Finally Tried Paper Cartridges in smoothbore......

[B P Maniac Shooter]

Tried something new ( at least for me ) this week.
Paper cartridges were made and used with decent results.
Enjoy:

 

[windini]

Great video, thanks!

I also appreciate your K.I.S.S. approach to cartridge making. Learn principles, apply with materials at hand, field test: demystifiy complexity.

 

[Thomas.bill92]

All the videos I have seen where people have turned a caliber specific dowel for making the perfect cartridge, Mark is over here like "stick". This is why we love ya man! You ground us and show is the no nonsense way to enjoy the sport! Can't wait for next Sunday!

 

[CyrusP]

Always entertaining and educational. Never stop!

 

[B P Maniac Shooter]

All the videos I have seen where people have turned a caliber specific dowel for making the perfect cartridge, Mark is over here like "stick". This is why we love ya man! You ground us and show is the no nonsense way to enjoy the sport! Can't wait for next Sunday!

Aaaagh, thanks for those kind words my friend.

 

[B P Maniac Shooter]

Always entertaining and educational. Never stop!

Thank you..I made 4 more videos this week to post soon.

 

[kyron4]

I'm with you Mark, I'll stick to my horn and measurer. I have other guns if I want to shoot fast. Keep the videos coming.

 

[Paul-in-PA]

When I range shoot I will use a container, horn or can, and measure. When I am hunting I like pre-measured charges, I keep a couple of speed loaders or 35mm film canisters in my pocket and I am good to go.

 

[Gordoncourtney]

Tried something new ( at least for me ) this week.
Paper cartridges were made and used with decent results.
Enjoy:

That was really nice

 

[Mtgelaude]

Historically I understand priming the pan first. And using the rest of the charge in the bore, but realistically it kinda makes me cringe. True, a good lock, well maintained shouldn’t slip, but my luck being what it is. Lol.

 

[ArmorerRoy]

If it worries you put a leather cover on the fizen.

 

[Twisted_1in66]

Tried something new ( at least for me ) this week.
Paper cartridges were made and used with decent results.
Enjoy:

Fun to watch you do this. I am real used to using cartridges because of reenacting. Although they weren't used with rifles, in reenactments we are commonly required to use them as most venues do not allow you to load from the horn. Obviously at reenactments we never loaded a lead ball in fact were prohibited from bringing any lead balls on the venue's properties.

To put the paper cartridges in perspective, you could not be a British soldier of the line unless you could maintain a rate of 3-shots per minute using the supplied cartridges. A HUGE difference was that they used undersized lead balls so they could load and fire quickly without needing to stop and wipe out the fouling in the barrel. If the Brits used a .74 size lead ball in their .75 caliber smoothbore muskets, they'd be lucky to get two shots without needing to wipe the barrel to get a third shot seated. So they used .69 lead balls. The French used .69 caliber muskets and loaded them with .62 lead balls for the same reason. The US troops primarily used the French muskets because France supplied them to us after the Battle of Saratoga when they officially became our ally.

Smoothbore muskets are not the most accurate implements, but accuracy was not the intent. The intent was to put as much lead in the air headed towards your enemy as quickly as you could. A smoothbore musket can be pretty accurate out to about 65-yards with a patched, normal-sized, lead ball. But two shots is about the max before you have to clean out the barrel. They are not nearly that accurate with undersized lead balls. You could possibly hit someone at 75-yards with an undersized ball using a paper cartridge but that fellow would be either very unlucky, or was not the person you were aiming at. At about 50-yards firing at a rank of enemy soldiers standing in close order, you'd start getting hits. Might be the guy next to who you aimed at but you would start getting hits. At 40-yards you would get a lot of hits, at 30-yards virtually everything would hit. A rank of 24 or 48 if it was two deep was like a giant shotgun going off at a rate of three blasts per minute. At these close ranges it was devastating. Then after you fired from your closest range, you would charge with your bayonets hoping to get to the enemy line before they could load and fire.

Using a cartridge was very systematic. You wore a cartridge box, which held 18 to 24 cartridges off your right hip. On command you would slap the box, open the box, and then grab a cartridge. With your musket under your arm and the cartridge held in your hand between your thumb and first finger, you would pull the **** back to the half **** position. You would then tear open the cartridge with your 2-front teeth.

You really need to have your two front teeth to do this. I found this out first hand while we were doing a tactical at Explore Park in the Blue Ridge Mountains. I went to tear open my cartridge and my front teeth went flying instead of opening the cartridge. I'd had those capped at age 12 after a fight with a kid at school who was pushing everyone around about 50-years previously. You can't load from a cartridge nearly as quickly without those front teeth. Luckily because it was an official event our unit insurance covered what was left by my personal insurance and about 3-weeks later I was back to tearing the cartridges with my teeth again. I was surprised what a bit difference it made.

Anyhow, after tearing open the cartridge, you charge the pan and close it and then move your musket to your left side with the trigger up and the gun slanted behind you. From here you you pour the rest of the powder down the barrel. Then, you turn the cartridge over and put the ball in first shoving it with your thumb (or first finger if your thumb won't fit in the barrel, draw your ramrod out and ram it home. Then you put your ramrod back in its pipes and move your musket to either "shoulder arms" position on your left shoulder, or "Poise Firelock" position in front of you and await further commands.

I've attached a pdf file of the British "Drill Manual of 1764" which is what the Brits used during the Revolutionary war. It gives a very step-by-step description of how it's done. In the heat of battle, the order "Prime and Load" was the command often given to include all the movements that are detailed in the manual to get everyone ready to fire as quickly as possible. Notice that it starts with "I. Poise your firelocks". This presumes the gun is already loaded. It then goes through all the orders to fire and reload. **NOTICE** as was common practice at the time, the small "s" is typically written similar to a small "f". You'll get the hang of reading it after a couple of pages.

 

[Flint62Smoothie]

#Mark H - You should re-try this, but lube the paper around the ball, and shoot for groups benched or sitting (best mimics the offhand stance with the head/shoulder alignment). You may be surprised at how well they will group!

FWIW I shoot 100-grn paper cartridge charges of 1Fg, out of my 60" barreled 75-cal flint smoothie ... and she's a killer, wicked accurate! Once took 2nd place (to a rifle no less ... ) at a local woodwalk with her, but the load broke a few targets, so they politely asked me not to shoot those loads again, LOL!

 

[Twisted_1in66]

Tried something new ( at least for me ) this week.
Paper cartridges were made and used with decent results.
Enjoy:

As I mentioned earlier, I've used cartridges a lot for reenactiments. In fact when I was a member of the Virginia 7th Regiments (plural because of different year's portrayals) we would have "cartridge loading parties" in which everyone brought at least 100 empty tubes and we'd fill them with 100-gr. of 3Fg powder. Sometimes it was 2F - not important because not firing a lead ball, just making it go boom! Below is a shot of an actual paper cartridge from the Revolutionary war.

This is very similar to what BP Maniac Shooter demonstrated. However, they never used glue on them and the French and US typically folded the paper top over instead of twisting it because it's a lot easier to tear off than a twisted top. Plus, it fit more neatly in your cartridge box with a folded tip. When you removed it from the box you would swipe up along the side of the cartridge to push the top up to tear it open with your front teeth. As the picture notes, they used newspaper for the cartridges which is more easily torn than the 20-lb copy/printer paper you usually see used now. If you want to get something similar to that newspaper, those tablets of tan art paper like you used in elementary school is the proper weight and tears like newspaper.

The Virginia 7th that I belonged to used the copy paper and we copied a section of newsprint from a June 20, 1776 edition of the Virginia Gazette on it. We did that because there was then no question who the cartridge belonged to with that print on it. There had been a problem at one reenactment before I joined them in 2005 where someone had dropped a few cartridges on the ground with the standard 100 or 110-gr. blank charge in them, where they could have been picked up by kids. It was nott a VA7th cartridge but there was quite a dust-up and that's when they started using paper with the Virginia Gazette printing on it.

I've also attached a copy of a tutorial on how to roll these cartridges. Note that they are for blank charges so there's no accommodation for a ball in them. I have rolled them with a ball in tubes constructed in this manner thought without using the string around the top of the ball and they worked fine There is no reason not too use the string it you want to though. ALSO this tutorial shows using a copper pipe. It works just as well if you use a dowel of the appropriate size. Please NOTE that the dowel or pipe has to have an outside diameter less than caliber of musket or smoothbore you are using. Use a 5/8" dowel to make cartridges for .75 cal. muskets, and 3/8" for .50 caliber. Sorry, don't know size for the French .69 muskets. VA7th rolled cartridges for .75 cal because that's what most of the line had. I made the mistake of rolling 150 tubes on a 3/4" dowel, which made them too big to fit in the muzzle of the muskets. Tied the next batch with a 5 /8" dowel and that yielded the correct size.

If you decide to make cartridges I suggest you make a bunch of cartridge tubes before you load them with powder. I remove the wooden holder out of the box and set it up to hold the tubes because the flap on the box both gets in the way and causes it to tip over easily. It's easy to make the tubes while watching TV or carrying on a conversation. But pay attention when you load the powder. You can get little powder scoops in a lot of sizes so get one of those with the charge you want, then scoop and tap level before pouring down the tube. Another hint - using a small funnel to dump the measure in helps minimize waste. If you don't have one, you can roll one out of a piece of paper, tape the side and cut it to size. Filling them is easy if you put them in your cartridge box first so it holds all of them up. Go through and charge each one and then come back to fold the tops. Below are pictures of a cartridge box from the Rev War.

 

[B P Maniac Shooter]

As I mentioned earlier, I've used cartridges a lot for reenactiments. In fact when I was a member of the Virginia 7th Regiments (plural because of different year's portrayals) we would have "cartridge loading parties" in which everyone brought at least 100 empty tubes and we'd fill them with 100-gr. of 3Fg powder. Sometimes it was 2F - not important because not firing a lead ball, just making it go boom! Below is a shot of an actual paper cartridge from the Revolutionary war.

View attachment 231208

This is very similar to what BP Maniac Shooter demonstrated. However, they never used glue on them and the French and US typically folded the paper top over instead of twisting it because it's a lot easier to tear off than a twisted top. Plus, it fit more neatly in your cartridge box with a folded tip. When you removed it from the box you would swipe up along the side of the cartridge to push the top up to tear it open with your front teeth. As the picture notes, they used newspaper for the cartridges which is more easily torn than the 20-lb copy/printer paper you usually see used now. If you want to get something similar to that newspaper, those tablets of tan art paper like you used in elementary school is the proper weight and tears like newspaper.

The Virginia 7th that I belonged to used the copy paper and we copied a section of newsprint from a June 20, 1776 edition of the Virginia Gazette on it. We did that because there was then no question who the cartridge belonged to with that print on it. There had been a problem at one reenactment before I joined them in 2005 where someone had dropped a few cartridges on the ground with the standard 100 or 110-gr. blank charge in them, where they could have been picked up by kids. It was nott a VA7th cartridge but there was quite a dust-up and that's when they started using paper with the Virginia Gazette printing on it.

I've also attached a copy of a tutorial on how to roll these cartridges. Note that they are for blank charges so there's no accommodation for a ball in them. I have rolled them with a ball in tubes constructed in this manner thought without using the string around the top of the ball and they worked fine There is no reason not too use the string it you want to though. ALSO this tutorial shows using a copper pipe. It works just as well if you use a dowel of the appropriate size. Please NOTE that the dowel or pipe has to have an outside diameter less than caliber of musket or smoothbore you are using. Use a 5/8" dowel to make cartridges for .75 cal. muskets, and 3/8" for .50 caliber. Sorry, don't know size for the French .69 muskets. VA7th rolled cartridges for .75 cal because that's what most of the line had. I made the mistake of rolling 150 tubes on a 3/4" dowel, which made them too big to fit in the muzzle of the muskets. Tied the next batch with a 5 /8" dowel and that yielded the correct size.

If you decide to make cartridges I suggest you make a bunch of cartridge tubes before you load them with powder. I remove the wooden holder out of the box and set it up to hold the tubes because the flap on the box both gets in the way and causes it to tip over easily. It's easy to make the tubes while watching TV or carrying on a conversation. But pay attention when you load the powder. You can get little powder scoops in a lot of sizes so get one of those with the charge you want, then scoop and tap level before pouring down the tube. Another hint - using a small funnel to dump the measure in helps minimize waste. If you don't have one, you can roll one out of a piece of paper, tape the side and cut it to size. Filling them is easy if you put them in your cartridge box first so it holds all of them up. Go through and charge each one and then come back to fold the tops. Below are pictures of a cartridge box from the Rev War.
View attachment 231227View attachment 231228

WOW...thanks for those tips! Awesome!

 

[B P Maniac Shooter]

#Mark H - You should re-try this,

I wasn't going to try this anymore, but, I've had several requests to try this again.
I'm even going to load some cartridges using buck & ball loads.
I'll find something interesting to shoot......
This should be FUN to try again!

 

[Mtgelaude]

If it worries you put a leather cover on the fizen.

That would solve the danger, but you are slower now.

-Go to the pan and prime (say cover is on already and the gun is unloaded at the start of battle, hunting, etc. Maybe it was for battlefield situations, but I doubt it, and a hunter with an unloaded rifle is going to go hungry).
-Go to the muzzle, load the ball.
-Go back to the frizen to take off cover, and go to full ****.
-FIRE……but now what.

a) put the cover back on and repeat the process, b) leave the cover off from now on which only keeps it safer for the first shot.

I wonder how many people got their faces blown off on accident from their gun or the guy next to them.

 

[ArmorerRoy]

The most dangerous part of shooting a muzzleloader is driving to the range.

I’m 30 years law enforcement so I have seen a lot of range injuries. Glocks blowing up, 556 ricochets off steel that required surgery. Everything is a risk. I only shoot muzzleloaders by myself and especially not with kids around. My advice is based on my situation.

 

[bud in pa]

I use the French style paper cartridge. I found it on the net. I believe that it was also referred to as a Pickering type. I did not tie off the ball and I lubed the ball end of the cartridge. Got up to 15 shots before any resistance was felt. Got a 4 to 5 inch group at 5 yds. measured.

 

[Gordoncourtney]

Historically I understand priming the pan first. And using the rest of the charge in the bore, but realistically it kinda makes me cringe. True, a good lock, well maintained shouldn’t slip, but my luck being what it is. Lol.

As I previously mentioned, At mates club.
“The ramrod went through a shooters hand, through the tin roof never to be seen again”
Daft priming first , but what’s a lost hand in the heat of battle.