Hi John,
It's not hard to make the tools yourself. You will need a dowel rod of the appropriate size. If you cannot get one the exact size you need, you can get a slightly smaller one and then wrap it in packing tape until it is the diameter you need.
Likewise the metal templates for cutting out the paper pieces can be cut using metal snips from any hardware store and some light-weight metal. You can order small pieces of metal from onlinemetals.com. Or you can simply walk around the hardware store and find something like air conditioning duct work pieces that you can use to cut out your templates.
Here is a video I made on making 1855 style Enfield Cartridges:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzA9aXEyT-c
Here is a web page I made that contains information about US and British Enfield cartridges:
http://4thla.weebly.com/paper-cartid...formation.html
The British Enfield cartridge evolved through three different styles. First was the 1855 style. It is the simplest to make. It utilized a smooth-sided, hollow cavity bullet that was .568" in diameter.
In 1859 the bullet was reduced in diameter to .55". And the cartridge changed and became more complex.
In 1860 it took on its final form, becoming more complex yet.
This article by Bruce Carins gives a very good overview, but be aware that in at least one image he has the orientation of the paper on the former incorrect:
http://4thla.weebly.com/uploads/3/7/...uce_carins.pdf
The Confederacy attempted for much of the war to standardize on the British Enfield style of cartridge, and finally did so near the end of the war, though the order was rescinded a week after it was given - probably because the Confederacy no longer had reliable sources of consistent paper to make them.
If you read Round Ball to Rimfire you will find numerous Confederate examples of the Enfield style of cartridge, of all three patterns. However, the Confederates did not use a plug in the base of their bullets as the British did. The original British Enfield bullets used an iron cup in the base of the bullet, but this was found to sometimes blow through the bullet and leave the rest of the bullet in the bore. Later they switched to a boxwood plug, and finally they switched to a fired clay plug.
In my video above I simulated a Confederate copy of the British 1855 style of cartridge, with no plug.
As I recall, I did not spend a lot of time trying to do a load workup for accuracy with this style of cartridge, since the N-SSA does not allow paper-patched bullets. So I was shooting service charges. Accuracy was reasonable, and the bullets clearly were and are the state-of-the-art for musket loading. They are faster and easier to load than the "package" method of the US style of cartridge, and the wax coating on the paper acts like a swab when you run it down the barrel. You can feel it "squooshing" down the barrel as it goes down, coating the barrel with wax as it goes. Like the original folks, I found the bullets made with the .55" diameter bullet much easier to reliably use than the ones with .568" diameters.
Note that you will need to have an undersized bullet to make the British Enfield style of cartridge, because the bullet is wrapped in paper and is loaded with the paper intact around it, making a paper-patched bullet. Thus the bullet+paper has to fit down the bore.
Steve
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