Welp I'm now the proud owner of a Pedersoli 1859 Sharps Carbine!

[Maillemaker]

So I let my beautiful but unused Pedersoli P1853 go in trade for a Pedersoli 1859 Sharps Carbine.

Finally I have one of those new-fangled breech loaders that all the cool kids have.

I don't know anything about them.

It came with a Pedersoli mold. It's about a 522 grain ring-tail.

I see that they make tubes of various kinds (paper, brass) to use with them - how do you fish them out of the chamber after firing?

I like the idea of combustible cartridges like the originals, using flat bottoms instead of shearing tails. Is this allowed in the N-SSA?

This Pedersoli has a breech bushing that floats very nicely.

There is like a shiny metal plate that does the shearing and sealing of the breech - it is backed up by a block and there is an o-ring in between the two. Is this the "o-ring mod" that Charlie Hahn does, or is that something else?

Is the Hahn mod considered mandatory for these things?

Which end do I point at the target? It's so confusing having holes at both ends of the barrel! (just kidding)

Thanks,
Steve

[John Holland]

Steve, you know good shooting is all about consistency, so you will want to shoot a cartridge where you do not shear off any part of it. Charlie's tubes will fit the bill. The original Sharps flat bottomed linen cartridge was the improvement over the older model which required it to be sheared off.

[Jud96]

Congratulations on your new Sharps! You can use either a flat bottom cartridge or a twist tie that needs sheared. My Dad has been shooting his hand rolled tubes with a twist tie for over 30 years and he's been the number one shooter on our team for everyone of those years except a couple where I beat him ;). You only lose a few tenths of a grain or maybe a half, but with black powder those few kernels will go unnoticed with the type of shooting we do.

[Maillemaker]

Yeah, from what I've read, pre-war they used shearing-type cartridges, but during the war they went to flat-bottomed, burn-through cartridges.

My question is, with Charlie's tubes, you still have to fish out the tube after every shot, right? How do you do that?

I think I'd rather use a fully-combustible flat-bottomed paper cartridge. I know combustible cartridges are not allowed with muzzle loaders, but I did not see anything prohibiting them with breech loaders.

Steve

[P.Altland]

Hahn tubes eject from the barrel like confetti, at least for me.
BTW, probably just a keystroke error on your part but, combustible cartridges are not approved for use in muzzleloaders. They are , however approved for breechloading.

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[Maillemaker]

Ah, yes! "now" was supposed to be "not"! I have fixed it.


Hahn tubes eject from the barrel like confetti, at least for me.

Ah, so they are consumables! I did not know that - I thought they were cardboard tubes or something that you somehow extracted and re-used.


They are , however approved for breechloading.

OK, cool!

Steve

[Michael Bodner]

Charlie's tubes are not consumable/combustible. But they generally will fire-out of the barrel.

-Mike

[P.Altland]

While not combustible, they are consumable as they cannot be used again. The original brown tubes would split and eject out the barrel. Remind ya of a whirlybird seed pod from a maple tree. The new white tubes are thinner material and tend, as I said, to come out more like confetti. In the off chance, and it sometimes happens, that a piece is left in the breech, just push it forward with the next round. No big deal.


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[Smokepole50]

During Nationals I was shooting Bootsie's Sharps in the carbine match. It was damp weather as everyone knows so that may have affected how well the tubes broke up in the chamber. My experience in that match was approx. 1 out of 4 loads left some amount of tube still in the chamber. At least twice during the match the remaining tube looked to me at the time thick enough that I fished it out with a nipple pick. Other times I just pushed the remaining paper forward with the new cartridge. The time lost was probably one or two shots worth in total.

Charlies tubes are a great addition to the sport, however IMHO if you want a completely empty chamber every time you pull the trigger you need to roll your own tubes. I have been using curler paper with folded over end in my original sharps. I roll the tubes to be full bullet diameter and attached to the bullet base with nail polish. The end is folded over like a shotgun shell leaving a 1/8 flash channel which is sealed with a single layer of curler paper. A single paper, approx 1.5 turns on my .530 dowel gave me complete combustion. Two layers of paper, while sturdier did not always burn completely. The tubes were also coated on the outside with varnish in an attempt to make them stiffer. I used a thin card wad over the powder and steel cut oats as a filler to make up the remaining cartridge. I was also loading 40 and 45 grains of 3F in these loads. As you can probably guess, this is not a fast process...........charlies tubes are much much easier and very cost effective. I wonder how a bit of nitrate solution brushed on Charlie's tubes would effect there burning/ejection.

I think some of the problem with tube combustion or fragmentation is the reduced powder loads everyone wants to shoot. I would try some of Charlies tubes and see how much powder you need to use to get reliable burning/ejection of the tube. Charlies tubes are a very great time saver and if my bore was standard size so that I could use a normal Christmas Tree bullet I would be giving Charlies tubes a whirl. My original bore is .526 groove diameter.

[Ron/The Old Reb]

When I was shooting my Sharps I mad them out of Easy Wide Extra Wide Cigarette papers. When I loaded them I pushed the tail into the chamber with my thumb. They went off every time.
No shearing.

[P.Altland]

You experienced the same problem I did initially. Answer: no filler or wads. Charlie will tell you the same. The tubes will break up better without.


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[Harley1247]

I am going to try floral foam. I can cut it to the thickness to take up the gap on a meat slicer to get a true thickness and use a punch I made to cut the wads. A lot of single shot black powder guys use it as a filler.

[Smokepole50]

Yes Paul, I remember Charlie talking about not using any filler with his tubes. I am not sure if Bootsie loaded a filler with the loads he provided for me or not.

My use of steel cut oats was with my hand rolled curler paper tubes.

I like the idea of having the chamber as full as possible with the cartridge. From reading other people's comments, this may not be all that necessary for good ignition but I wonder how it affects accuracy?

My guess is that the reason Charlies tubes work at all is because of the small explosion that is happening in the chamber due to the air space inside the tube and around the tube. These rifles were meant to be fired this way so this is not a dangerous way of loading. After all, the old paper cartridges had lots of air around the powder charge as well. I would like to know if there is any accuracy benefit to having a more contained and uniform powder column that ignites and burns at a consistent rate and not be subject to powder location in the chamber or tube. Maybe I am just over thinking things and a design that was meant to be functional in battle.

[P.Altland]

My experience with my Garrett is that having filler makes no difference in accuracy. In fact, until this year I shot loose powder and still prefer sometimes to switch back to that.

Fear not, there will always be people telling what you can't do (loose powder......no, lube on the nose of you bullet.......no).

Experiment for yourself.


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[Jim Wimbish, 10395]

I find what you Sharps shooters go through to make good cartridges quite interesting. The Sharps also has a fascinating history. I played around with one a number of years ago and it shot beautifully, but I tired of the heavy bullets, musket sized powder charges, and paper cartridges. I went back to my First Model Maynard after a few times out with the Sharps and have never looked back. I use a 210 grain bullet with 21.5 grains of powder. The Maynard has a shorter spark path and a 28 inch sight radius. I have great respect for the Sharps and truly enjoy seeing them on the line. Now the Gallagher is another story.

[Maillemaker]

It seems to me that the Maynard is a more advanced design than the Sharps - it's one step away from a real cartridge firing gun. It certainly sounds easier to make ammo for it.

It would seem to me that one benefit of the Sharps is that there is no unloading to do - the cartridge is consumed on firing. I would hope that would be a time savings. Maybe it isn't in practice.

Steve

[Maillemaker]

A couple of questions:

About this floating chamber thingy. Mine floats just fine - very nice fit and slides out of the breech block until it hits the rear of the block. Doesn't go any further though. How would one remove it?

People talk about using white lithium grease on the falling block. Are we talking on the outsides of it or are we talking about in between the stainless face and the rest of the block? They come apart.

Steve

[Maillemaker]

Hi Harry,

I just re-discovered a thread where they talked about them:

http://www.yoresupply.com/long.html

My only concern with them is that it seems by default this is loaded barrel-down, so that as you retract the tube the powder stays in the chamber. This would put the powder at the opposite end of the chamber from the flash hole. Does it present ignition problems? Or consistent shot problems? I suppose before firing you could sky the musket to settle the powder towards the rear of the chamber, provided no one yells at you for skying the musket.

It does seem a nice way to eliminate cartridge construction at all though.

Steve

[Maillemaker]

Say...I removed my breech block and got to looking at it, and it looks like Pedersoli has already done an "o-ring job".

As I understand it, Charlie Hahn cuts off part of the sliding bushing and replaces it with a stepped version with an o-ring in it that will cause it to push away from the breech face and stay tight against the breech block face.

Pedersoli seems to have approached this from the other end - they have a floating breech face plate and have an o-ring behind it that keeps it tight against the bushing.

Does this mean I don't need to have an o-ring job done on my gun?

http://i.imgur.com/kDUk7oz.jpg

Steve

[Maillemaker]

I made up 50 cartridges with 10 each of 40, 45, 50, 55, and 60 grains of 3F Goex. Cartridges were made from untreated printer paper with hair curler paper to make the end caps. Cartridges were designed (obviously) as the flat style that do not shear off on loading. Bullets were dip-lubed in 50/50 Crisco/Beeswax. I was able to get off about 20 shots before the action stiffened up. I then squirted Ballistol on the block wear surfaces until the action loosened up to where it could be operational again. Later I discovered the real problem surface is the interface between the breech block face and the breech face.

I had one failure to fire event - I believe I accidentally got a drop of Ballistol on the nipple. 3 caps later and it went off.

I brushed after every 10 rounds.

It appears that 50 grains of 3F Goex was the magical recipe. I was shooting the Pedersoli USA 317-541 bullet. It is a Christmas Tree type ring-tail design and weighs about 525 grains. I did not size them.

However, given that the gun shoots 8-9" high, for the top two targets I had to take a very deep hold of the front sight in the rear sight to where I could barely see the tip of the post, and even at that I aimed about an inch under the bull. So not a very good sight picture conducive to consistency. It is possible that some of the shots went over the cardboard and my group is not as good as I think it is - the holes overlapped so much that it was difficult to be sure I had an accurate count.

Here are the results:

http://i.imgur.com/Qp1Sx6P.png

http://i.imgur.com/s4E1T1C.jpg

The paper cartridges usually seemed to leave some remnant in the chamber. A couple of times I blew them out/down the barrel, but eventually I just started thumbing in a new cartridge, letting the lube-covered bullet push anything out of the way. It was a little nerve-wracking thumbing the cartridge into battery but nothing went boom. I think I will definitely pursue nitrating and see if it helps consume the cartridges.

http://i.imgur.com/1KMgcPE.jpg

Steve