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- Interesting stuff comes along on-line from time to time eh
The HAZARD POWDER Company of Enfield Connecticut was founded 1835 along the Scantic River - and manufactured waterproof cartridges between 1861-1864 for blackpowder revolvers such as the Colts & Remington Army and Navy revolvers. - This was the American Civil War era.
'Hazard' was one of the Top Three gunpowder manufacturers at that time.
When I was shooting ROA Blackpowder I did experiment making Paper Cartridges and they worked fine except the nitrated cigarette papers I used left bits of unburned charred paper in the bottom of the chambers that had to be picked out before re-loading for the next shots. - I reckon properly home NITRATED paper using a saturated solution would have worked better. - Caseless balls would be even betterer as there is NO paper to worry about eh.
This process is a simple one but fiddly to manage - basically what you do is - mix your Black-Powder with a little Dextrin powder - moisten the mix with a small amount of water and scoop it into a shaped open topped cavity and press it down using a ram to PRESS & solidify - and put aside in a sunny dry window for 24 hours to dry - then GLUE together with the conical or ball of choice. (- IF you sadly are located in a high rainfall - high Humidity - grey, cold, mouldy, slimey, damp & overcrowded hole like the Poms .. you would need a drying cabinet or electric dehydrator ..)
Six or seven per cent of DEXTRIN moist-mixed and compressed to shape is great .. bearing in mind that some of the alternative coloured 'Blackpowders' and rocket fuels comprise Dextrin as their main fuel.
Links to informative VIDEOS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyoPmklwv-Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H64cgJQOLAc
Now U S based Mr Crossen does NOT accept overseas orders so we poor Kiwis will have to make our own moulds to compress and shape the antique propellants into the needed loads & calibers as required - shouldn't be a problem using a drill followed by a carbide burr, stone or reamer to shape - and polish eh.
Start off with two aluminium flat bars clamped together in your vise .. drill to depth along the 'split-line' - I plan to clamp the halves together with bolts .. open-up to shape with a taper reamer or burr - and you'll be able to press the mixture down no worries .. use a waxy mould release to ease extraction of the compressed forms ready to glue-on the 'antique' spheres or conicals .. The shape of the powder 'charge' can be tapered, round, flat, or pointed bottom (as drilled), as long as it will load & fit into your chambers eh.
I would intend to use a compression 'pusher' with a rounded bottom shape in a re-loading press - to form them to accept and glue-on forty-four caliber BALLS.
No wucking furries eh.
Or .. READ ALL ABOUT IT here ...
Mr Crossen has a YouTube page with lots of clever videos ..
https://www.youtube.com/@crossencartridge6403/videos
Marty K.
Hmmm... might give this a try. I think I could make a cutter for the moulds to make them really consistent. A controured flat drill will work. It would be interesting to see if the dextrin degrades performance; I rather think it will, but it remains to be seen by how much. The powder 'cake' will need to be quite robust. If it is 'cast' longer than the chambers it will be crushed on loading which will help ignition.
ReplyDeleteWell observed Kathryn - Thank You.
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