British Enfield cartridges chard and ready for the range tomorrow.

[Maillemaker]

The white cartridges are 1860 pattern British Enfield cartridges with slits and base plugs. They were made by Brett Gibbons. He sent them to me to charge with 68 grains 2F Goex and I will test shoot them in my Euroarms P1853 Enfield with Whitacre barrel with correct progressive-depth rifling.


The tray full of brown cartridges are copies of Confederate Enfield cartridges based on the British 1855 pattern. They have no slits and no base plugs. I have a batch loaded with 68 grains 2F, and the rest is a load workup from 45 grains to 70 grains 3F to see what is most accurate.


The small batch of brown cartridges are Confederate Enfield cartridges as above but I put plugs in them to see if the plugs make a difference.


Pictures:

http://imgur.com/a/ljTnO

[Maillemaker]

Here are the results of today's Enfield cartridge shooting.

I had 4 sets of cartridges.

I had Confederate copies of the 1855 British pattern. These had no slits in the wrapper (the 1855 pattern did not have them. They were charged with 68 grains 2F Goex. I made up one batch with plugs, and one without. The Confederates did not use base plugs but I wanted to compare with and without.

I also had a batch of 1860 pattern cartridges made by Brett Gibbons. He wanted me to test them in an Enfield with progressive-depth rifling as Whitacre barrels have.

Then I made up a batch of Confederate 1855 pattern cartridges with 3F powder from 45 to 65 grains to find an optimal target load. These had no plugs.

I shot the service loads (68 grains 2F) at both 50 and 100 yards. I shot my target load workup at 50 yards.


At 50 yards, using the service load of 68 grains of 2F Goex, the bullets with plugs made a better group than those without. Also at 100 yards the 1855 bullets with plugs made a slightly better group than those without.

Here are the targets:

http://imgur.com/a/CXqgF

I also shot 5 rounds of my usual skirmish load, an RCBS-Hodgdon with 48 grains 3F Goex as a benchmark.

At 50 yards I fired into my "bullet bucket". This is a 5 gallon plastic bucket lined with 18GA sheet metal and 3 pieces of 18GA sheet metal in the bottom on top of a piece of 3/4 plywood. The bucket is filled with chipped rubber mulch. My hope was to recover some of the bullets and look for traces of plugs and/or paper. Unfortunately accuracy was not good enough to keep them centered on the bucket opening and the full service charges combined with the 540 grain bullet destroyed the bucket.

http://imgur.com/DoueD6f

I was able to recover some bullets and even a plug. You can tell which bullets had the plug as there is a clear imprint of the plug inside the base cavity. The plug itself was virtually undamaged.

http://imgur.com/a/hy3Xb

I did not find any traces of paper in the mulch. During firing, the paper was seen on most shots to be blasted into confetti. I was able to recover some of the pieces from the ground. You can plainly see that the rifling cut into the paper.

Here is me loading and firing the Confederate 1855:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoMji4yqUec&feature=youtu.be

Here is a shot looking downrange when firing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-9vnvHSF2Y&feature=youtu.be

You can clearly see the paper patch stripping off the bullet.

Paper-patched bullets like the Enfield Cartridge seem to shoot cleaner than naked bullets. It's basically like swabbing the bore with a greased patch every time you load a bullet. There is such a massive contact area of lube as the bullet is pushed home you can feel it slithering down the barrel instead of scraping down as a naked bullet does. I never shot more than 10 rounds before cleaning (usually 5) but the patches were much cleaner than shooting naked bullets. My impression is that the paper patch acts like a cleaning patch on it's way down and back out. Of course there is also the fact that there is virtually no leading as there is virtually no lead contact with the barrel. I do believe you could shoot these cartridges pretty much indefinitely without cleaning.

Steve

[hwaugh]

Great job on this topic...I am also working on my paper patched cartridges and you have given me some great information...especially on the base plug. Thanks.

Harry Waugh - 3731V - Terry's Texas Rangers

[Maillemaker]

I found the base plugs easy to make using Bondo, though perhaps a bit expensive. A small can of Bondo costs about $15 or so, and you go through it pretty quickly. I suspect a small can could make 500 plugs or so.

But they are easy to crank out.

I found an easy way to make them is to lay down a piece of wax paper, then lay the Noe base plug plate on the wax paper, then use a small plastic scraper to splooge the mixed Bondo into the plug cavities.

Don't try to squeegie the Bondo into the cavities - all that does is pull the Bondo out of the cavity.

Then fold the wax paper over the top surface of the plate.

Next sandwich the plate with wax paper between two small pieces of wood, and clamp the whole thing tightly in a machinist vice. Failing that, set something heavy on top of the stack-up. This squeezes out the excess material and compresses the Bondo in the plug cavities making good, solid plugs with no air bubbles.

In about 5 minutes the Bondo cures and you can simply press out the plugs with your thumb.

You can use a razor scraper to remove the excess remaining Bondo from the plate.

Do not attempt to use the razor scraper to shear the excess Bondo off before removing the plugs; the razor will lift the plugs out of their cavities while cutting them, resulting in an uneven cut surface. If you have squeezed the stack in a vice there should be only a thin film of excess Bondo and when you press out the plugs they just punch out just fine.

Because the Bondo sets up so fast, you can crank out hundreds in an hour or less. Each tray produces 50 plugs.

Steve

[hwaugh]

Steve, again you saved me hours of experimenting...thanks so much.

Harry Waugh - 3731V - Terry's Texas Rangers

[Maillemaker]

No prob. It is fun playing with historical ammunition.

Steve

[Smosin]

I got a chance to shoot a new-to-me PH 2 band 1858 a few weeks ago with my also-new NOE 570 grain .566" Pritchett bullet, wrapped a la the 1855 cartridge and 68 grains of Graf 3fg. I was surprised but pleased that the load was more or less zeroed at 100 yards without having to tweak anything. Reasonable first group out of the rifle at 100 yards. No plugs in the bases, but if the groups don't shrink with a bit of powder adjustment I will try the plug mold and see if they tighten up.

[Maillemaker]

I can't wait to try this big, long bullet with my P58.

In fact, I rolled my .566 Pritchett between two files, making it knurled, and dipped it in SPG. I am going to try and shoot that "naked" to see how it does, also.

Steve

[robertdeans72]

Great work Steve. There needs to be more Pritchett shooters out there. I found that with my bullet, the 5 groove performs it's best with a stiffer charge... 60r FFFg vs 52.5 with the P53. Same bullet.