.54 mini ball paper cartridge

[Sandpounder3/7]

So I was watching Cap & Ball YouTube’s video on the Swiss model 1851 Feldstutzer rifle and saw in the construction of that rifles 1863 paper cartridges, that the bullet has a skirted hollow base like the minie ball, so immediately wondered how such a cartridge would do in my .54 Hawken with 1-48 28” barrel. The picture below is what the cartridge looked like. This would obviously make reloading faster, but the question is how would the American minie ball do with paper patching? Any of y’all ever try something like this with none military firearms? I’ll be doing my own tests and will share the results but am curious if anyone else has tried it at all. It loads the same way the British Pritchett cartridges does.

 

[Sandpounder3/7]

Historical Diagram for the Bulhozer cartridge

 

[Bad Karma]

So I was watching Cap & Ball YouTube’s video on the Swiss model 1851 Feldstutzer rifle and saw in the construction of that rifles 1863 paper cartridges, that the bullet has a skirted hollow base like the minie ball, so immediately wondered how such a cartridge would do in my .54 Hawken with 1-48 28” barrel. The picture below is what the cartridge looked like. This would obviously make reloading faster, but the question is how would the American minie ball do with paper patching? Any of y’all ever try something like this with none military firearms? I’ll be doing my own tests and will share the results but am curious if anyone else has tried it at all. It loads the same way the British Pritchett cartridges does.

Very good question. I have never used the paper cartridges but a friend of mine has. He says as long as the bullet and paper are a fit for the barrel it will work just fine.

 

[Grenadier1758]

@Sandpounder3/7, a Minie' ball based on the thin skirt design and near bore sized diameter is designed to be loaded as a lubricated bare conical bullet. The pressure of ignition expands the skirt of the Minie' ball to fill the grooves. There should be no need to paper patch a Minie' ball that is correctly sized to be 0.001" to 0.002" smaller in diameter than the land-to-land diameter. Your Hawken has shallow grooves, so there shouldn't be any need for a paper patch if the ball has been sized for your barrel.

 

[Sandpounder3/7]

@Sandpounder3/7, a Minie' ball based on the thin skirt design and near bore sized diameter is designed to be loaded as a lubricated bare conical bullet. The pressure of ignition expands the skirt of the Minie' ball to fill the grooves. There should be no need to paper patch a Minie' ball that is correctly sized to be 0.001" to 0.002" smaller in diameter than the land-to-land diameter. Your Hawken has shallow grooves, so there shouldn't be any need for a paper patch if the ball has been sized for your barrel.

Gotchya. I think for this kind of cartridge the paper isn’t really acting as a patch, so much as just keeping everyone thing together to speed loading. So to make that work, an undersized bullet would be required that still had an expanding skirt? I wonder if that’s getting into custom mold territory.