Obsolete Rimfire Ammunition

A lot of people don’t realize that much of our earlier self contained cartridges were actually rimfire primed. When we think of rimfire primed today, the .22 long rifle cartridge comes to mind. Today I’m going to show you how I make .52 Sharps and Hankins for an older Civil War breech loading carbine.

I started off this project with some 32 gauge shotgun brass from MagTech.

I mark the appropriate cartridge length with Dykem blue and cut the shell.

The question now is — “How do I know what length to cut the brass case ?” If you know anything about making custom ammunition, then you know how to use Cerrosafe to make a chamber casting. I don’t have the space here to outline that step — however — you can watch my video series Ammunition Essentials. This video series is coming soon, and will cover every aspect of making your own custom ammunition from A to Z in an easy to follow video format.

The case is cut and trimmed but NOT ready to load just yet.

The next step is to silver solder the center fire primer hole shut. Normally you don’t want to heat the head on a modern case as it weakens the metal. However we’re only talking about black powder cartridge pressures here. Considering the original cases were thin drawn copper and you’ll see this doesn’t cause any problems.

The silver solder is filed and sanded off flush with the case.

Now it’s off to the millling machine to make an offset and countersink in the case for inserting a primer.

Here’s where the fun part begins. I take a live .22lr cartridge and carefully pull the projectile from it and dump out the powder. I’ll cut the case in half and use the back end for a primer. You might ask — why does this idiot not use a nail gun primer from the hardware store ? Well…. I have, but unfortunately it blows the projectile out of the case just before it ignites the powder charge sometimes. I don’t like that. A pop…. Then a whoosh.

The hole drilled out for the new primer is reamed out by a chucking reamer so the .22 “primer” is a tight fit without having little curls of drilled material blocking the hole. It’s a nice friction fit.

The interior of the case showing the primer fitted in place. IF — it’s necessary to keep the primer in place, you could add a single drop of crazy glue to the .22 case to lock it in well.

A primed case with full powder charge.

A loaded case with projectile seated and ready to fire. An appropriate .52 caliber, 350 grain projectile greased and seated.

Keep in mind that modern cases don’t have to same capacity as the old rimfire balloon head copper cases did. So if you copy the original load data for black powder cartridges, the case capacity will not be the same. Something to keep in mind when loading black powder cartridges is that you NEVER a want to leave an air gap of any space between the powder charge and the base of the projectile. This is a recipe for disaster. An air pocket could allow the cartridge to explode and damage the gun or hurt yourself.

Remember — black powder is a type of low grade explosive. Smokeless powder burns rapidly and builds up gas pressure to power the projectile.

Since the Sharps and Hankins is a single shot carbine, you need to be aware of the position of the primer in relation to where the firing pin strikes the case. In this situation the case is aligned with the primer at the 12 o’clock position in the breech.

The neatest thing of all is that once you have made these cases, they are reloadable over and over again. There’s no need to go through all this work for just a one time use.