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maillemaker
I don’t know if this is the correct forum, but I wanted to say that I received my Pritchet mold. Delivery was very speedy after payment. The mold looks to be top quality, including a set screw to lock the sprue plate screw.
I’m very intrigued by the way Noe is able to make multi-cavity molds for hollow-base bullets like Minies. I have never seen this before and I wish all of my molds were double-cavity to speed up production for competition.
The mold came with two sets of core pins, to make lighter and heavier bullets. I also bought the base plug plate to make base plugs out of Bondo (originals were made of boxwood).
I attached my Lee 6-gang handles to the mold with no problems. I’ve got to break in the mold per the instructions and I’m ready to cast some Pritchet bullets and make Enfield-style cartridges!
Steve
maillemaker
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OK, I ordered some 9# onion paper and it makes a great outer wrapper with the .566 Pritchet.
Here are my first two Pattern 1855 Enfield cartridges. Since I already had a tin of SPG lube, I used that to dip them in. I find SPG has a very similar texture to 1:8 tallow:beeswax.
These fit easily down my Pedersoli P58 and P53, which like .578-sized minies, and fit more firmly in my Hoyt and Whitacre Richmond Carbine and P53 barrels, which like .576-sized minies.
After lubing, these measure .576-.578.
I did not install base plugs in these. Nor are they charged.
http://i.imgur.com/SFSVFjh.jpg
Steve
brettgibbons
I bought one of these molds about five minutes after I found this thread; I have been waiting for an actual Pritchett mold for years, without resorting to an expensive custom order. The NOE mold is exceptional and throws a perfect bullet as long as the mold is nice and hot. I heat it up on a hotplate as suggested, and got perfect bullets in no time. The pins that form the cavities in the base of the bullet need to be kept (very) hot or the bullets don’t like to drop. I bought the .550-caliber because I like to shoot from the cartridge box, and the late pattern Enfield cartridge with the smaller diameter bullet to facilitate easier loading is exactly what I was looking for.
Shot the Pritchett balls from the NOE mold for the first time today. With an old Italian-made P/53 rifle with an average bore, I put five bullets into a 24-inch log at about 40 or 50 yards, without really even trying. I was mostly interested in seeing how easily the bullets rammed home. Would have shot more but it was almost dark by the time I was ready to shoot, and I’m hesitant to tempt fate too much with paper-patched bullets until we get some rain here in California.
The bullets were made up into Enfield-pattern cartridges using 13-pound cotton rag paper for the outer wrapper that forms the patch around the bullet. I made clay plugs from oven-bake modeling clay that I stole from the kids. The NOE plug mold makes a plug that extends slightly beyond the base of the bullet, and I cut them down to be flush with the base of the bullet. The plugs seemed to be quite hard. Making the cartridge from the historical pattern (Handbook for Hythe is the pattern I use), the total diameter of the cartridge came out to .560 to .564 inch before lube. I used 8 parts beeswax to 1 part tallow for lube. The first two rounds slid almost all the way down the bore under the weight of just the ramrod itself, all I had to do was tap them home. The others took very little effort to ram. Over 65 grains of 3F, they all hit a log perhaps 24 inches round, at pretty close range. I don’t know if the clay plugs answered for their purpose, or if I was close enough that the balls were still hitting the target regardless. I get about the same accuracy from my 69-cal smoothbore at that range…
I’ll try them out at longer range once we get some rain.
Thanks for an awesome thread with a lot of great concepts and ideas! I definitely would have struggled with the mold being too cold otherwise.
Brett
adamsutherland
Replicas of CSA manufactured copy of British Enfield cartridge, 1855 pattern. Based on extant example #540, “Round Ball to Rimfire Volume 4″, Dean .S Thomas. .550” diameter Pritchett bullet with no base plug. Cartridges need to be lubricated and charged.
Original:
Lubed. On the right is pre-heated. Pre-heating allows the wax to stay liquid too long and soak into the brown paper. In the future I will not pre-heat.
I have charged up a bunch of cartridge for testing tomorrow at the range.
The white cartridges are 1860 pattern British Enfield cartridges with base plugs. They were made by Brett Gibbons. He sent them to me to charge with 68 grains 2F Goex and I will test shoot them in my Euroarms P1853 Enfield with Whitacre barrel with correct progressive-depth rifling.
The tray full of brown cartridges are copies of Confederate Enfield cartridges based on the British 1855 pattern. They have no slits and no base plugs. I have a batch loaded with 68 grains 2F, and the rest is a load workup from 45 grains to 70 grains 3F to see what is most accurate.
The small batch of brown cartridges are Confederate Enfield cartridges as above but I put plugs in them to see if the plugs make a difference.
Here are pictures:
http://imgur.com/a/ljTnOSteve
Here are the results of today’s Enfield cartridge shooting.
I had 4 sets of cartridges.
I had Confederate copies of the 1855 British pattern. These had no slits in the wrapper (the 1855 pattern did not have them. They were charged with 68 grains 2F Goex. I made up one batch with plugs, and one without. The Confederates did not use base plugs but I wanted to compare with and without.
I also had a batch of 1860 pattern cartridges made by Brett Gibbons. He wanted me to test them in an Enfield with progressive-depth rifling as Whitacre barrels have.
Then I made up a batch of Confederate 1855 pattern cartridges with 3F powder from 45 to 65 grains to find an optimal target load. These had no plugs.
I shot the service loads (68 grains 2F) at both 50 and 100 yards. I shot my target load workup at 50 yards.
At 50 yards, using the service load of 68 grains of 2F Goex, the bullets with plugs made a better group than those without. Also at 100 yards the 1855 bullets with plugs made a slightly better group than those without.
Here are the targets:
I also shot 5 rounds of my usual skirmish load, an RCBS-Hodgdon with 48 grains 3F Goex as a benchmark.
At 50 yards I fired into my “bullet bucket”. This is a 5 gallon plastic bucket lined with 18GA sheet metal and 3 pieces of 18GA sheet metal in the bottom on top of a piece of 3/4 plywood. The bucket is filled with chipped rubber mulch. My hope was to recover some of the bullets and look for traces of plugs and/or paper. Unfortunately accuracy was not good enough to keep them centered on the bucket opening and the full service charges combined with the 540 grain bullet destroyed the bucket.
I was able to recover some bullets and even a plug. You can tell which bullets had the plug as there is a clear imprint of the plug inside the base cavity. The plug itself was virtually undamaged.
I did not find any traces of paper in the mulch. During firing, the paper was seen on most shots to be blasted into confetti. I was able to recover some of the pieces from the ground. You can plainly see that the rifling cut into the paper.
Here is me loading and firing the Confederate 1855:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoMji4yqUec&feature=youtu.be
Here is a shot looking downrange when firing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-9vnvHSF2Y&feature=youtu.be
You can clearly see the paper patch stripping off the bullet.
Paper-patched bullets like the Enfield Cartridge seem to shoot cleaner than naked bullets. It’s basically like swabbing the bore with a greased patch every time you load a bullet. There is such a massive contact area of lube as the bullet is pushed home you can feel it slithering down the barrel instead of scraping down as a naked bullet does. I never shot more than 10 rounds before cleaning (usually 5) but the patches were much cleaner than shooting naked bullets. My impression is that the paper patch acts like a cleaning patch on it’s way down and back out. Of course there is also the fact that there is virtually no leading as there is virtually no lead contact with the barrel. I do believe you could shoot these cartridges pretty much indefinitely without cleaning.
Steve
Not a bad start.
I have found the choice of paper critical, I use a vellum because the lube doesn’t seep through and stick inconsistently to the bullet. When I moved to paper that kept the lube off the bullet and especially the plug when the cartridge is dipped the fliers disappeared and the groups tightened especially at the longer distances.
The paper cuts nicely and the tied base with the cut sides on it litter the front of my firing point, my cartridges use the penultimate three slits.
klausschmitz
i need some help for my issue
due to the fact that my PH Enfield had an oversized bore .582, i need a thicker bullet or wrap more paper around the bullet
what could you recommend for my problem.
i`ve been using Bienfang 360 Graphics or Airmail paper
how many wraps are usefull ? actually i patch a RBCS .575 Minie with airmail paper up to .581
any ideas
thx for help
Klaus
I have never come across a PH that is over bore, are you sure it is a PH and not an Eytie PH.
Why do you think you need to patch the Minie up.
The 0.550″ Pritchets with a plug shoot just fine in my .577″ bore diameter Enfields with just one wrap of similar paper to what you are using.
These cartridges are supposed to be well undersized, we are not using the same thinking as metalic cartridge paper patching. The Minie style bullet is a totally different beast and are supposed to be well under bore diameter so as to facilitate repeated re loading.
Hi Dromia,
thx that you reply to me
i was asking some about this at Cast Boolits and YUKU and post some pics and reports alreadyyes i am sure about the barrel diameter because this PH Enfield was rebored by Ueli Eichelberger from my previous owner for unknown reason. Ueli told me that he has refreshed the Bore and polish them but the Diameter was now 14.78 mm / .583
Pics are at YUKU
Now i was searching for a Pritchett Mould wich i can use for this Bore.
if i get the .566 from Al i have to wrap 3 rounds of the Bienfang to get the 14,78 mm for slip fit sizeas wrote before i use actually a Winter Heavy Slug 670 grs and a RBCS .575 Ball with thin copying paper.
But was looking for a real Pritchett Ballby the way here in Germany Heinrich Hensel offers a custom Pritchett Mould similary to Steve Brooks in any diameter you want but for an expensive price.
KLaus
brettgibbons
adamsutherland
klausschmitz
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