The 1800 Pattern Baker Rifle: Shooting with Paper Cartridges -PART TWO-

the baker rifle holds a special place in the history of early 19th century british and empire military firearms its distinctive appearance combined with the equally distinctive uniform worn by most of its users makes it instantly recognizable equally is distinctive was the personal equipment worn by riflemen it's black color and the inclusion of a Powderhorn worn slung above the cartridge box where its hallmarks the powder in this horn was used to refill the flask the intended tool for loading a little known fact that the evidence seems to point towards is that both these implements the horn and the flask by the mid peninsular war were rendered redundant by the almost exclusive use of paper cartridges now these cartridges contained both packs and unpatched ball presumably those with the patched ball we're just as effective as the tried and trusted method of patching with fourth ball that is to say loose ball powder and Pat now we've examined the use of the paper cartridge with an unpacked round ball in a previous video today we'll explore the use of the paper cartridge including a passion ball the also a goal of these experiments is twofold one is to examine possible construction techniques of these cartridges and two to ascertain whether the fact that these cartridges are as effective as loading and firing with the separate components in part one of this series we examined and compared the use of loose patch Brownville and unpatched ball cartridges the results were predictable but the degree of lost accuracy was somewhat less than may have been expected as stated here in part two we'll examine the use of the paper cartridge including a past run vaulting information on this type of ammunition is exceptionally scarce and in keeping with its position as an invaluable reference DeWitt Bailey's book British military flintlock rifles will form a key source of information the information contained therein about packs round ball cartridges is not exhaustive or definitive this mainly due to reasons of simply lack of references therefore in this project there's a certain degree of speculation as to the design of the cartridges one of the governing factors in the development and construction of these was the important consideration that these were to be used on active service so they had to be reasonably robust simple to make and include the pre-lubricated patch three methods of cartridge construction were used here the container pattern the thistle pattern and the massarone pattern the latter is the only historically referenced cartridge used in the experiments and is found in DeWitt Bailey's book a key consideration in its use is that it dates from the 1830s and is not from the Napoleonic era the other two are of my own design with names picked simply to describe them and without any historical reference whatsoever the round balls used for all the experiments measure point five nine four and weigh in the neighborhood of 22 to the pound all shooting was conducted using the Pritchard international four-foot high target when I turned to the container pattern served only as a vessel to contain the powder and the packed round ball one key element to this style of cartridge is the necessity of tying the patch to the bullet so that in handling the two remain together to prepare the ball a jig was found to be helpful I used the drying rack made for my Enfield cartridges although other methods were used and as we shall see were equally successful the holes in the drying rack measured three quarters of an inch with a lubed pax place over the hole the bullet was then seated in the patch and was forced into the rat bringing the loose ends of the patch together light string was then used to tie the patch to the ball the next step was to roll the cartridge using the paper width dimensions shown here the mandrel used measured 5/8 one key aspect here was the folding of the corner of the paper at the beginning of the forming this created a stop or barrier within the cartridge which would then keep the looped ball and powder from mingling the ball was placed with the open end facing in for ease of loading and the paper rolls to its final form it was then choked both above and below the ball although in retrospect it was probably acceptable to have only choked above at the end of the cartridges light string was then used to tie the cartridge off at the choke point and 95 grains of 2f was used to charge the cartridge for these particular cartridges I used an a historical method for closing the cartridge in fact it was a method used in the American Civil War for their cartridges as it is effective easy to use and doesn't affect the functioning of the cartridge in any way historically they were tied shut the use of the container pattern was conventional in most respects as per the standard military doctrine of the era priming was executed first with a pinch of powder taken from the cartridge before loading the rest down the barrel here we see the importance of placing the patched bullet in the cartridge in its peculiar way by biting the bullet end of the cartridge ah it exposes the underside of the patched ball which then can be placed in the muzzle ready for ramming so I've confirmed one of my suspicions about this type of cartridge in the fact that the patch is tied to the ball because the target is their firing points up there and I just found a patch right there about 20 yards from the target that can't be good for accuracy so to follow on from the found patch at the 80 yard point there's only two hits on this target I have no idea what the other three rounds went so in the two criteria that we're evaluating today the accuracy and the functionality I would say accuracy is craft with that one probably because the patch is tied to the ball but functionality it it loaded with ease the patched round ball came out of the paper casing on loading very easily and the ball was forced with no extra effort whatsoever down the barrel the initial efforts with the official style cartridge used the regular patching material this was a fatal flaw now I knew the concept I wanted to use in that the hole cartridge would be rammed on the barrel with little handling the problem was that what's the patch the ball was mated to the paper tube the overall thickness of that combination made loading extremely difficult and completely impractical in this diagram we see this cartridge placed at the muzzle of the rifle the light brown represents the patching and the light gray the paper the problem with using this thicker patching material was that it combined with the paper wrapping was simply too wide to fit down the muzzle ultimately the solution would be the use of a thinner patching material reducing the windage and allowing the bullet and combination of patch and paper to completely be forced down the barrel here we see a demonstration of just how difficult loading of this initial pattern of fissile cartridge was [Applause] that was pretty difficult so it was back to the drawing board I revamp the construction steps and began with a die made from a piece of 5/8 copper tube this was used to prep the patching involved the patch in this case was a fender material measuring only some point 0 1 2 in thickness the mandrel which was a 1/2 inch piece of dowel was placed 1 inch from the wide end of the paper the corner was folded over creating the internal barrier which I considered important to minimize any contamination of the powder the ball impacts were then pushed out of the die into the end of the partly rolled paper and the cartridge was then formed encapsulating the passion ball [Music] the dye was then slid up the mandrel from the other end to hold everything together while tying off took place a lower choke was applied although probably not necessary and perhaps most importantly the upper choke was tied loosely around the open ends of the patch in paper this last subtle aspect was extremely important as the upper string was intended to be removed on loading the excess was trimmed and the cartridge removed from the mandrel it was charged with 95 grains of 2f powder closure was effected by twisting in time with a quick trim of the excess the ball and was lubricated with shortening to the level of the lower choke and let the cool much like the one then patterned before only a couple of key differences one the patch inside is much thinner material - there's lubricant on the outside this should help us load easily and three it's actually using a thinner mandrel so that the cold cartridge will fit much more easily down the barrel of the rifle the initial sequences of loading with the fissile cartridge were the same as any other paper cartridge priming first followed by loading here we see the critical step of removing the upper choking string this was important as it allowed this catch and paper combination to separate cleanly from the bullet at the muzzle so generally my impressions about that style of cartridge are pretty good they seem to load okay the second string was a little finicky trying to peel it off through all the layers of lubricant and whatnot by tying the second string around the top loosely mind you that gathers together the patch and the end of the paper cartridge and it makes for a much more robust package let's have a look and see how they shot well unlike other patterns of cartridge all five of these hit the target one two three four five it's about twice as big a grouping as I typically shoot with forced ball with the Baker so somewhere in that multiple layers of paper and patch it's probably not quite a perfect fit that is to say no this is definitely effective double that to 200 yards and we're talking about a spread that's probably about as wide as this target is and again that would probably be considered effective especially for the arrow let's see what a speed test looks like drawings and instructions for the massarone pattern of cartridge are found in DeWitt Bailey's book initially I again used the full thickness patching material with the patch and ball combination sewn together with a few stitches looking back I'd probably use thread that was a little too heavy the combination was then mated to the paper tube overall it was simply a bad choice on my part as it suffered from the same inherent false as with the first try at the fizzle cartridge you can see here how the paper got in the way and the overall fragility ensured that everything fell apart at the muzzle so as with the previous pattern back to the bench to retrieve a proper version I started by prepping the ball and patch by nesting them together in the 5/8 copper tube now full thickness patching was used here for reasons that will become apparent so the combination did not push through but rather form the underside of the patch the mandrel measuring one happen was placed 1/2 inch from the end of the paper which was roll using the internal divider technique glue was used to seal the cartridge tube now glue was used in the construction of the cartridge but just not in this way as it would have to sit and dry the glue here was simply to hold everything together the closed end of the paper was dipped in white glue to coat the rim of the cylinder the mandrel was then removed and the paper placed in Iraq removing the bullet and patched combination from the die it was then nested at the mouth of the cylinder leaving the ball in place to maintain some sort of downward pressure it was then allowed to dry in this position after a while the ball was stitched into the path I tried a number of different techniques but settled on this one as being most efficient in title by taking a small stitch in each corner the patch was drawn up and around the ball closing it and giving it the characteristic bud like shape as shown in the historical diagrams I use very light thread as I didn't want to impede the separation of bullet and patch at the muzzle the idea being that the ball would simply blow through the thread or stitches as soon as possible carrying on to the target unimpeded the pass was lubricated with shortening by the instructions this was supposed to be done with a brush the dipping method proved satisfactory and slightly easier 95 grains of 2f was used to charge it it was closed using a series of triangular folds as shown in the historical diagram the end result was somewhat unorthodox looking and I did have reservations about the glues ability to hold everything together especially what's the Greeks had been introduced this diagram illustrates the importance of using this smaller diameter dowel in the initial version the paper had come to the side of the patch and ball combination making it too wide to fit down the barrel and by using the smaller diameter valve the paper tube was mated on the underside of the Patchen ball combination keeping it well clear of the crown of the muzzle so the massarone powder it's been in a pouch overnight the glue seems to be holding the patch and ball combination quite well let's see how it works [Music] these views show with clarity the importance of using the smaller diameter mandrel to form the paper tube allowing that paper to slide inside the mother know also how that paper forces to patch in ball combination to see at the muzzle ready for ramming so as far as functionality now goes that cartridge performed flawlessly the smaller mandrel creating a smaller paper to really help in the ability for that tube to fit into the barrel with absolutely no hair comes whatsoever the prelude patch glued to the top of the cylinder sat at the muzzle perfectly positioned for ramming all in all that cartridge I don't think you could improve upon its functionality so five rounds on target the grouping is a little bit bigger probably again spread the spread about twice the size that I could typically attain with loose [ __ ] for our ball one two three four five so not just studying by any stretch of the imagination obviously with the first five ever shot with this type of cartridge the you will acquire a few more rounds downrange to get a better feel for its capability but as mentioned before functionality was a dream shoot accuracy well it can be better but this is still effective so I hope you can see this in the really strong sunlight out here but here's a patch recovered from the ground to vote Oh ten yards from the firing point you can see the remnants of the paper cartridge still glued to the powder side believe it or not of the time I was kind of surprised to see that there was still some remnants of it then I found this which is not some sort of exotic mushroom however look how much of the paper has been left and essentially not charred it's all so that definitely formed a an effective nut sabot but a wad below the patch which has a double function of protecting it but it's on there and that's just with white glue now let's see how fast I can load and shoot three rounds [Applause] [Applause] as for the performance of the container pattern it may be said that it functioned very well but shot poorly the simple arrangement have patched the ball in powder in one unit it was quite convenient due to the fact that it was not intended for the paper to be loaded the ability to mean full thickness touching is beneficial unfortunately the fact that the patch needed to be tied to the ball they gave it any advantages as mentioned it shot horribly having the ball encumbered by a piece of material piping threw off its trajectory to the point of it being ineffective a small caveat needs to be mentioned here the use of leather packaging glued to the ball is a method that has some historical merit perhaps this method in packaging in the container pattern would perform better it's a subject for another video perhaps missile pattern was a design that it came up with that enabled the whole cartridge to be loaded down the muzzle thus speeding up it'll really focus after arriving at a correct thickness of patching the cartridge suppose will it function reliably with only one small added step of having to remove the upper choking string this would ensure maximum accuracy it would still function if forgotten accuracy was consistent with other experiments using wads bullets not optimum but not completely ineffective the master old pattern proved to be the most efficient although very complicated to make the payoff was in its use exceptionally simple with no special steps needed one reservation identity exposed nature in fashion easily able to attract dirt and other contaminants coupled with this would be a long-term feasibility of the glue holding the patching ball to the end of the curtain over time the lubricant in the patch might compromise the group allowing for the separation attitude and a loss of effectiveness as for accuracy it too was on par with previous experiments including one somewhere in between unpacked ball cozy and loose fashion ball as for rapid firing test I elected not to include the container patterns of experiments the accuracy was that dismal leaving the Thistle planet and the massarone pattern to go off head-to-head for the other two patterns there really wasn't much to choose from each shooting their three rounds within seconds [Applause] I'd be very interested in hearing of your experiments with catch the ball cartridges if you've tried them I'd like to know for further experiments with the Baker another Napoleonic weaponry you might start by CD Sadler run out of Australia by a group of 1953 and address their videos are excellent and delve into many historical aspects of the era I had the occasion a tweeting a couple of David and Adrian at Waterloo for the bicentenary finding rifleman envy if you'd like to support the channel please stop by our patreon page the link is in the description below [Music] you

Channel: britishmuzzleloaders

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Keywords: SMLE, 303, Enfield, rifle musket, black powder, BF1, battlefield 1, snider, martini henry, zulu, 577/450, smle, shooting, short, magazine, lee, enfield, bayonet, drill, shooting sports, mad minute, snider enfield, reloading, bullet casting, Victorian army, baker rifle, brown bess, p51, p53, p58, p56, p60, p61, long rifle, short rifle, breech block, sharpe, harper, 95th rifles, greenjacket

Id: t_zE91zB7ek

Length: 26min 26sec (1586 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 01 2017