Today I finished up making another batch of paper cartridges for my .44 cap and ball revolvers.
For these, I used permanent end papers AKA curling papers for the tubes and the end caps. This paper seems a little easier to work with than cigarette rolling papers and is cheaper, under $5 delivered for a box of 1,000.
As before I used .454 round balls. The powder charge in this batch is reduced, however, at 20 grains of 3Fg Triple 7 measured using the 20 grain spout on my flask. Because of the lesser amount of powder, I added 0.5cc of cornmeal filler, to ensure that I get enough compression.
The first picture shows some rounds in various stages of construction. The top two in the leftmost row have been charged with the powder and filler, and have balls dropped in. The third one down has the powder and filler, while the 4th has the funnel from my Guns of the West kit inserted, ready for the cornmeal. Finally, the one on the bottom has powder only. (Click on each pic to enlarge.)
And two completed cartridges:
I've noticed recently a lot more interest online in making paper cartridges for percussion revolvers. I suspect that this is driven at least in part by the current ammo shortage situation, driving folks to take another look at their cap and ball sixguns to get some shooting in. Paper cartridges allow you to get a lot more shooting in during a range session than if you load with loose powder and ball.
In some of these discussions I've seen comments about how making the combustible cartridges is tedious. To a certain extent it is, which is why I break it up into batch jobs. I'll make up some tubes until I have 50. At a later time I'll get around to loading them. Done this way it's not really any worse than loading metallic cartridges on a non-progressive press. At least with this I don't have to recover, clean, resize, and decap my brass. The overall amount of work is probably less, in fact.
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