drop it and force the ball down a dirty barrel.
I think that they're 2 different issues, one about dampening recoil and the other about how it helps to ram balls down a dirty barrel like during a woodswalk where swabbing isn't convenient.
I don't think that it means that he was necessarily doing anything wrong because his barrel was fouled.
And as still yet another additional benefit, solid brass rods do tend to be stronger than their similar diameter wood counterparts in practical use, especially when the sabots or PRB's are difficult to ram for whatever reason.