Hey Fellas, I've noticed a bit of a trend lately. It seems we're all posting about rifles, cartridges and such, but nothing about our beloved Colts or much associated with them. So I thought I'd come full circle and do something with a Colt and black powder. I thought you all might like to see how I constructed paper cartridges with the J&D bullet. If not, don't look past the first photo. Because what follows is a pictorial on how I do it. Hopefully no one is bored to tears.
So now that you've seen the end result, I'll get down to business.
Since loading these bullets is a different proposition than round ball, I needed a new mandrel. I started with a 1/2" diameter wooden dowel. I cut a piece off about 3" long and chucked it in my drill press. I used a rasp to dress it down to the dimensions shown in the picture. Then some 400 grit sandpaper to smooth it out. Once it was done, and the ring marked on, I rubbed it down good with beeswax so the paper and glue won't stick. Easy.
Now that we have a mandrel for rolling, lets roll em' up. I use the hair curler papers, just like for my round ball carts. This is the position of the mandrel on the paper, when I start.
Then I fold the top of the paper over the mandrel, and run the glue stick down that whole edge at the bottom of the paper.......
....after the glue, roll the paper up around the mandrel like this.
Once it's rolled up, twist the small end together tight.
Now, you will be able to see the ring marked on the mandrel, through the paper. Using a pencil, make a mark on the paper right where that ring is.
The mark is where you will cut the tube with a pair of scissors. You can also shorten up that twisted pigtail at the same time.
You now have a "cartridge" to load.
I set the cartridge in my loading block. It's just easier. I then use a small funnel to put the powder charge in. In this case, I load 20 grains of FFFg Goex. You can see how much it fills the "case".
Now comes the part everyone hates, putting glue on the bullet. It's really not that hard though. Just hold the bullet like I show in the picture, and twist it. This will put glue right on the skirt of the bullet where it belongs. I don't even get it on my fingers.
Just take that freshly glued bullet, and set in in the case. It sits in there just right. Then pick it up, roll the bullet in your fingers and it will smooth out and stick the paper to the bullet good. You can now give a little twist on the pigtail and tighten the whole thing up a bit. And you're done!
It's really not that hard. It took WAY longer to type this up than it took to make all six cartridges. I used my stopwatch and timed myself, it took less than 1 1/2 minutes to make a cartridge. 1 minute, 27 seconds actually. And I'm a sausage fingered rookie.
They fit nicely in the cylinder too.
So go ahead, give it a try. You could do it this way with round ball too. It would just be a little trickier getting the glue on the ball.
I also want to thank Scooby for sending me the bullets to try out. Sorry it took me so long to get them loaded.
Hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for looking.
