Paper cap and ball cartridges

[Omnivore]

Cigarette papers work fine. If they are "too expensive", so is shooting.

That's a good point. If you're getting the results you want with cig papers, there's no real reason to switch. With the perm papers I found I got the greater case length I wanted with the type of case I'm making. The cost difference is negligible in the big picture, and the big jumbo cig papers would probably do just as well with the long, tapered case I'm using.

I too experimented with nitrating for a while, so I can't knock anyone else for doing it. It would after all be kinda cool if they disappeared completely with each shot, but as you say it makes no difference in performance. Treating cig papers with KN03, I never did get the paper to completely burn up anyway, though I saw later that someone said you should boil the paper in the solution. Whether that makes the difference I don't know, because I never tried it. Others have suggested painting the finished cartridge with a solution of smokeless powder and acetone, but I'm a bit hesitant to try that given the unimportance of complete paper combustion along with the fact that you'd be shooting some smokeless along with your BP, combined with adding another step in the process. Another suggestion was to paint the cartridge with a solution of ping-pong ball (celluloid) and (I think) acetone also. Same reservations there. You can (last I checked) buy flash paper ready-made, and some have reported using that with good results. Since I've apparently fired thousands of untreated cartridges with very good (I would say excellent) results, then I'm not motivated to try the more exotic materials and processes. I'm more interested in ways to make this process even simpler and easier, and I think at this point it would have to involve some kind of mechanization.

The fantasy of course is that I feed a thousand-foot roll of paper into one end of a machine, fill a hopper with bullets, another hopper with lube, another with powder and one of adhesive maybe, with the option of having another roll of card stock for card wads, start pulling a lever and have finished cartridges drop out the other end, exactly to my specifications. Once you have that, you attach a motor or actuator to it and all you have to do is keep the hoppers full. The advanced model would have WiFi connectivity, so it could send me a text when it's getting low on materials or go on line and re-order them for me, or I could use my phone to tell it to have three hundred carts ready when I get home. OK, so where do I get one of those?

[RPRNY]

....
The fantasy of course is that I feed a thousand-foot roll of paper into one end of a machine, fill a hopper with bullets, another hopper with lube, another with powder and one of adhesive maybe, with the option of having another roll of card stock for card wads, start pulling a lever and have finished cartridges drop out the other end, exactly to my specifications. Once you have that, you attach a motor or actuator to it and all you have to do is keep the hoppers full. The advanced model would have WiFi connectivity, so it could send me a text when it's getting low on materials or go on line and re-order them for me, or I could use my phone to tell it to have three hundred carts ready when I get home. OK, so where do I get one of those?

to make paper cartridges for cap and ball revolvers...

[M-Tecs]

Nice thread -- great info. Thanks for posting.

[rodwha]

That's a good point. If you're getting the results you want with cig papers, there's no real reason to switch. With the perm papers I found I got the greater case length I wanted with the type of case I'm making. The cost difference is negligible in the big picture, and the big jumbo cig papers would probably do just as well with the long, tapered case I'm using.

I too experimented with nitrating for a while, so I can't knock anyone else for doing it. It would after all be kinda cool if they disappeared completely with each shot, but as you say it makes no difference in performance. Treating cig papers with KN03, I never did get the paper to completely burn up anyway, though I saw later that someone said you should boil the paper in the solution. Whether that makes the difference I don't know, because I never tried it. Others have suggested painting the finished cartridge with a solution of smokeless powder and acetone, but I'm a bit hesitant to try that given the unimportance of complete paper combustion along with the fact that you'd be shooting some smokeless along with your BP, combined with adding another step in the process. Another suggestion was to paint the cartridge with a solution of ping-pong ball (celluloid) and (I think) acetone also. Same reservations there. You can (last I checked) buy flash paper ready-made, and some have reported using that with good results. Since I've apparently fired thousands of untreated cartridges with very good (I would say excellent) results, then I'm not motivated to try the more exotic materials and processes. I'm more interested in ways to make this process even simpler and easier, and I think at this point it would have to involve some kind of mechanization.

The fantasy of course is that I feed a thousand-foot roll of paper into one end of a machine, fill a hopper with bullets, another hopper with lube, another with powder and one of adhesive maybe, with the option of having another roll of card stock for card wads, start pulling a lever and have finished cartridges drop out the other end, exactly to my specifications. Once you have that, you attach a motor or actuator to it and all you have to do is keep the hoppers full. The advanced model would have WiFi connectivity, so it could send me a text when it's getting low on materials or go on line and re-order them for me, or I could use my phone to tell it to have three hundred carts ready when I get home. OK, so where do I get one of those?

If you ever get one up and running please let me know!

[Tar Heel]

Great video Omnivore! Thanks for this post.

[gnoahhh]

A lot of sound advice here!

My approach is to roll the paper onto a tapered mandrel, having cut them out with a trapezoidal pattern- just big enough to go around once with about 1/8" overlap. Seam is sealed with a child's glue stick, bottom folded and sealed with the glue stick. Balls are seated and permatized with the same glue sick after filling with powder.

For paper I'm old school. I go to the local art supply store and get thin rice paper- it's kind of porous and I feel it aids the ignition flash to reach the powder easier. I'm overthinking it for sure, but on the other hand I never have had a mis/hang-fire either. I never tear the cartridge when seating it either.

I also nitrate my paper. I put a small saucepan of water to boiling and add saltpeter (potassium nitrate) to it until no more will dissolve. I use that super-saturated solution to soak my paper in, clip the sheets to a little clothesline to dry over night before processing into cartridges. Set a match to it and it flashes away to nothing instantly. I never see any unburnt particles left in my chambers. Again, I'm overdoing it, but I like doing it that way. I always smear grease (or Crisco) over the chambers, partially to abrogate the risk of chain fires but mainly to get lube onto the ball.

[Michael J. Spangler]

How is everyone handling the possible issue of line getting into the powder? Is a simple card was enough to keep it all safe?
I'm guessing this would be a great candidate for a custom big lube style bullet mould.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Omnivore]

How is everyone handling the possible issue of line getting into the powder?

I'm sure you mean "lube getting into the powder". I've been all around this issue for a while. It's not complicated. The lube can be placed in direct contact with the powder IF it has no oils in it that will soak into the powder over time or when the weather gets warm, though you'd want to avoid leaving your cartridges in a car in a hot parking lot in the sun, for sure. Gateofeo #1 lube (look it up) works pretty well, as does the old standby, SPG. If you want more insurance, then yes; use a card wad between the powder and the lube. BPCR (Black Powder Cartridge Rifle) shooters have been doing this for years and years in their metal cartridges.

A Big Lube style bullet will work too, but either way you look at it, the right amount of lube is going to take up a certain amount of space in the limited capacity chamber of a revolver. A bullet with a giant lube groove will help keep lube away from the powder, but it will be substantially longer than a more standard bullet of the same weight. Longer bullets generally require a faster rifling twist than shorter bullets. Using a longer bullet also means you do NOT have the option of loading without lube to increas your powder capacity for hunting. In hunting, where you may only fire one or two shots for blood, you don't need lube. The lube is only for keeping the gun running by keeping the powder fouling soft so it gets blown out with each subsequent shot. If you're only firing a frew shots, you can forgo the lube and use more powder in its place, UNLESS you have a long, big lube bullet, in which case the space is used up already.

The bottom line is that you can use all the lube you need by placing it between the powder and the bullet, so long as you use the correct lube. If you use a lube that's too soft, or has oil in it, it can wick its way through the paper to the powder over time, even if you have a big lube groove full of it and no lube is placed on the powder.

Use the right lube, use enough of it to prevent all fouling build-up (meaning your hundredth shot leaves the barrel looking exactly as it did after the first shot) and use whatever bullet shoots best in your gun.

With all the talk about this or that lube in the percussion revolver discussions, and whose personal recipe is the "best", the BPCR and Coyboy competition shooters have been quietly using SPG lube very successfully all along. Best we take some heed to that. GF1 lube has been working well for me, in hundreds and hundreds of paper cartridges, either placed directly on the powder or between cards, though I'm still not done with a long-term test to determine how much, if any, velocity reduction might result from leaving cartridges assembled with the GF1 in contact with the powder through two hot summers. If you're going to shoot them up within a few weeks or months, and you're not leaving them out in the hot sun on a hot day, you'll not have any cause for concern using GF1 or SPG in direct contact.

Also; lube in a bullet groove is not going to mix with the powder fouling as well as lube between the bullet and the powder. If 99.9% of it gets blown out the muzzle, then it's not doing its job.

Remember; we don't care a whit about actual "lubrication of the bullet" here. We don't need any of that at all in a black powder revolver, so even using the word "lube" can be a bit misleading if you don't understand the objective here. The only reason we need it at all is to keep the fouling in the barrel, and that which gets into the cylinder arbor, nice and gooey-soft so there's no buildup to degrade the performance of the barrel or tie up the action. That means we can keep shooting all day and not have to fuss around with swabing or removal of the cylinder for cleaning until we got home in the evening.

Oh! Another thing about using a card. Standard cards for 44/45 are .450" or, most likely, larger. That means a standard sized card will create an impedimant to inserting the cartridge into a chamber, being that practically all repro 44 percussion revolvers have chamber diameters of .450" and less. Some are as small as .447". I've used .452" - .454" cards in paper cartridges, but they're more difficult to load. Lately I've been using a punch for making cards for the 43 Spanish cartridge (available at Buffalo Arms in Idaho). Given that the paper case is tapered, and given that the card is below the lube pill, which is in turn below the bullet, the 43 Spanish-sized cards fit the paper case pretty well. You can tweak your rolling mandrel to ensure that your smaller card fits snug in the case with your desired amount of powder (I use 30 grains in most 44 carts).

[Gtek]

This thread has been GREAT! Thanks to all for their time and experiences. Bought my box of paper from Sally today, had some 1/2" dowel and off and running. In any way could this be described/perceived as drifting into a paper patch? The Dr.'s stuffed cylinder picture eludes to that in my eyes, makes me almost wanting to try a little application of something around ball/boolit area on paper and be concerned with overlap. I know, over thinking. Don't blaze me, OCD, ADHD, blonde a very long time ago, Southern, pick one!

[DrDucati]

I believe a little independent thinking should be encouraged. Don't let anyone tell you which experiment is worth performing.

[Omnivore]

I believe a little independent thinking should be encouraged. Don't let anyone tell you which experiment is worth performing.

^^ Word.

I size my bullets to .449" for the Pietta 44s (Lyman 4500 lube sizer) and they still shave a tiny bit of lead when seated. My Uberti Carbine has .450" chambers, but the same carts work in both platforms, the Uberti resulting in more of a "paper patch" bullet (though what happens to the paper during the transition from chamber to barrel I don't rightly know). Most or all of the paper gets scrubbed off the bullet while seating in the Piettas - it bunches up into a ring along with any shaved lead. If you only have the base of the bullet wrapped in paper though, you'll get a bit of a different result.

I'm wrapping the paper up, around, and over the top of the bullet to leave a "pull tab" for easy removal from my cartridge belt box, so the result is a little bit more paper left behind after seating. I suppose one way to look at it would be to have the goal of no paper at all left behind above the bullet after seating. That would make for a cleaner loading process. I choose the trade-off of being able to easily load in the field from the belt box, having no table, or no extra hands to remove cartridges from the container - I use one hand to pluck a round from the box, and load it, then pluck out another and so on. This we came to refer to as "field shooting" on another forum, as opposed to "range shooting" wherin you have an accessory table to place things off the ground or out of the mud or snow, etc. With a box of six carts, what do you do? You hold the gun in one hand, hold the box in another hand, and dump the carts out into your third hand... So the way I see it is that I use the little sixpacks to refill the 40 round belt box, then continue to load the gun directly from the belt box. I'm trying to look at it as a whole system then, in which I carry nothing but the gun in a belt holster, the cart box on the same belt, a capper around my neck on a lanyard, and a few sixpacks in a pocket or two. Mobile, requiring only two hands, and nothing gets placed on the ground or any such.

[Gtek]

I will admit this hobby has created more than a few memorable moments. In my fifties, ok, snowed in on mountain, I hope fairly normal otherwise. The micrometer at the fabric store, I have to tell them just to change the already strange look. Same scenario today at Sally's, put two boxes on counter and I sense the what/who is this guy buying this for from the green and purple haired young lady. I told her paper cartridges for one hundred and fifty year old period style revolvers. Processing, wait for it, The LOOK=PRICELESS!

[rodwha]

I will admit this hobby has created more than a few memorable moments. In my fifties, ok, snowed in on mountain, I hope fairly normal otherwise. The micrometer at the fabric store, I have to tell them just to change the already strange look. Same scenario today at Sally's, put two boxes on counter and I sense the what/who is this guy buying this for from the green and purple haired young lady. I told her paper cartridges for one hundred and fifty year old period style revolvers. Processing, wait for it, The LOOK=PRICELESS!

Too bad you didn't get a video. I would have loved that!

[Omnivore]

I'd be happier to see the purple-haired, black lipsticked clerk look at my bright orange nail polish, perm papers, Bobbi pins, acetone, and glue stick purchase and say something like; "So; do you like the Remington, the Colt, or other designs better? Myself I have a Spiller and Burr and a '62 Colt Police..."

[Michael J. Spangler]

Thanks guys! Great info. Yes sorry I meant to type LUBE. My iPhone autocorrect seems to think that's not right.
I'm look into the GF1 lube. I was wondering what types lubes would hold up at a given temp. I was planning on just using the ol smear of crisco during range trips but as always I want to see all of my options.
Great write up. I can't wait to find a revolver and start playing.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[rancher1913]

[QUOTE=Omnivore;3731207]I'd be happier to see the purple-haired, black lipsticked clerk look at my bright orange nail polish,

I must have missed what the orange nail polish was for

[RogerDat]

What about using the commercial wool wads as lube/card? Have heard of them being left in cylinder for long periods without problems but have not tried it myself. Do use them but never left loaded for any length of time.

http://www.cabelas.com/product/Cabel...Per/706908.uts

[Omnivore]

Rancher; the black-on-black sights are difficult to impossible to see in certain lighting conditions, so I've taken to using nail polish on the back of the front sight, to provide some contrast.

the Wonderlube and Bore Butter type lubes, as found in most of the lubed wads, are great except that they will definitely degrade the powder if left in contact for days or more. The felt wads don't come with enough of it anyway, and if we're talking about paper carts, then the commercial wads are typically too big for easy cartridge assembly. Don't let me stop you from trying them though.

[DrDucati]

I would agree with omnivore. The wads you buy have too little lube, and are oversized such that they are difficult to seat level.

I punch my own out of felt from Durafelt co. after soaking in my own lube which is a common recipe made from sheep tallow and bees wax. They come out full of lube and they are a better fit to the cylinder.

[Michael J. Spangler]

So the trick would be to try to soak a properly sized felt wad in the GF1 or SPG lube then?
Not saying it would do as well for keeping the fouling soft but it would make for a dependable long lasting cartridge right?
I guess if you're at the range and wanted to fire a ton of rounds you could just smear some lube over the cylinder mouths to help keep up with the long sessions.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk