The Pritchett bullet - by Paper cartridges on Youtube....

[TFoley]

Brett has just put this excellent 12 minute article up on Youtube that covers the use of the Pritchett bullet by both sides of the American Civil War in vast numbers.



For those who want to shoot the correct bullet in their re-enactment shoots or even N-SSA competitions, the benefit of being able to load literally hundreds of consecutive shots without either leading up the barrel or having a bullet jam half-way down it are immeasurable. Add to that, the increased velocity of the Pritchett bullet means that the usual rainbow-style arcing flight of the Minié bullet is largely done away with at ranges out to a couple of hundred yards.

Remember that the Pritchett-made Volunteer rifle and the bullet used in it were de rigeur among the early British long-range target rifle shooters until the Metford bullet took over.

 

[nkbj]

For military armaments it was a short lived but at the time huge advance.

 

[Dude]

Thank you for that!

Now I need to find the mold and start making my own bullets

 

[Stantheman86]

I've been buying these from Brett for a few years now, I have some loaded up with powder in an Enfield cartridge box right now

I bought some of the earlier type ones but haven't fired any of those.

My Parker-Hale 3 bander loves them. I've fired 50 in a row, they all just glide down the bore

I'd never be able to make my own, so I occasionally order some. Brett is deployed so you can't get them for now.

The best I can do is lubing and sizing Minie balls and making the American type paper cartridges. The Pritchetts are very complex, with the clay plugs, the compression formed bullet, different types of paper etc.

I make kind of a knockoff for shooting shotgun slugs out of my .69 Smoothbore, with cigarette paper.

 

[TFoley]

I've been talking to Brett over the last few weeks. I'll be trying another wheeze instead of clay. I have been told that one or other of the air-drying/setting modelling clay substitutes like FIMA makes a good 'bung'. I've also been given a few hundred wooden plugs, too.

Here in UK, the same person has told me that L.E.M advertises a mould on E***. PM me for details - the maker ships anywhere, he says.

 

[Dude]

I'll send you a PM TF. Thanks for making the data available.

Those cartridges probably aren't cheap? I'm good at doing for myself, so a mold to cast them is my route. Besides, I'm all set up for casting already, and the cartridge patterns have been posted. I know where to come if there's trouble. LOL

Did you mean to say "wheeze", TF?

 

[Stantheman86]

I was going to try air dry modeling clay to make plugs for using 12 gauge slugs as Nessler Balls but never got around to it

 

[Stantheman86]

They look great in the cartridge box too.

I'm just enjoying the sight of them in there because it may be a while until I can get more of them .

 

[ResearchPress]

Remember that the Pritchett-made Volunteer rifle and the bullet used in it were de rigeur among the early British long-range target rifle shooters until the Metford bullet took over.

It wasn’t Pritchett, but Whitworth‘s example where long range target rifle shooters looked. Following principles established by Joseph Whitworth in the late 1850s, there developed a special class of ‘small-bore’ target rifle. The majority of these rifles were around .451 calibre, and the contemporay term ‘small-bore’ used to distinguish them from the ‘large-bore’ service rifle of .577 calibre. Makers of small-bore rifles in the early 1860s (before Metford) include Beasley, Edge, Henry, Kerr, Lancaster, Rigby, Turner & Whitworth.

The .577 large bore rifles and their Government cartridge with Pritchett bullet weren’t considered accurate enough for long range shooting. Hence for example the change in rifle to a .451 small-bore for distances beyond 600 yards in the Queen’s Prize.

Metford’s design utilised shallow rifling and a hardened expanding cylindrical bullet, supplanting the earlier gun makers designs with deeper rifling and some including mechanically fitting bullets.

David

 

[TFoley]

I'll send you a PM TF. Thanks for making the data available. Those cartridges probably aren't cheap? I'm good at doing for myself, so a mold to cast them is my route. Besides, I'm all set up for casting already, and the cartridge patterns have been posted. I know where to come if there's trouble. LOL

Did you mean to say "wheeze", TF?

Yes, its a schoolboy term for something you are going to try out, which might be risky, dodgy, not quite the thing, kinda thing. Usually prefaced with the word 'rippin', as in 'a rippin' wheeze', Algy' - for Biggles fans. I'm old, but not that old, so its by way of an anachronistic phrase, rather like 'By Jingo' or 'Odds Bodkins' but not as old as 'Forsooth!' or 'zounds'.

Brett's cartridges, with or without his bullets, are NOT cheap, and for people living here in UK, not a viable proposition unless you are pretty comfortably off. Being poor, and poorer than ever now after buying another Whitworth rifle, albeit a Parker-Hale version, which, as Mr Minshall often notes, is not quite the thing, I'll be making my own after Rob's patterns [britishmuzzleloading on YT].

Where did you get the cartridge patterns? Mr Sheldon?

 

[Whitworth]

Great video, thanks for sharing. Here's a couple from my backyard Unpleasantness, September 1862, the one on the left (.57) has a very deep cavity, the right one(.56) shallow with a bit of the swage bleed out still attached. The measurements are approximant due to the lead carbonate on the surface. So from this I surmise the larger of the two is the earlier bullet, the other one, with small diameter and lack of space for a plug make it the later version. A few have turned up with the boxwood plug intact but I have never dug one The lone .54 Pritchett I recovered from there is also shallow b based.

 

[Dude]

TF - I'm feeling better about Mr PaperCartridges the more I check him out. He's got the data you need on his site to make your own. Troubleshooting data as well. How cool is that???

https://www.papercartridges.com/home.html
BTW - what's wrong with the PH Whitworth? Which one is supposed to be best?

 

[ResearchPress]

My article from 2004 on Enfield Paper Cartridges includes more background information, with contemporary information on making the cartridges and loading with.

David

 

[TFoley]

TF - I'm feeling better about Mr PaperCartridges the more I check him out. He's got the data you need on his site to make your own. Troubleshooting data as well. How cool is that???

https://www.papercartridges.com/home.html
BTW - what's wrong with the PH Whitworth? Which one is supposed to be best?

Apart from the real thing - a true work of artifice and mechanical beauty, the Parker-Hale Whitworth-rifled match rifle is 'unmatched' in contemporary times for a mass-produced firearm of its kind. No doubt a custom gunmaker could replicate the real thing, but that would probably cost the same as the real thing - thus defeating the point. I've shot the real thing, and it was a very fine experience indeed, if lively. Remember that most originals are two-band, not three, and a deal lighter than the P-H version. Their owners are well-used to using a 90gr load behind a 535gr bullet - or thereabouts - from the prone position, and I, to my chagrin, am not.

IMO, no johnny-come-lately copy of it does anything more than come near. Ask Dungspreader on this forum. Remember that the jigs, patterns and gauges used to ensure a very close match to the actual P53 rifle were loaned to P-H expressly for the purpose. To my knowledge, no Italian maker has had similar highly-privileged access.

This rifle is forty-one years old -

Most P-H Whitworth match rifles I've seen over the years look just like this.

Just make sure that you get the real thing - the lower the serial number, the more certain you are not to get a 'follow-on' rifle - the give-away being the Italian proof marks to the left the 'Sir Joseph...' and the very high serial number - I've seen one in the 30,000s.

This is what Birmingham Proof Marks look like - accept no substitute, as they say - they can only be seen by taking the barrel out of the stock, except for the tiny stamp on the breeching. FB is the date code for 1980 - the number three is the code number of the inspector, by seniority, I'm told. D230 is the ID number for that particular breeching, but I don't know anymore about that.

'BP' = Birmingham Proof [accept no substitutes ]

A number of hexagonally-rifled barrels were part of the closing-down sale - they had no breeches and were therefore un-Proofed in England. I myself bought five of these barrels on behalf of an English gun-maker, since I was a lot nearer to the factory than he was at that time. The Italians would have had to put their own breechings on these barrels, which were, in any event, already stamped with the Parker-Hale roll-marks and the cursive 'Sir Joseph etc'.

I'm not saying for one minute that they can not be a good shooter - that would be doing the now-defunct EuroArms company a disservice - and the Pedersoli versions can be nice guns, as capandball ably demonstrates on his Youtube channel. What I AM saying is that Parker-Hale was very proud of its handicraft when these rifles were made, and rightly so.

The example I highlighted yesterday from TOW had a serial number of 11XX - probably made between '86 and '90 - my last Whitworth was #888 and I collected it in 1986. So not that many were made - Mr Minshall can probably tell us the total of full P-H manufactory,

 

[Stantheman86]

Yes, its a schoolboy term for something you are going to try out, which might be risky, dodgy, not quite the thing, kinda thing. Usually prefaced with the word 'rippin', as in 'a rippin' wheeze', Algy' - for Biggles fans. I'm old, but not that old, so its by way of an anachronistic phrase, rather like 'By Jingo' or 'Odds Bodkins' but not as old as 'Forsooth!' or 'zounds'.

Brett's cartridges, with or without his bullets, are NOT cheap, and for people living here in UK, not a viable proposition unless you are pretty comfortably off. Being poor, and poorer than ever now after buying another Whitworth rifle, albeit a Parker-Hale version, which, as Mr Minshall often notes, is not quite the thing, I'll be making my own after Rob's patterns [britishmuzzleloading on YT].

Where did you get the cartridge patterns? Mr Sheldon?

When I buy a batch of them it's like I feel I need to save them for a special occasion. These definitely aren't cartridges you just take out and blow off 50 of them blasting at tin cans. A cartridge box full , including the powder and caps etc is close to a $100 day out at the range

I don't cast because I'm honestly too lazy and by the time I get raw lead, a pot, molds etc. I can just pay my friendly GunBroker seller guy 25 cents each to cast me .575 Minies and I can roll em into cartridges. My Post Office hates me because the poor lady has to go in the back to get a box with 400 Minie Balls in it

Also be cognizant of theft, I bought a few hundred lead revolver bullets and they were stolen, I received an empty box with a fist sized hole in it. Postal Worker somewhere probably thought it was Gold or Silver and ended up with 30 bucks worth of lead

 

[Stantheman86]

Someone should probably go snap up that Whitworth at Track of the Wolf....

If I didn't already have a Birmingham produced .451 Volunteer that I haven't fired in 2 years I'd think about it but I don't need another expensive rifle to decorate my gun room that I shoot once and lean up in a corner, to join all the other ones

Hopefully it goes to someone who will be able to stretch it out to the 1000 yard ranges that really let a rifle like this shine.

This is why my Volunteer doesn't get much use , I'm more of a , hang a target up at 100, put a steel swinger out, and shoot at both until I feel I've hit more than I missed by a little bit then I go home , so I play with. 58 rifles or smoothbores that I can just blast paper cartridge ammo through.

Also , for some reason Dixie Gun Works sells Whitworth bullets but list them as "not for use in Pedersoli rifles " not sure what that's about

 

[TFoley]

If I didn't already have a Birmingham produced .451 Volunteer that I haven't fired in 2 years I'd think about it but I don't need another expensive rifle to decorate my gun room that I shoot once and lean up in a corner, to join all the other ones

Appreciate the serial number of your Volunteer, please. And if you could check the under-barrel details we can put a date to it. Henry rifling or not? Got an H, in front of the serial number, I think, is the clincher. TVM.

 

[Stantheman86]

I'll check it out tonight, I've got 4 Birmingham produced rifles to add to any data.

These things pretty much spoiled me, my Italian stuff is 2nd Class now after I started buying P-H's. I bought a Miroku Springfield, haven't fired it but I wasn't blown away by the fit and finish but again when I've got a P-H P53 sitting in my rifle rack it raises the bar by a lot.

For overall shooting enjoyment I can't stay away from the P-H Musketoons , they reach out to 300 with no problem and handle so nicely. If I'm shooting at 100 yards they are the perfect choice. I can see why they were so coveted back in the original day.

 

[TFoley]

Musketoons, eh?

This is mine - #1187.

 

[Whitworth]

I'll see your PH Musketoon and raise you a 2 Bander This Musketoon was found dirty with dried out wood and looking very sad. Little elbow grease and bit of tung oil had her looking good for a $400 PH. This little fellow has become a favorite.