Cleaning and Reusing Patches?

Why do you want to put toxins (lead, copper, etc.) into your water supply?
In any case, cotton that's not woven will disintegrate in a washing machine.
"...use a LOT of cotton patches cleaning my black powder guns..." You're doing it wrong. You need to let the solvent(plain water or soapy water) do its job.
 
And just where do the toxins you clean out go.

At any rate, cleaning patches have no lead only fouling. Lead never touches the inside of the bore. No copper at all. Don't know where that idea comes from. Carbon, some sulfur and some nitrites. That's about it.
 
Interesting idea I guess. Never tried it and likely won't. Patches, primers/caps, bullets and powder are consumables. For me it's part of the cost of shooting.
 
Depending on whether your patches are cut up or not, they can be recycled. I save mine for the char cloth tin and I finally found a source of non-screw tins: San Francisco's Chinatown herb stores. Hong Kong made (and not Workers' Paradise) fruit flavour individually wrapped hard candy in a convenient size tin.
 
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