Video on making 1855 British Enfield cartridges.

[Maillemaker]

Here is a video I made on how to make authentic 1855 British Enfield cartridges:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzA9aXEyT-c

Steve

[Maillemaker]

Replicas of CSA manufactured copy of British Enfield cartridge, 1855 pattern. Based on extant example #540, "Round Ball to Rimfire Volume 4", Dean .S Thomas. .550" diameter Pritchett bullet with no base plug. Cartridges need to be lubricated and charged.



Original


Lubed. On the right is pre-heated. Pre-heating allows the wax to stay liquid too long and soak into the brown paper. In the future I will not pre-heat.

[bobanderson]

Well done, Steve.

I think I heard that this style of cartridge is not allowed in a skirmish for safety reasons. (If that's wrong, please ignore the rest of this post.)

How is this type of ammunition less safe than a) Sharps cartridges with Hahn tubes and nitrated paper covers or b) Smith tubes with an exposed vent? Wouldn't either of those be as apt to ignite with the occasional ill-timed spark?

[P.Altland]

Not that this hasn't been covered before, but here it is again. Think about where the ball were to go if there was a cook off. In a breech loading carbine the ball would eject from the muzzle and away from you in the unlikely event of a premature cook-off. In a muzzleloader the ball would, at best providing your using safe loading practices, go past your head. At worst, for those that insist on hugging the gun while loading, it may go through your head or your neighbor.
We already have occasional cook-off for a variety of reasons. There's no need to increase the chances exponentially by adding paper down the barrel.

Also have to ask yourself how many cook-offs have you see from a Breechloading Carbine?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Maillemaker]

I think I heard that this style of cartridge is not allowed in a skirmish for safety reasons. (If that's wrong, please ignore the rest of this post.)

That is correct - the N-SSA does not allow paper-patched bullets at this time. This is purely for historical interest.

How is this type of ammunition less safe than a) Sharps cartridges with Hahn tubes and nitrated paper covers or b) Smith tubes with an exposed vent? Wouldn't either of those be as apt to ignite with the occasional ill-timed spark?

I would think that breech-loading arms are probably less prone to problems with embers in that for one thing you are pushing any debris ahead of the bullet during loading.

Personally I suspect the fear of cook-offs from paper-patched bullets is overblown, though clearly greater than bullets without paper. This was, after all, arguably the most advanced muzzle-loading ammunition ever devised. It was the standard military issue of the British Empire from at least 1853 until the advent of metallic cartridges, and would have been the Confederacy's also as they worked throughout the war to standardize on it before fitfully doing so in 1864.

Anyway, I am going to experiment with the manufacture and shooting of them for fun. I enjoy learning about and sharing information about re-creating period ammunition.

Steve

[Maillemaker]

I shot them this weekend.

My CSA copies of the British Enfield, using the .550" diameter bullet and brown masking paper, tied off under the bullet, shot better than my British Enfield copies using 9# onion paper and the larger .566 bullet, though I did not tie them off on the bottom; I merely folded the bottoms into the bullet cavity.

Off a bench at 100 yards I was able to get about a 6" group using 55 grains 2F Goex in my Whitacre barrel P53 with progressive-depth rifling.

I shot the larger-diameter bullets in my Pedersoli guns, so it could have been the guns that made the different, of course.

But my findings follow the official period findings that reducing the bullet diameter from .568 to .550 (before wrapping, of course) resulted in better accuracy.

The bullets shot incredibly cleanly, especially the tight-fitting ones. I shot 25 rounds straight and the patch came out with only a slight greenish tint to it.

I was firing 35-round courses of fire without stopping or cleaning. The last bullets loaded as easily as the first. No cook-off issues.

Steve