I’ve wanted to try these ever since I first saw this video a few months back. After waiting for John to restock his product I ordered both a 36 and 44 set just yesterday. Really looking forward to assembling some! Thanks for the great video, mark.
WHat is the diameter of those original Richmond bullets? It is difficult to find appropriate bullets for the original(and some repro) 52 Cal guns. Would like to use this bullet in an original Sharps with a .530" groove. Your bullet is just too big.
I made a straight right former, non conic. For this i took a 12mm diam wood stick i filed a bit, to get very slightly lesser than .44". It fit perfectly in chambers and grant me more powder charge. I use french cigarette paper (very thin), already treaten for easy combustion. Then i cover with nitrocelullosic varnish : high combustion, waterproofing and rigidity. This way, i can have 30grains (and a bit more), for a rem. .44 new army.
I added a shim on the top side of my hammer spring and that gave it a pound or two more pressure on the hammer and I also got slix shot nipples and haven’t had a problem since.
Excellent safety instructions given. I have been shooting black powder since the late 1970s. I was a civil war reenactor throughout the 1990s and currently reenact the War of 1812. I also still live fire my original circa 1859 Manhattan Navy revolver,my original 1861 Enfield rifle and several black powder cartridge rifles. I only wish there was a NSSA group in Canada. Again Excellent safety brief and a great video.
Hey Sir, stuff like this seems like an amazing idea to get locals interested! Dumb question, where can I find the rubber/plastic tubes you use for cartridges? Thanks, Joe
As Steven said, they are called cap plugs and were originally designed to go on the ends of re-barr for safety reasons. Most of the vendors who cater to N-SSA shooters carry them. S&S Firearms carries them. www.ssfirearms.com/products.asp?cat=175
Tuckers Naval Brigade member. I get off 12-14 rounds in 5 minutes. Best match 24 hits out of 34 shots. My wife's best match 19 hits out of 23 shots. She went 5 for 5 at 100 yards😊. Her grandfather taught her well.
That is a nice range. I am in middle Ga. I have shot muzzle loaders for 50 years and always enjoyed it. Noticed in the intro a Smith carbine. I have wanted one for many years but can't fins an original I can afford. Maybe one day...
Mark thank you very much for posting this video, I had no idea these types of events existed. About 20 years ago I spectated an NSSA match as a youngster, it was fascinating. I think a great many more people would participate in NSSA as a result of events such as these. Are there any plans for more?
We will be trying to get the Deep South Region to host a Region wide Camp in the coming year. We will do another team level Camp of Instruction next year if the Region does not do one.
You don't have to wait for the next Camp of Instruction! The next Skirmish is at Brierfield August 23-25. Come on down Saturday before lunch and ask for me. We'll get a musket in your hand and let you try it out!
i wonder hypothetically if they could be hard enough to get mag fed design , maybe like a broomhandle , lol but it has maybe a stainless 1858 barrel in ".44" and an electric ignition would be the problem otherwise it's sort of a replica, blackpowder only , type non ....hypothetically daydreaming ....thanks for the vid it looks like a must have or try for the skilled cap and ball shootist imo .... EDIT: i think my gears were turning on the thought that a mag fed barrel for these (in fantasy ) would need a smooth chamber but it would not chamber any standard brass "round" though was all...and thanks for the vid i forgot to type
Do you think it's a good idea to make these charges for inline gear as well?? Between 45 and 80grains BP ? I tried firing a 31 grain sample just like that on a tile and it exploded with a pretty big bang. It seems too strong to me. Loose dust burns differently. I would hate to pull pieces of a rifle barrel out of my head :-) I have a Traditions Vortek Northwest Magnum rifle.
if you shoot it and it goes off it's better than nothing and if you have to shoot it for defense and it blows up they say that's the least of worries because your situation is worse needing to shoot it .../jkes
Very cool . Seen post on mewe had watch it . Great performance. Remember shooting pine boards with 44cal rd ball good performance. I know with service charge rd ball go through old car door. Got brother old 44cap in ball we used to shoot on bench need rebuilt for 3 time this time not tobad service rust .
I think Charlie built your 1858 for point of aim shooting. I remember when he worked on my .54 Sharps Carbine he asked me if I wanted to shoot 6:00 or POA. As an aside, Charlie also recommended a low 40 grain charge for the Sharps (likely for target work) but he did mention the 64 +/- grain combat charge the original used with the .52 bore. I imagine the .54 would require a heavier combat charge.
I am currently working on getting my own Palmetto Sharps carbine up and running. I bought a few of those bullets, and plan on ordering the mold, too. Have all I need to make linen cartridges and been testing ways of manufacture and sizes to get the perfect cartridge. What was the fix on the breech that was made? Can you discribe?
In a nut shell, the breech block face is replaced with a precision machined version that uses a rubber "O" ring to seal the breech. The chamber insert is also replaced or fixed to make sure it can be get a proper gas seal. Larry Flees did my Garret Sharps and my buddies Pedersoli sharps.
Thanks for another history lesson had no idea they made bullets that way. Also pointing out the weight difference between cakes not made using a scale was an eye opener! Thanks Mark
I recently fired J&D flash paper + flash glue cartridges in my Uberti Whitneyville Dragoon that uses the Walker grip frame. The powder charge was 30 grains of 3F. They were very accurate at a rest to a 25 yard target and only shot about 6" high as opposed to 13" high for the same cartridge using round balls. Just wanted to let you know I am very pleased with the J&D .44 performance. Also, The revolver I used has a loading lever mouth that is factory made to fit conical bullets. FYI the nipples on the revolver prefer CCI #10 caps and I lubed the mouth of the cylinders with homemade beeswax, beef tallow, and Olive Oil lube.
With your chambers being so tight, you should check your bore. If your chambers are that tight, they're going to make smaller bullets as the lead is shaved off while pressing them in. If your bore is not as small as the chambers, then the bullets will not seal and that can cause all sorts of problems, especially with accuracy, but also with slowly damaging the barrel (would be damaged a lot faster if you were shooting smokeless powder). I don't recall the term, but hot gas escapes through the grooves in the bore and it strips lead from the bullets causing leading and steel from the barrel causing bore damage.
You don't have to use force to seat your caps on your nipples? If I don't, the caps won't go off... and even if I do, sometimes I need to hit them twice to go off. It's like 3/5 go off and 2/5 need to be hit again. I think the caps aren't a good fit for the nipples, but they're the one's that the company (and others) recommend. I think a couple of my nipples are out of spec and that's why it's consistently 3/5 that go off. It appears that the taper is too wide at the top edge of where the cap makes contact/seals to the nipple. Either it's too wide there or the entire taper is too wide. I think the entire taper is too wide, but never measured, because how do you accurately measure a taper? It's different along the length and it's not easy to measure the exact spot each time. I'm thinking maybe that I can make a mold of one of the nipples that works and use that as a "no go" gauge and/or a visual inspection gauge if I cut one in half, so I can see how the suspected larger nipples fit inside it.
I'm surprised nitrocellulose didn't make them too powerful. I thought that nitrocellulose would the the best choice, but I thought that it would burn too fast and cause far too high pressures... and second to that, I thought that nitrocellulose was invented long after these bullets were ever used. Were they some kind of bullet used after nitrocellulose, but before cartridges? (during that short period of time?)
@@fasted8468 Yeah, they only needed to burn down a forest to produce a pound of potassium nitrate... but then they would have to then turn the potassium nitrate into nitric acid to be able to make nitrocellulose. I just didn't think nitrocellulose was invented until after cartridges were invented. I don't know for a fact though.
@@fasted8468 I googled it, but got like 4 different answers. Some say 1851, some say 1855, some say 1862 and some say 1863. Even Wikipedia's short answer says 1855 and 1862 in the same google result of "when was nitrocellulose invented". I have no idea when the skin cartridges and hazard cartridges were used though. (I thought I was replying to a comment on skin cartridges that I watched today... but then realized it was the Hazzard cartridges video. I guess it don't matter either way though. I just figured that with the nitrocellulose being used as an adhesive it would burn too fast and too powerful. When nitrocellulose was invented it couldn't be used as gunpowder, because it burned so fast it would blow up and gun they tried to use it in. They had to invent ways to slow down the combustion first.
Combustible paper cartridges were made using paper that was soaked in a combination of nitric + sulfuric acids during the Civil War Era. It is a dangerous process that should not be done at home. It was the same as modern flash paper. I make mine from flash paper and flash glue and they burn 100% clean without leaving any charred paper in the chambers. They also make 3F black powder burn cleaner. It is a totally different & superior process than soaking coffee filter papers in potassium nitrate and water which is basically an uninformed hoax seen in many YT videos.
@@robertrobert7924 Isn't nitrated paper the same as nitrocellulose? ...and if it is nitrocellulose, isn't it too powerful for a black powder rifle? Even a small amount of nitrocellulose can create too much pressure for a black powder gun... and mixing that with black powder, especially surrounding the black powder, because it can cause the black powder to burn much faster too (by igniting it all at once). I know nitrocellulose isn't always the best quality and poor quality nitrocellulose would work... but I wonder if anyone ever made too high quality nitrocellulose and blew up their gun on accident.
