Construction of the Enfield Paper Cartridge

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bobbob
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Re: Construction of the Enfield Paper Cartridge

#21 Post by bobbob »

Bnz Googled a particular bullet he was after. He was most surprised when he realised he had been sent to a post he had stared on here. :shock:
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anpol
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Re: Construction of the Enfield Paper Cartridge

#22 Post by anpol »

Hi,

Where do you get your Pritchett bullets from, if I may ask? Are they cast or swadged?

Cheers
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Tower75
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Re: Construction of the Enfield Paper Cartridge

#23 Post by Tower75 »

anpol wrote:Hi,

Where do you get your Pritchett bullets from, if I may ask? Are they cast or swadged?

Cheers
And.
Hi. I had a custom mould made, and I gave the mould to someone who knew what to do with it, and they cast me my bullet, or boolits, if you're of that school of thought. No swadging.
Wait, so I can own a .55 calibre Boys anti-tank rifle, but not a .22 pistol?
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Re: Construction of the Enfield Paper Cartridge

#24 Post by Gazoo »

Thank you, very helpful , I will try it out on my 2 band. Have made my own in the past but completey different way.
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Re: Construction of the Enfield Paper Cartridge

#25 Post by Christel »

bobbob wrote:Bnz Googled a particular bullet he was after. He was most surprised when he realised he had been sent to a post he had stared on here. :shock:
Excellent lol
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Re: Construction of the Enfield Paper Cartridge

#26 Post by lobo3603 »

Very interesting and informative. Right on. I just got a basket case Snider Enfield MarkIII and will be looking for any and all info and some parts I can get, to help rebuild and hopefully shoot this older piece of history.
One question - I understand that naked balls were rammed down the barrels in time of war and accuracy was not that great. Did any one of the time use patched round balls? I have found that patched balls are quite accurate in a smooth bore.
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Tower75
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Re: Construction of the Enfield Paper Cartridge

#27 Post by Tower75 »

lobo3603 wrote:Very interesting and informative. Right on. I just got a basket case Snider Enfield MarkIII and will be looking for any and all info and some parts I can get, to help rebuild and hopefully shoot this older piece of history.
One question - I understand that naked balls were rammed down the barrels in time of war and accuracy was not that great. Did any one of the time use patched round balls? I have found that patched balls are quite accurate in a smooth bore.
Hi. When you're referring to naked ball I assume you're referring to muzzle-loaders and not Snider breechloader. ;)

As-issued naked ball, patched or otherwise, were not used on these type of percussion rifled muskets. Minnié conical bullets, or similar designs were used as these were a vast improvement over round ball.

Patched round ball were the common load for earlier rifled muskets in military and civilian use, such as the ubiquitous German "Jaeger-style" rifles or the American "Kentucky long rifle," but by the mid-1840/50s the conical bullet was starting to replace the ball in military rifled muskets.
Wait, so I can own a .55 calibre Boys anti-tank rifle, but not a .22 pistol?
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Re: Construction of the Enfield Paper Cartridge

#28 Post by Maggot »

Now that was interesting....please indulge me folks.

I notice that the paper goes down the barrel as well, is this what is working as a patch/wadding/obturation?

What is the loading process?

The oldies talk of tearing the end off the cartridge with their teeth so the powder goes down first then the rest obviously....

What powder do they use to prime the rifle? A bit of what was in the cartridge or from a horn or flask?

Sorry but I only know about artillery (must be the exe gunner part of me).

Another thing was that in one of the Sharpe books they wer egoing on about getting more velocity by grinding the powder down, then his sgt told him to be carefull as he would blow himself up 5mith

Makes sense, but was there some form of grading back then? Anyone know of any sources of info (I am digging into the historic bit for the kids at the moment to try and make the occasional lesson more interesting).

We are doing an interest lesson for them with a Chey-tac and a .50 cal so they get a physics lesson by stealth, it woudl eb good to show them a musket ball and minie bullet to compare with SS109...yea....might do that.
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Re: Construction of the Enfield Paper Cartridge

#29 Post by dromia »

With the Enfield cartridge the bullet is paper patched by the wrapper and loaded so.

These rifles are percussion cap ignited, no priming powder.

Grinding the powder to make it finer increased its burning rate, make it too fine and it is like taking a load of forty grains of N140 for your 303 and making it into forty grains of N320, blow up.

Here is my take on the process using modern re-usable materials along with Roger Fenton's contemporary photographs of the loading process.

http://www.full-bore.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=22251

My Brooks Pritchett mould arrived a week or so past so I have cast up some Pritchett Minies and have been loading them into cartridges ready for the range this week.

The Brooks mould drops a fine bullet exactly to my specification of 0.564". This diameter will give me a good fitting bullet at the muzzle with two wraps of my 100% rag draughting vellum which is 0.003" thick giving me a final paper patched bullet diameter of 0.576". All my Parker Hale Enfields have spot on 0.577" bores.

This is not my first Brooks mould but it is my first one with a base plug, I ordered an extra base plug so that I had a shallow and deep one, the base plugs are adjustable so that I can have bullets any length between 0.950" and 1.170" handy for playing around with rifles with different twist rates, the Enfields had 1 in 78 or 1 in 48.

The Brooks moulds are exceptionally well made and always come to specification however there are the odd niggles, the handle screws are larger than normal so you need to use their handles or be prepared to drill out a set of Lees, KALs, NOEs, RCBS or whatever handles you have. The pins have a nut head so a spanner is needed for these, there is a locking nut on the threaded base plug pin and this is a different size to the handle pins, finally the threaded base plug adjuster has two flats on the end to rotate the plug up or down so an adjustable spanner is need for this. To set up the mould you need two different spanners and an adjustable one. I know I could use the adjustable spanner for all but I prefer to get good fitting spanners when I can as an adjustable will always have play and eventually wear the nut edges.

Here is the mould:

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Ready to cast.

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I am using lead piping at 750 degrees and a very hot mould, it turned out very good bullets from the first drop. Of the 57 I cast there was only 1/2 a grain weight difference, that is + or - 1/4 of grain on a 515 grain bullet. I was extremely pleased with this.

Here are some of the bullets:

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So onto making the cartridges, my cartridges are not exact copies of the original cartridge but function just like the original, it consists of reusable powder tube, bullet, powder and external wrapper. When I use to shoot these a lot in the 1970s we used cardboard tubes for the powder and they would last many loadings before becoming tired, in fact I seen to remember that there was someone who supplied them specifically for the Enfield way back then advertising in the gun comics of the time. Nowadays we use modern plastics I need a 14mm tube for my bullet as the tube should be just a tad under bullet diameter. I use clear acrylic with and ID of 10mm a 2 1/2" length holds 70 gns of TPPH with the service load being 69 gns.

Here we are ready to go.

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Firstly the tube and bullet are rolled together in the outer wrapper, the wrapper has three slits in it so that it separates consistently from the bullet when leaving the muzzle.

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The whole thing is then held together with a piece of sellotape.

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Next the paper at the base of the bullet is choked tight:


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The cartridge is rotated 180 degrees and choked again to centre .

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The choking string is removed and the tail is tied off with non plastic string, I am using linen thread.

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The tail and thread ends are trimmed off.


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The end is then tucked into the bullets base cavity.


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The cartridges are now ready to be charged with powder.

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When filled the top is pinched in on the powder tube.

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And then folded over.


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Cartridges all filled with powder ready for lubing.


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To lube the bullet end of the cartridges are dipped into the melted lube, 4 parts beeswax to 1 part tallow, up to the ogive of the bullet.


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Rob Deans from Canada has done a lot of work on the Enfield cartridges and has some very good videos on the internet showing how he makes and shoots these cartridges and he has been helpful to me in developing my take on it, thank you Rob.


All that is left to do now is load and shoot.


Phwoarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Here are some details from Roger Fentons series of photographs of Volunteers at Hythe showing platoon exercise for loading the Enfield.

Prepare to load.

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Two different images of the loading procedure.


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Ram home.


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Cap.


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Come on Bambi get some

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Re: Construction of the Enfield Paper Cartridge

#30 Post by Maggot »

Cheers Adam, blimey....Thanks for that.

So these cartridges were all pre loaded and shipped, not something that could be done in the field.

All that paper flying about its now wonder the bloody grass caught fire!!
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