tpelle
Member
I've become interested in making combustible paper cartridges for my 1860 Army. I looked at just about every YouTube video on the subject that I could find, and the one that most impressed me was the one by that guy in Hungary that posts as "capandball.eu". That was the set of instructions I followed, but with one exception - he cast "Johnson & Dow" heeled bullets, but due to not being set up for doing any bullet casting I was going to have to use .454 round balls.
I used curler paper for the main tapered tube, and a single ply of facial tissue on the bottom, as on the capandball video. I have a spout on my Colt-type powder flask that throws 27 grains of Pyrodex P, which filled the paper tubes to within about 5/16" of the top.
I took the round ball and smeared the bottom half around on my glue stick, then inserted it into the filled tube and sort of "massaged" the tube so as to get it to stick to the ball.
I had made up six paper tubes to try out. The first ball I "seated" I pushed down the tube to the powder, but I felt this was too deep - there was a lot of paper tube still above the ball. I had it in my head that I wanted the paper tube glued to the ball in it's "southern hemisphere", so to speak, so that the lead ball itself would contact the chamber wall when pressed in by the rammer. The second tube was defective, and split open during handling, so I deep-sixed it. The remaining four I poured a little bit of Cream-of-Wheat filler on top of the charge, up to within about 1/8" to 3/16" of the top. this left just a slight bit of paper to glue to the bottom of the ball so that better than half of it was exposed.
How did they fire? Pretty good, actually. All five completed cartridges pressed into the chamber just fine, except I did end up with some paper exposed at the cylinder mouth. I capped the five chambers, walked out into the back yard and down to the creek, where there's an old dead locust tree to use as a backstop, and let fly. (The beauty of living in the country!)
All five cartridges fired with a satisfying throaty boom and a cloud of smoke. I did have a problem with the last chamber, as it appeared that the cap fired properly, but the nipple may have been plugged and the cartridge didn't fire. I admit that I did not fire a cap on each empty chamber before loading - totally slipped my mind. I'll put it down to a senior moment. I pulled the barrel and made sure that there was no obstruction, then decided that it appeared that the ball hadn't moved at all in the chamber. I re-capped it and it fired just like the rest, with pretty much the same sound and recoil.
Unfortunately I didn't take any pics of the cartridges - envision a tadpole with a serious weight issue - but I do have a picture of my home-molested Pietta:
Over the years I've had it I've refitted the wedge and the bolt, corrected the bolt timing, polished and de-fanged the hammer face, swapped the stock nipples with Treso's, re-contoured the back of the barrel where Pietta got the shape wrong, and aged the finish.
I'm retiring at the end of the year, and I think I'm going to enjoy messing around with my percussion revolvers.
I used curler paper for the main tapered tube, and a single ply of facial tissue on the bottom, as on the capandball video. I have a spout on my Colt-type powder flask that throws 27 grains of Pyrodex P, which filled the paper tubes to within about 5/16" of the top.
I took the round ball and smeared the bottom half around on my glue stick, then inserted it into the filled tube and sort of "massaged" the tube so as to get it to stick to the ball.
I had made up six paper tubes to try out. The first ball I "seated" I pushed down the tube to the powder, but I felt this was too deep - there was a lot of paper tube still above the ball. I had it in my head that I wanted the paper tube glued to the ball in it's "southern hemisphere", so to speak, so that the lead ball itself would contact the chamber wall when pressed in by the rammer. The second tube was defective, and split open during handling, so I deep-sixed it. The remaining four I poured a little bit of Cream-of-Wheat filler on top of the charge, up to within about 1/8" to 3/16" of the top. this left just a slight bit of paper to glue to the bottom of the ball so that better than half of it was exposed.
How did they fire? Pretty good, actually. All five completed cartridges pressed into the chamber just fine, except I did end up with some paper exposed at the cylinder mouth. I capped the five chambers, walked out into the back yard and down to the creek, where there's an old dead locust tree to use as a backstop, and let fly. (The beauty of living in the country!)
All five cartridges fired with a satisfying throaty boom and a cloud of smoke. I did have a problem with the last chamber, as it appeared that the cap fired properly, but the nipple may have been plugged and the cartridge didn't fire. I admit that I did not fire a cap on each empty chamber before loading - totally slipped my mind. I'll put it down to a senior moment. I pulled the barrel and made sure that there was no obstruction, then decided that it appeared that the ball hadn't moved at all in the chamber. I re-capped it and it fired just like the rest, with pretty much the same sound and recoil.
Unfortunately I didn't take any pics of the cartridges - envision a tadpole with a serious weight issue - but I do have a picture of my home-molested Pietta:
Over the years I've had it I've refitted the wedge and the bolt, corrected the bolt timing, polished and de-fanged the hammer face, swapped the stock nipples with Treso's, re-contoured the back of the barrel where Pietta got the shape wrong, and aged the finish.
I'm retiring at the end of the year, and I think I'm going to enjoy messing around with my percussion revolvers.
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