Range Report 24MAY2026: Comparing Boxer Cartridges

I was recently talking to someone about shooting my version of the English Boxer cartridge, often incorrectly called a "Pritchett" cartridge.  Our discussion touched upon the functional difference between cast and compressed (sometimes called "swaged") bullets, on the importance of the paper, on why historical ammunition loads don't work for unhistorical fantasy shooting sports, and on why modern replica P-53 rifles, or, more precisely the bores of those rifles, don't shoot well with historical ammunition.  It's a huge and fairly complex subject, and worse, is clouded by vast amounts of false redneck lore that has been repeated as gospel for decades, so today's range session looks at several of those questions.

I am not going to go into the complicated question of why modern reproduction rifles are purposefully designed for people doing modern fantasy shooting sports and why that means they don't work with historical loads since that subject has already been covered in depth by Brett Gibbons here:
https://youtu.be/KHC7c1UeNX0
Suffice to say, although my rifle started out as a cheap Euroarms reproduction, it has been as carefully modified to function like an original as I have been able to arrange.  Tod Watts has defarbed the stock and shaved it down to match the shape of an original better, and Whitacre Machine Works made me a new barrel with the historically correct progressive depth rifling and installed a new, better-made rear sight.  Mr. Watts also installed a new front sight (which is what drove today's shooting--I wanted to try it out).

When I make English cartridges, I make the Boxer style, which was the last of the three main types.  These had .550 in. bullets with clay plugs.  To learn how I make them, get a copy of my book, Historical Shooting with the P-53 Enfield or go HERE.  I load them with 68 grains of Swiss 1.5F powder, and my bullets are cast with a mold from NOE.

Today, I pitted my fairly crude cartridges against those made by Brett Gibbons at Paper Cartridges LLC.  Mr. Gibbons' cartridges use compressed bullets, not cast, and are perfect matches for those used in period.  In addition, he wraps them much better than I can, a point that becomes instantly obvious during loading.  I loaded them, also, with 68 grains of Swiss 1.5F.

I fired 30 rounds of each type, for a total of 60 shots, today.  Every single cartridge loaded perfectly and rammed without any force required at all, except for a couple of my cartridges which were tied off clumsily so they were a bit hard to start into the muzzle.  In fact, one problem I had today was that Mr. Gibbons' bullets started to fall down the bore on their own, so I had to be careful to maintain my hold on the paper when I was breaking the powder tube off or else the whole thing would have fallen down the bore without even ramming.  You will never have that "problem" with a Springfield rifle musket and those abominable Civil War Burton-ball cartridges!

I shot all tables of fire from a rest, as you should when gauging the precision of the rifle and ammunition rather than the accuracy of the shooter, and shot all of them at 75 yards.  Shooting conditions: Bright and sunny 70 degrees, wind 10 mph from 5:00, humidity 48%.    I used a fine sight picture with a 6:00 hold on the Center for all shots.  The targets are my reproduction of the 1864 3rd-class targets for 300 yards scaled down to use at 100 yards.

Table of Fire Two: My Cartridges

ToF 2: My cartridges.

Rounds: 10
String: 32.0 in.
String Test: 3.2 in./rd.

Table of Fire Three: Paper Cartridges LLC

ToF 3: Paper Cartridges LLC.

Rounds: 10
String: 27.0 in.
String Test: 2.7 in./rd.

Conclusion
This only shows 20 out of the 60 rounds I fired today.  The rest of the results were very close to those posted here, although these show the best table for each of the different cartridges.

Although it may be hard to see in the photograph, 7 out of the 10 rounds in ToF 3 (Paper Cartridges LLC) are bullseyes in almost the exact middle of the Center, with 2 in the Inner, and only one in the Outer.  That last is interesting because it clearly key-holed (you can see it on the upper left of the Outer right beside the numeral 3).  I have no idea what cause it to keyhole, unless in ramming it I somehow stripped the bullet out of the paper.  Regardless, I'll take getting 7 out of 10 rounds on the exact bullseye all through the same hole any day of the year!

While my bullets (ToF2) didn't shoot as well as those of Mr. Gibbons, a String Test of 3.2 in./rd. is very satisfying, and is better than I usually get, so I am quite pleased.  I use a very thin tracing paper for the bullet patch, but I will be switching to 9-lb. onionskin paper from now on as my cartridges were slightly harder to get started, if not any harder to ram, than those from Mr. Gibbons.  I will also forbear from casting my own bullets and simply switch to using the compression-formed bullets from Paper Cartridges LLC as they are clearly superior, since all other factors were the same today.

Another interesting note is that although the String Tests showed a distinct difference, using the scoring system for which these targets were designed, the scores were almost identical.  In the musketry instructions, a Center was worth 4 points, an Inner was worth 3 points, and an Outer was worth 2 points.  Using that system, my cartridges produces a score of 35 compared to the 36 for the Paper Cartridges LLC.