Hi All,
Gun magazines, the reading kind, not the cartridge stuffed into kind, are often instigators of a lot of my firearms experimentation. In the Summer 2011 issue of "Guns of the Old West", I discovered an interesting article on paper cartridges made up for .36 and .44 caliber BP Cap and Ball Revolvers. I have long used .36 caliber conicals in my 1851 Colt Navy replica, a steel framed version, these were purchased at a now defunct Black Powder shop here in Las Vegas. I am down to probably the last 50 or 60 of them. They "mike" out at .379", shoot quite nicely in my Colt Navy, grouping into about 2 inches for me at 25 yards. While I am looking for a mold to cast up my very own, this article is more concerned with how to go about making up the actual paper cartridges like the ones in the magazine.
Now I did go through 10 pages of the Paper Patched Boolit threads and 10 pages of the Muzzleloading threads attempting to locate anything about the subject, so if there is a thread all about this buried someplace earlier, sorry, but I did make the attempt to locate the information. While I did find a bunch of interesting threads on C&B Revolvers, conversions, loading information and that sort of thing, but nothing specific to what I am looking for. The gentleman who makes up the paper cartridges that were tested has done his homework quite obviously from what the article said.
From Potassium Nitrated paper so that it completely combusts to period packaging, reasonable loads, 15 grains of triple Fg in the .36 cartridges to 25 grains of triple Fg in the .44's, it all sounded so rosy in the article, I am fairly champing at the bit to come up with my own. The Potassium Nitrate isn't hard to come by, any drug store or chemical supply store will have that. One could go so far as to use some stump removers that have it as a primary ingredient, you would have to purify it somewhat, there are articles on the web on how to go about it. The paper would be the same onion skin that is used to paper patch BPCR boolits, again not an issue.
So, looking for a .379" boolit mold of some sort, possibly someone can point me in the right direction. I will be obtaining some of the Onion Skin paper from the internet links provided in other threads I have discovered. The same goes for the Potassium Nitrate. From what I have already read, it is better to cut the paper to size before soaking it, so possibly a clue as to what sort of shape to start with for this project would also be some handy information. I have my choice of several powders from Pyrodex "P" to two Fg and three Fg Goex to experiment with for accuracy. The 15 grain loading used in the article chronographed out to 689 FPS for an average, not exactly barn burning loads, but then this isn't about that sort of thing. I am looking for a convenient to carry and quicker to load method for my 1851 Colt Navy not how to magnumize it. If I can pick up a little more accuracy along the way that would be a good thing as well.![]()
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