paper cartridges for C&B revolvers

[bigted]

well finally did it. I bought some zig zag rolling papers .... [nope haven't smoked anything for 5+ years] .... and purchased a 5/16th wood dowel and a 3/8ths wood dowel. snipped 5 or so inches off each for a mandrel to roll on ... purchased some super glue and set about rolling some cylinders to glue the ball onto for my paper cartridges.

it is kinda tedious so I just rolled 6 - 44 cal [3/8ths] tubes and after folding em over on the end carefully ... I glued a .454 ball on the end of each thus sealing one end against the ball.

next I shoveled in 30 grains of GOEX 2f powder and after this I tightly twisted the tail for the final closure. snipping off the tail around 1/8th inch from the powder and smushing this into the end.

I took the 5/16th rod and built the same for my 36 cal ... making them exactly the same except that the charge of powder was 18 grains powder.

now having 6 of each ... I headed into the woods to see if they would work or not.

the 44's loaded without a hitch in my cut down remmy and nary a hitch with the ramming the final product home in each cylinder hole. capping with a CCI mag cap on each nipple I eared it back and in rapid succession I thumbed all 6 into the dirt bank. after shooting these 6 I really wished I had "rolled" about 24 of them as I will now have to further the experiment later now that I know that they work so well.

taking the 36 out I slipped in the paper cartridge and rammed it home 6 times for a complete loaded revolver ... again I capped with the CCI mag caps and after a second ... I thumbed off these in rapid succession. also wish I had way more then just the 6 to play with.

every hole went bang without incident and upon examining the revolvers ... I see just a snippet of paper in the odd cylinder chamber but not in them all. no other incidents and now im back to rolling to have a few more to play with when I go out again.

I believe I can reload these C&B revolvers as fast as a single action army style Colt revolver now and with the aid of a capper I believe I could beat somebody in the reload speed. interesting as I have heard that almost all ODG"s sixgun shooters used some sorta paper cartridge such as these. I can certainly see why now. takes all the drudgery outta the reloading of these sweet revolvers.


so how bout it ... anybody else done these and if so ... what was your outcome?

[bigted]

my next batch I will take photo's and post em of my procedure.

[DIRT Farmer]

I have made paper cartridgs for several of the M/ls I shoot. They do add to the speed.
There was an article in this months Muzzle Blasts on paper cartridges for revolvers.

[Fly]

Tell you something to save you a bunch of $$$$.Forget the zig zag papers.You can buy womens hair
rolling papers for $3 a 1000.There just as thin & perfect size.And no you do not have to nitrate them
as some say.They go bang every time as is.

Remember (Stick with me & you will be wearing jewels) Wink

Fly

[gnoahhh]

Shooting un-nitrated paper cartridges could maybe possibly leave smoldering embers in the chambers which could ignite a new cartridge if loaded quickly thereafter. A slim possibility, true, but I don't take the chance.

I use thin Japanese rice paper (got from art supply store), cut in a dihedral shape, soaked in super -saturated salt peter+water solution (boiling hot water with salt peter stirred in until it won't take any more), and wrapped onto a tapered mandrel when dried, glued shut with a child's glue stick, projectile is then glue sticked in place. I made the mandrels tapered to match the tapered chambers of my revolvers, so the finished product perfectly conforms to the chamber shape. Drop a handful into a Civil War repro cap box and off I go for a day of fun.

Touch a match to my nitrated papers and they flash away to nothing in an instant.

[rodwha]

I've made paper cartridges with various conicals. The balls didn't work as well, and so what I did for them was make powder packs by rolling my paper around the dowel and leaving a portion hanging over. I would fold it down on to the end of the dowel and used a glue stick. Poured my measured powder and twisted the other end tightly and cut the excess off.

[doc1876]

I did not see a mention of grease sealing. And yes, you will have a safer time with the nitrated papers.

[bigted]

i will have to try the nitrated papers. thus far all I do is roll a paper over a wood rod 5/16ths in diameter and do like rodwha describes ... only I use super glue and after the cylinder is rolled I push it up a bit and fold it over on itself from three directions and then push it a bit further and apply the glue with a small brush and push a ball on the fragile folded paper end and it conforms to the round ball just fine. tried to glue directly over the folded paper on the rod end but it didn't get glued only in the 1 place and as a benefit the glue soaked into the paper and glued itself to my wooden rod.

I did notice small bit of paper in the cylinder but didn't think about the possibility of a burning ember setting the next load off prematurely. I don't think the nitration process would be very friendly to the glue strip on the cigarette papers so guess I will have to find some plain rice paper or the mentioned curler papers.

the nitration process sounds simple enough but I wonder if adding a little alcohol to the water would help impregnate the paper a bit more. I would like to hear more about this process if you could detail it out for a simple old mind like mine.

[rodwha]

You could maybe try creating the paper cartridge and then use a small paint brush to wet the cartridge. After it dries it ought to work at least better than nothing I'd think.

[docone31]

When I made paper cutter cartridges, I used a glue stick. With the nitrated paper, it worked easily and well.

[bigted]

well the system that seems to work well for me is rolling the cylinder ... then folding over the end of my dowel enough that I have a glue spot to superglue my balls ...[I HEARD THAT!]... then stripping the cylinder from the dowel ... I install them ball down in my loading block and when I get the number I want ... I fill with a scoop and funnel the 18 grains for the 36 and 30 grains for the 44 ... then after the powder is in the cylinders I tap the whole shebang on the table gently then twist the leftover tail up nice n tight with the tail around 3/4 inch long and very skinny ... when I load these paper cartridges in the revolver ... I grasp the tail rite where the twisted tail meets the powder containing "cartridge" and rip it off exposing the powder ... then I tip the exposed powder and paper cylinder up and shove the whole thing into the revolver cylinder ... doing this 5 times and now have a loaded revolver ... place grease over the mouth of the revolver cylinders ... followed by capping the nipples ... walla ... bang bang bang bang bang .

now thinking I had invented something so lightening fast in the reloading dept. I took my Ruger Vaquero 45 colt along with my cut down remmy and off to the range I went. finding the stop watch area on my phone I set about to find out how close to a metal revolver cartridge loading these would compare to.

after loading my remmy fully with 5 capped and greased "cartridges" ... I began the stop watch and proceeded to shoot as fast as I can and still be fairly accurate ... then stuffing these paper cartridges in as fast as I could in the previous mentioned steps ... I fired these last 5 and stopped the stop watch.

doing the same with the Vaquero ... I began with a loaded revolver with 5 shells in and after beginning my watch I shot the first 5 ... then extracting the spent cases I loaded 5 more and shot them at which point I stopped the watch again.

sadly my findings were still about a mile apart even tho I figured I had the system to load and shoot as fast as I can a cartridge revolver in single shot army configuration.

the C&B revolver took exactly 2.09 minutes to shoot the 10 cartridges [paper].

the Ruger revolver took exactly .98 seconds to load and shoot the same 10 shots.

still and all I feel that I have a safe and reliable way to load paper cartridges without the aid of nitrating the paper and hence adding this nitrating job to the mix.

what fun tho. I love the smell of BP after shooting 5 fast rounds thru the C&B revolvers. it just hangs there till a breeze takes it away.

keep your experiences and ideas coming ... love this forum and folks here to chat with about this stuff.