Paper Cartridges

[shifty]

 

  Doe you have to use Nitrate paper to make paper cartridges?

[Candle Snuffer]

Are you making them for a cap and ball revolver?  If so, I use the Tops Cigarette papers and they work great. I believe they have a level of
nitrate in them. I can't say it's mandatory to use a nitrate paper? I've never tried anything else.

[shifty]

  No i had just read some of the older post on here about them for a ML Rifle but didn't catch what kind of paper to use.Was thinking about trying some in a 54cal rifle.

[drago]

I would be careful with quick reloads, it would be hard to see a ember in the barrel. 63 Sharps use paper cartridges but it's a breach loader and you can look through the barrel to see if it's safe.

[bob in the woods]

I use a bond type paper for my .62 rifle.  A .54 is about the smallest bore I would use cartridges in. The paper acts as a wad and a paper jacket for the ball. I've never had a problem with embers in the bore. I use cartridges for hunting, since they are handy to carry, and they shoot to the same point of aim as the patched balls in my rifle.  I usually dip the ball end of the cartridge in a bear oil/beeswax mix.

[Daryl]

I use a bond type paper for my .62 rifle.  A .54 is about the smallest bore I would use cartridges in. The paper acts as a wad and a paper jacket for the ball. I've never had a problem with embers in the bore. I use cartridges for hunting, since they are handy to carry, and they shoot to the same point of aim as the patched balls in my rifle.  I usually dip the ball end of the cartridge in a bear oil/beeswax mix.

ditto to what Bob has said, although I have never dipped the ctg. in a lube. I have only used them in a 14 bore rifle as well as an 11 bore cal. Bess replica.

In neither gun did I use anything but bond paper - never had one ignite and that included 165gr. 2f charges in the 14 bore rifle.  just confetti, no burning paper. I am sure if you used nitrated paper, you would set fires in the summer time, just as people shooting dry oiled patches and thin patches seem to do.  In extra dry years of late, we have to have fire-extinguishers or buckets of water on the firing line at Hefley Creek rendezvous due to the fire threat from thin patches.  Every year, the shooting is stopped while shoots go forward to put out the smoldering patches and small fires that set almost immediately. I suspect the problem would be worse with nitrated paper ctgs.

My late buddy Brad tried nitrated paper ctgs. in his percussion Sharps rifle. After firing, he could reach into the breech with a finger and pull out the paper ctg., mostly in tac and sometimes smoldering- burning his finger. He gave up on paper ctgs. and went with loose powder after that. Due to the paper ctg. in a ML gun being all ahead of the powder charge, it all is expended. Since it is compressed against the powder and around the ball, it creates a seal. for a rifle to shoot well with paper ctg. the wrapping around the ball must engrave somewhat in the rifling so the ball spins and thus is stabilized. The waded up paper behind it acts as a seal - thus, it does not burn.

If you shoot loose combinations such as the military issued throughout the 1800's, you are on your own due to the fires you might/will set in dry locals.

load them tight, and no fires.

Bruce, (wish I still had his address) a member here, experimented a great deal with paper ctgs. in his underhammer rifles, up to a .72 cal. with excellent results, as-did DPhar here.
Another friend of mine used them in his 11 bore rifle that Taylor built, with good results in a rounded bottomed deep groove Getz bl. Due to the deeper grooves filling with fouling, he was restricted to 3 or 4 shots before he had to wipe out the bore. With my rifle's .012' square rilfing, i was able to shoot up to 10 accurate shots, then I'd shoot a 3 dram load with a WET cloth patched ball. That would clean the bore and I was able to shoot another 10 paper ctgs. without accuracy loss.

As bob said, same accuracy as a tightly patched ball and same point of impact.  They work!

[sonny]

I have a 16 gauge smoothie/English officers fowler, an had great luck with paper patched roundballs. I made an icecream cone looking wooden cartridge shaper from a broom stick. That was fun!!!!......sheesh........but I have it now. I then used a protractor to make a perfect circle, an adjusting the paper cutout to roll any amount of wraps around the ball to adjust thickness......works perfectly!!!....When the cone is formed a bit of elmers glue on edge hold the cone in shape. the pointy end is folded over an flattened to make the cup complete. I then weigh different powder charges, pour it into the cone, insert the ball (slightly undersized to barrel bore)sprue up, and tie a small string around the ball to slightly separate the powder from the ball an give you a better push into the bore without shoving the ball thru the paper cone(guess how I learned that!). The paper is folded over the ball tightly or can be twisted into a point,then tied off there also, (ball is contained). I made a 1part bear grease to a 3 part bee wax soup an dipped the ball in the soup right to the string o ball bottom. Let it harden, an head to the range. When loading just pick up the paper icecream cone, bite off the tip of the cone,spill powder down the bore an thumb start the paper wraped ball grease coat lump down until you crunch up the cone at the breech plug. I can tell you this,when you see how sweet this works, powder horns and bullet boards lose there shine.....and @!*% they shoot!...powder charges and paper wraps can be adjusted if needed for the best tightness and accuracy.........sonny

[Daryl]

This is a leather ctg. box, Hunter Brand, that holds a modern box of 20 rounds. I made a wooden block for it to hold my hunting ctgs. Included in the picture is a tapered plug for making tapered ctgs. along with some of the ones I made for the .75 Bess.



Here are the original (I believe) drawing for making French paper ctgs.


Here is a drawing of the English ctg.


I prefer the tapered ones as they ride in the pocket nicely, ball down, pointy end up, are easily picked up and when the tiny end is ripped off with the teeth ,very little powder is lost. I have carried paper ctgs. in my pocket all hunting season without them breaking or leaking. As Sonny does, I use some Elmer's or other paper glue along the seam and folded over point.

All of the ctgs. are double layer of paper.

The pointy end is shoved into the bore and the ball end will stop at the muzzle while you pull out the loading rod. By the time you get the rod out, the powder will have dribbled into the bore and then you choke up on the rod and push the paper patched ball and all the paper below it, down onto the powder.

Prime or cap and fire.

[shifty]

  Ok , I made me a little tapered mandrel 4 3/8" long and tapered  from .600 to .180,and made up a few tubes of 20# Bond paper(.004) with 2 1/2 wraps,will try these in a few days( we have rain and winds now) don't know how these will work in my 1-48 twist, i have read older post where some prefer slow twist for these ,so i guess i will find out.
  Some of this Muzzle loading stuff i don't think is writen in Stone but maybe Sand,hehe.

[Daryl]

If they are snug going in, they should work just fine, shifty.  Mine required me to choke up on the loading rod and carefully get them started before attempting to shove them down.  I could also use the short starter. Accuracy was the same as with patched ball. Someone here on the forum, years ago, tested them in a .54 Kodiak rifle, which has 48" twist, I believe with good results. I practiced loading and shooting and got mine down to 8 seconds for a load, cap and aimed fire.  Mind you, that was with a 31" bl. and an English designed stock, specifically designed for rapid sight acquisition.  Thus, is was easy to out-perform the musket's rate of fire of the 1800's which was 3 shots in a minute. I, however never fired more than 3 shots in rapid succession during practice.

[shifty]

           

            Thanks for that info Daryl ,the reason I am going to try these is just for 1 or 2 follow up shots while hunting,and yes I have needed followup shots on two occasions not for finishing shot but because of missing the Deer,one Monday last yr I missed a small spike at about 50yds I was in a tree stand and shooting a short barreled conical gun I missed him twice and said no more shots right now,waited a while and got down and went home ,practiced shooting some more this was a new to me gun with peeps,well went back the next Monday and here he comes again in same spot I shoot and miss but see that i was over shooting him reload and try again holding lower dropped him on that shot.

[Daryl]

I played with the paper ctgs. due to the -30 to -56 temps we were hunting moose in, back in the late 80's.  With not needing lube, the paper ctgs. were wonderful to carry and quite easy loading  as you could well imagine - an 8 second reload. All I needed was to load my rifle back in camp with patched ball, then carry 5 ctgs. in each pocket along with a radial leather capper, which held 24 caps around it's periphery. I did not have to take my hunting bag nor horn. I did carry the 'tool' pouch in a separate pocket. The tool pouch had a nipple wrench, pick, spare nipple, jag, worm, couple leaning patches - the normal stuff, which easily fit in a shirt pocket under my down parka.

After 'some' experimentation (about 10years of it), I found that a Track's 'Mink Oil" lubed patch shot centre even in horrifically cold sub ZERO Foreign Heat temperatures.

The dilema was that it was difficult to load the next shot with an oiled or greased patch is such a cold tube, as even the Mink oil or Neetsfoot oil were too stiff- instantly upon contact with the barrel.  A thinner patch could be loaded, but that  lacked the accuracy.  I finally found the answer to the problem, only 2 years before the in-lines got our season cancelled.

Subsequent or follow-up shots with paper ctgs. hit the same spot as patched round balls and were extremely accurate as well, just as accurate as patched balls - in that 14 bore rifle, thus I'd found AN answer to the dilema.  Someone else may find THE answer, but paper ctgs. were mine.

[shifty]

   Daryl you have given me both GOOD news and BAD news, the good is how these paper cartridges perform for you and maybe for me too, the bad news is the cancelation of your season are you  talking of a primetive weapons only season can you still use MLs in regular rifle season . Some body needs a kick in the Bigonias!

[bob in the woods]

Daryl, that is exactly how I carry my stuff when hunting, especially for moose .  Moose season here is pretty much a jumble of every kind of weather you can think of. Blizzards, to sleet, snow , rain, cold and sometimes even heat !!!
The one thing you can usually count on is wet at sometime or other.  I carry a small priming horn in my pocket since I'm using a flintlock.
Here in Ontario, you can use a muzzleloading firearm during a regular firearm season. I pretty much always use a flintlock. We do have a week long  separate  muzzleloading deer season. But , not a separate muzzleloading moose season. [ or  for anything else for that matter]

[Clark Badgett]

The best paper to use comes from those small brown paper sandwich bags, the second best I ever found was blank newsprint. easy to use easy to tear with teeth.

Avoid all heavier papers including printer paper and heavy grocery sacks.

[SmokePole Dave]

I herd of paper cartridges before and didn't have much luck with them. I will have to revisit the issue soon. Question, has paper cartridges been tried with shot? Last sat we went bird hunting with my 62cal smooth bore and was successful only reloading was slow. I thought cartridges my be the answer.

[Daryl]

The important factor with rifle loads, is the rifling engraving somewhat into the paper that wraps around the ball.  This happened with mine, using a .682" ball in a .690" bore with .012" rifling. I used 2 wraps of about .003" or .0035" printing paper - 18 to 20 pound I think.

Note that I had to choke up on the rod to an INCH below my fist or use a short starter to get the ctg. started. Once started, I could easily run it down with one stroke.  I could also fire up to 10 shots without any loss in accuracy or hard loading.

The 11th would start to get crunchy, and I felt it might effect accuracy, so I stopped ctg. shooting at the 10th, then fired a cleaning load of a mere 3 drams (82gr.) plinker, with a sopping spit-wet patch - then I could load and shoot another 10 ctgs. with perfect accuracy to 100 meters or more.

 Now - I was also shooting 6 drams+ (165gr. 2FOEX) in the that rifle for a hunting load with both paper ctg.'s loaded with WW balls, or a cloth patched pure lead ball, same load, same poi. The velocity was 1,550fps, thus producing about the same pressure as 1,550fps loads do in any large bore from about .54 up, using 2F powder - in the 1980's. 

With  today's (2013) 2F GOEX powder, I get the same poi with only 140gr. as I previously got with 165gr. 2F GOEX.  I have not chronographed the 140gr. 2F load - yet- I am hoping it gives me the same velocity or not, doesn't really matter, much, it shoots well right to 200yards and to the sights set up in 1986 when Taylor built the rifle.  It kicks plenty hard enough with 140gr. that I see no need to shoot the25gr. extra.

I've thought about that, Dave - the shot in a paper ctg. Years ago, Ely had shot ctgs. for cylinder bored ML smoothbores. The ctg. included the shot and a wad under the shot. The shot was in a copper wire basket inside the paper. The paper was coloured to denote the intended range. The green ctg. was for shooting deer, wolves at close range or ducks out around 85 to 100yards - just a guess.  There was a contest between an English hunter with a "nice little pistol", a 14 bore Westley Richards SXS and a long streak of famous bird killing hunter around St. Louis - can't remember his name. He had a long, 48"double barreled 12 bore.  A 4" X 7" card was placed at 75 yards distance and the US hunter fired first, hitting it with 4 pellets - well satisfied. The 'prize' was the other fellow's gun.  The English fellow chose a green paper ctg., loaded his gun fresh, and put 28 pellets on that little 4" x 7" card, easily winning the other man's gun. "Wal, thar fellow, you certainly have a fine shooting gun thar - here's o'l ?, you won her fair and skwar".
The 'story' of this contest noted that the English Gentleman declined the gun - saying "you keep her, you need her bore than I".

I have oft thought someone should, if wanting to develop tight shooting loads for their chokeless smoothie, should do some experimenting and get back to us here.
My 20 bore is choked and shoots right fine as it is.

[JBJ]

Smokepole,
Take a look at the following:

http://www.muzzleloadingshotguns.com/articles/skeetandmuzzleloadingshotcartridges

Something similar works for me in a 12 bore.
J.B.

[Daryl]

tks jb - that's a great article!

[SmokePole Dave]

Thanks guys for the information great articles . I have my work cut out for me this spring and will let you know how it goes- Dave