Comparing Paper Cartridges to Loose Round Balls

I took my Pietta Remington New Model Army cap and ball revolver to the range to perform a comparison between paper cartridges and loose round balls.

I made the paper cartridges by nitrating unbleached coffee filter paper, then using a Capandball.com former to make them into shells.  I filled them with twenty-five grains of Goex FFFg powder and seated a .44-caliber Kerr bullet on top.  The bullets were then dipped into lubricant made by melting beeswax and lamb tallow in an 8:1 ratio.  The bullets were cast by Christopher Beresovoy at PaperCartridges.com using a mold made by Mark Hubbs at Eras Gone Bullet Molds.

Kerr Paper Cartridges

I weighed four of the finished paper cartridges with the following results (in grains):
242.96
244.88
247.56
247.74
Average: 245.79; Median: 246.22; Standard Deviation: 2.29. 

The round balls were Hornady .454” .44-caliber round balls over thirty grains of Goex FFFg powder and a Wonder-Wad lubricated felt wad.  I recognize that using different loads of powder for the conicals and round balls may seem odd, but during the Nineteenth Century loose round balls were generally loaded onto more powder than was used in military paper cartridges in period, so I chose to follow this practice in order to compare the ammunition as it was actually used.

I shot four groups, two with each, at twenty-five yards from a sitting supported position.  The weapon was a reproduction Remington New Model Army revolver manufactured by Pietta.  The reason there are different numbers of rounds in each evolution is that there were problems with either time or loading, misfires, etc.

I made targets that were designed to simulate those described in Cooke’s Cavalry Tactics from 1862 (pp. 99-100) but reduced in size to match the shorter range.

I evaluated the shooting using the String Measurement Test mentioned by Cooke and described by Heth.  This was a way of evaluating marksmanship from the Civil War (the Berdan Sharpshooters used it) which evaluates both your accuracy (how close you came to your point of aim) and your consistency (your shot group) and expresses them both in a single number.  In more technical terms, it gives a precise figure for the deviation between your Mean Point of Impact and your Intended Mean Point of Impact.  It is like a vastly simpler version of the Figure of Merit technique used by the British army during the same period, and, in my opinion, is far more meaningful than simply measuring the group size as is commonly done today.

In the string measurement test, you hold the end of a string on the bullseye of your target and stretch it to one of the bullet holes.  You pinch the string at that point, move the pinched spot to the bullseye, and stretch the string to another bullet hole.  You pinch the string again at that point, and move that spot back to the bullseye, and continue with this process until you have measured the distance from the bullseye to each hole.  You can then divide the total length of the string by the number of rounds fired to determine an average.

Results:

Table 1:  Kerr paper cartridges.
52.5 in./11 rounds = 4.8 in./round 

Table 2:  Kerr paper cartridges.
41.5 in./9 rounds = 4.6 in./round

Table 3:  Round balls.
55 in./10 rounds = 5.5 in./round

Table 4:  Round balls.
62.5 in./11 rounds = 5.7 in./round

Adding the results, the average overall measurement was 4.7 inches/round for paper cartridges and 5.6 inches/round for loose round balls, a difference of almost twenty percent.  Various Internet sources disagree as to the relative accuracy of conicals and round balls; some argue that when conicals are driven into the chamber this inherently misaligns the bullet and affects accuracy.  These results seem to contradict that idea, although it must be admitted that the sample size is too small to be definitive.  Balanced against this, in a separate test (to be published later) done with a .36-calber Colt Navy comparing paper cartridges made with Richmond Laboratory bullets against round balls (again using historical rather than equal loads), the results were the opposite:  The round balls had the lower average string test measurement.

I do not pretend this is in any way conclusive, but I find the results interesting regardless.  Of course, had I used the same amount of powder for both kinds of bullet that would have been more of a direct comparison, but my intent was to compare the loads used during the Nineteenth Century as they were normally fired.

I offer my sincere thanks to the suppliers mentioned above whose products enabled me to perform this comparison.