paper cartridges

[wicket]

I made up a couple dozen cartridges the other day using Duco cement thinned with a few drops of acetone and applied with a small brush, it sticks great, dries very quickly and burns away to almost nothing when the cartridge fires.
Had less luck painting on nitrocellulose lacquer to stiffen and waterproof the cartridges, it left some soot behind and a few small shreds of paper from the base of the cartridge.

 

[Bear Rider]

I've had good luck using light aluminum foil as a wrapper for a cylinder full of cartridges at a time. I just lay a cylinder-load worth of cartridges side by side on a square of foil and wrap it up like a freezer packet. Once that's done, I can toss it in a belt pouch without worries.

 

[wicket]

Foil packets work for me, i keep mine in the freezer because of the potential for the flash paper to degrade over time.
I recently figured out a way to make the wooden packets with removable tops like Colt used to sell though, so will switch to them once i get a bunch made.
Waterproof cartridges are actually less of a concern with me than the basic fragility of the things. Using heavier weight paper works for me, but not perfectly. Since i lube my conicals before making up the cartridges, only the heel of the bullet below the first ring gets glued to the paper of the cartridge, and i've had rounds break in that area when the packet was accidentally dropped. Well-fitted wooden packets should solve that problem.

 

[Bear Rider]

I shoot round ball. I use a glue stick to glue the ball in place with the paper right at the equator. Once the cartridges are completed, I dip the ball end into melted beeswax. This provides a lube, seals the ball more tightly, and reinforces the area where breaks are likely to happen. I make my cartridges with zig zag paper, and they are actually pretty sturdy. Sealed in aluminum foil, they feel like a brick.

 

[wicket]

What got me experimenting with cartridges was a shooter on another forum who made round ball cartridges with a lubed wad included, but i couldn't manage it with the wads i make. Dipping sounds good.
It adds an extra step to clean the lube off the tail of the conicals so they can be glued into the cartridge, i figured dipping the bullets after making the cartridges would get messy, but i think i'll give it a try. Right now i pan lube and cut the rounds out of the cooled lube with a hollow punch.

 

[crockett]

On one of the early Colt pattents I think he had a very thin cork wad at the base of the conical. Breakage was always an issue even with the originals. It is great you are experimenting with various glues, etc. Please keep us up to date on how they work.
And kudos on the Colt replica box- I did A LOT where I kept chipping out the area between the holes.

 

[wicket]

I did my .36 packets from clear white pine on a drill press with a brad point bit, then reamed them slightly larger with a regular bit. You can keep from knocking out the partitions between holes by plugging the hole you're drilling next to with a snug fitting dowel.
I cut stock about as long as four packets, drill 24 holes, using an aluminum template, until the brad point almost pierces the bottom of the block. Then i glue on a strip of wood to cover the drill holes, and rip the drilled stock to make top and bottom pieces of the packet, and cut them to length. Goes quite quickly.

 

[wicket]

Bear, great tip about dipping the finished cartridge in lube. I cleaned the lube off a conical with acetone, made up a round, and then dipped it, perfect! Idiot that i am i stuffed the cartridge into a pistol and fired it before checking to see whether i'll need to bore the packets larger on account of the lube coating the bullet rather than just filling the rings. Real time saver, thanks again Bear.

 

[crockett]

Wicket: another thing I did was go on the net and get an image of an original Colt packet. I put tan paper in a copying machine and enlarged the image to original size and Voila! Something that looks pretty good. As I understand it, on the "rip cord" Colt use wire and Sage used string, so I tucked a wire under the label and folded over the wood and glued the label to itself but not the wood. A yank on the wire and the halves of the box pop open- just like the originals. As I said- to me at least- it was a "bonding experience" I just wanted to know what it was like to rip open a box and load up as fast as possible. For safety- doing this with a clean, unfired cylinder. I was impressed. In Buffalo Bills autobiography he writes how he and another fellow hid in a creek ditch and held off a large band of hostile NDNs , each or them with a pair of Colt Army revolvers (must have been before he got the Remington). They must have been using combustible ammo to keep loaded revolvers at the ready.

 

[wicket]

Labels would be fun, have to get to work on that, i was messing around with the computer trying to make some last weekend, guess maybe i need an antique type font to make them look right, Times New Roman just doesn't quite do it.
I don't mind toting around all the stuff for loading loose, i didn't get into black powder because it was efficient, but i prefer the cartridges, and haven't had any problems with them so far. I generally load 15 grains and don't experiment much with powder charges, so no issues on that account.
They sure speed up loading, and i can't imagine a reason why anybody back in the day wouldn't have preferred them. They do load easier in my '61 navy, but the '51's choke them down readily enough and i suppose the loading port on a '51 could be improved with a little grinding.

 

[wicket]

Took a while, but it finally dawned on me that "bottle capping" the end of the cartridge with paper the way Colt appears to have done is needlessly complicated. By rolling the cartridge 1/16 longer in the base and crimping the edges against the bottom of the mandrel, glue can be applied to the crimped portion of the cartridge at which point it can simply be pressed against a small disk of thin paper punched out with an ordinary paper punch to provide an end cap that a cap can blow through easily.

 

[crockett]

Wicket: try enlarging this a little and photocopy this to brown/tan paper. You might have to first photocopy to white paper and cut out and center on white paper and then photocopy that on to the tan paper. thumbsup:
http://ts4.mm.bing.net/th?id=HN.608010637246533102&w=322&h=185&c=7&rs=1&pid=1.7

 

[wicket]

Thanks Crockett, i really appreciate that link. Shall see whether i can get it to scale. The packets i make are 1 3/4 X 3 X 1/2 thick pine, with a flip-top that covers the bullets and is hinged with fine muslin. My hope is to make sleeves out of pasteboard that the packets can slide into to be held closed.

 

[sixgunner]

I've been studying about everything I could find on the net about paper cartridges for some weeks now.
Here a few sparse thoughts and some questions.
I'm talking about combustible paper cartridges for revolver, not the paper cartridges used for muskets or single shot pistols which were to be torn to pour powder into the barrel.

All the examples of vintage cartridges of this kind I've seen where more or less tapered.
I've pondered quite a lot about this, and I believe there's more than meets the eye in this detail. The obvious function of the taper is to facilitate insertion into the cylinder chamber. But I think this shape serves also another, much more relevant purpose. A cylindrical cartridge would just be seated home by the rammer.
When the hammer hits the cap, the fire jet it produces has to burn through the paper at the bottom of the cartridge. If it's single layer, no problem, but stacked, compacted paper is quite resistant to burning. So, if you have a cylindrical cartridge which has been closed by turning the paper (like many tutorials show) or by folding and gluing, you may get misfires.
A tapered cartridge, on the other hand, would be crushed in place, the smaller end bursting under the pressure applied by the rammer, releasing the powder and greatly facilitating ignition.
This is a mere hypothesis, which I plan to investigate in a more accurate manner as soon as I have some time available, using a cartridge mock up loaded with some inert material (cream of wheat sounds good).

Nitrated paper, that is, nitrocellulose used to build the paper cartridge, surely would burn completely, but should some remain trapped between ball and cylinder, could it enhance the chance of a chain fire?


Paper soaked in saltpeter doesn't sound so good to me. I thought it was, some time ago, but now it seems less and less viable.
First and foremost, I believe the solution should not be a saturated solution. As I suspected and others have confirmed on this same thread, paper soaked in a saturated solution of saltpeter would have much more of the stuff than it's needed to burn the paper.
I've made various experiments making slow match which I then used to ignite my coal forge with flint and steel. Saturated solution sputters and leaves residue. A milder solution produces a complete burn yet is cleaner.
Anyway, the chance that partially burnt paper remains smouldering in the chamber could be fairly high.

Having built many flying models with my father when I was young, I believe that onion skin paper with paper dope can be the way to go. This stuff burns fiercely and very quickly when ignited. Moreover, paper dope should give the cartridge added stregth.
Right now I'm at a loss about where to buy it. There was a big store which sold everything for model planes but it's been out of business for some years now. I'll have to look around. Next week I hope I can go shooting my Colt Walker. I've readied three dozens paper cartridges with 40 grains of FFFg powder in onion skin wrapping for testing. Let's see how they perform.

 

[bpd303]

I believe your hypothesis is correct regarding the tapered cartridge. I have tried them and they work better for me than straight ones.

 

[Bear Rider]

Yes, tapered cartridges are the way to go. However, you must make them long enough so they WILL burst when the ball is rammed down.

You should also try different brands of caps. 30 years CCIs were about the hottest thing out there. Now, I find that Remingtons work betters for me.

 

[wicket]

The problems shooters encounter stem directly from the paper employed in making the cartridges. The actual patents can be read at the U. S. Patent office site simply by searching the relevant patent numbers which were provided early in this thread.
Skin cartridges, being made of protein, generally shriveled upon ignition much as hair shrivels when it's burned; leaving no residue (it usually passed out the muzzle). They were fragile though, and several patents relate to ways of wrapping them in thread to make them strong enough for field use.
Pellet type cartridges were made either of pressed powder or powder molded with a binder, generally nitrocellulose, dissolved in an ether/alcohol mixture. They burnt cleanly, but were difficult to attach securely to the bullet and required some sort of water-proof coating to meet military standards.
The nitrocellulose "combustible" cartridge was wrapped in paper treated with sulfuric acid and either nitric acid or potassium nitrate, they burned cleanly since nitrocellulose doesn't produce solids when it burns, with the exception of whatever adhesives and water-proofing materials may have been employed during manufacture.
When a charge detonates in the cylinder it "plates" its wrapper at high pressure on the cylinder walls, if the wrapper isn't readily combustible, it remains there as part of the fouling. The cartridge base, which tends to be heavier due to folding and adhesives, packs into the bottom of the chamber fouling the cones and potentially smouldering for a time.
Nitrocellulose, which was quite commonly used to form combustible cartridges, can be unstable if not properly washed and neutralized during manufacture. The number of antique NC wrapped cartridges existing today indicates that properly made NC combustibles were stable when properly manufactured.
Without NC paper, a combustible cartridge must be made of extremely delicate paper if it is to burn at all cleanly. Unfortunately delicate papers are mechanically weak and thus difficult to form, and subject to breakage during transport and usage. Saturating them with potassium nitrate makes such papers more readily combustible,though no stronger nor completely clean burning.
Strong tissue grade papers like silkspan and tea bag paper are made from long-staple fibers, such fibers being mechanically stronger than the more usual short fibers found in most paper pulps. In the case of tea bag paper, plastic is also added to the pulp mixture so that the bags can be heat-sealed as part of the manufacturing process.
As is typical of the Internet, there is a mixture of useful and useless information out here about combustible envelope revolver cartridges. My suggestion to those interested in cartridges is to begin by reading the actual patents.
Then experiment with various papers, adhesives, and forming processes to find something that works for you personally.

 

[jaxenro]

"Having built many flying models with my father when I was young, I believe that onion skin paper with paper dope can be the way to go. This stuff burns fiercely and very quickly when ignited. Moreover, paper dope should give the cartridge added stregth.
Right now I'm at a loss about where to buy it. There was a big store which sold everything for model planes but it's been out of business for some years now. I'll have to look around. Next week I hope I can go shooting my Colt Walker. I've readied three dozens paper cartridges with 40 grains of FFFg powder in onion skin wrapping for testing. Let's see how they perform."

Brodak, the control line people, sell nitrate dope and thinner in smaller amounts. This is what I am trying plus using 100% cotton rag tracing paper. I have ordered everything just need to put it all together

 

[wicket]

Sixgunner, Regarding tapered cartridges, the paper forming the base doesn't split, and can still obstruct the flash if it's not lightly made. The cartridge walls do rupture, starting from the top in my experience, so the cap is flashing past the wadded paper, and hopefully encountering loose powder around the edges. Using a thinner base is probably the most certain method of insuring that the cartridge fires, though a heavier cap would certainly be a good idea.
I've recently gone to 40 gsm paper (grams per square meter) which is at the upper end of weight in terms of tissue, even nitrated it's quite strong. It sheers along with a ring of lead when the cartridge is loaded, so hopefully won't cause a chainfire.
In testing nitrated paper samples, i've noticed that the paper doesn't burn where it's pinched with pliers, which is interesting.
In terms of aircraft dope, butyl seems to be replacing nitro. Duco Cement, a glue made from dissolved nitrocellulose might be a workable substitute, i use it thinned with acetone to glue cartridges, though too much of it will wrinkle the NC paper and even dissolve it due to the solvents present.
You are to be congratulated upon reading extensively on combustible cartridges. Too few people take the time to perform meaningful research, the answers are out there for those willing to read widely and then experiment.

 

[swathdiver]

Tower Hobbies maybe?