So I was inspired by a post on facebook by Michael Murray who made up some linen cartridges for his Sharps. Very fine linen like he has is basically impossible to find anymore these days. What you really want is "drafting linen" which is what they used for architectural drawings in the 1800s. But it has not been around for about a hundred years now.

Here is one of Mr. Murray's cartridges beside an original:



I went and raided our fabric stash and pulled out the finest linen we have. I think it's 3.5 ounce. I starched it and ironed it and it has a somewhat paper feel to it afterwards.




I was intrigued by the idea of linen as Mr. Murray does a double-wrap of the linen. This gives some thickness to the body of the cartridge. Because the Richmond Laboratories has a heel diameter very close to chamber diameter, you can't use Charlie Hahn's tubes. Usually I make them of paper, but the paper is not quite the diameter of the chamber, so there is a little bit of play. I know from experimenting with the red rubber vs. hard plastic Smith tubes that bullet cocking can have an adverse effect on accuracy. I thought that perhaps with a thicker cartridge body it would more snugly fit in the chamber and thus more securely align the bullet with the bore.

I only made up 3 of the cartridges.

Unfortunately, they fit a bit too well. The first two shots, the first shot in particular, man it was like a perfect fit. Unfortunately after 2 shots worth of fouling the 3rd shot could not be pushed into the chamber. I am using a reduced load of 45 grains 3F, with a cardboard wad glued in place to keep the powder at the rear of the cartridge. When the powder part of the cartridge tried to go into the chamber, it got stuck. No pushing would help.

So, I would have to use thinner linen (hard to get), or not use 2 full wraps around the mandrel. I also have a thought to simply use thicker paper in my paper cartridges.

However, my paper cartridges, using regular computer paper, about 50% of the time leave a bit of a charred husk of paper in the chamber/bore. I don't think it really amounts to anything, but it is there.

The linen, however, was completely obliterated. There was no trace of it. I was really astonished - I expected the much bulkier and double-layered fabric to leave remains. Mr. Murray suggests the woven nature of the material means there is a lot of surface area exposed to air and fire and so it burns rapidly.

Anyway it was an interesting experiment. I don't see any reason to go to the effort for N-SSA shooting, but it was fun to try it out and the results were surprising.

Full-sized pictures here:
https://imgur.com/a/frN1kz7