Brass Burnside cases.

[ian45662]

I bought some brass cases for my Burnside and they don?t fit. Do they need fitting of some kind? Is this normal? I have tried removing material from the back side and it?s still not fitting.

[Carolina Reb]

Not all Burnside chambers are the same. I got some cases a few years ago where the taper didn't match my chamber. The case sides needed to be turned down about 0.003. I filed them down by hand. It was a slow process but that did fix them. Another potential issues is rust in the chamber. If there is any rust on the sidewalls that will prevent cases from seating. You can polish out any rust problems with fines sandpaper, like lightly oiled 400 wet/dry.

[ian45662]

Thanks for the reply. I will scrub the chamber really really good and try again. If that doesn?t work I will try your other method.

[Hal]

I heard a couple of years back that some of the Burnside cases were being made with a flat bottom, where the flash hole is, rather than with the tapered recess. Some were saying that these had even damaged (Flattened) the male taper on the face of the breech block. I never saw any of these, but counted myself lucky that I had not fallen into that trap.