Roll Your Own Paper Musket Cartridges

Long before the advent of brass cased cartridges, firearms used rolled paper cartridges for their ammunition. Many people don’t realize it, but paper cartridges were used in America as far back as the American Revolution. These first cartridges were fairly simple; they contained a round ball rolled in a certain manner that held enough gun powder to provide the main charge for the ball in addition to the priming powder for the flintlock pan.

In later years as the flintlocks gave way to percussion cap ignition, paper cartridges became a bit more advanced. A lot of paper cartridges were made up of multiple pieces and types of papers. Some of them could be quite complex. In addition to separate powder chambers and wrappings to contain the ball, some paper cartridges had a top layer rolled over the entire cartridge to provide waterproofing. The following pictorial shows how I roll my cartridges to be used in my reproduction muskets and other firearms.

I started out with some simple home made wooden tools. The dowel is about slightly under diameter of the bore of the rifle musket itself. The former for the paper wrapper and the other dimensions are outlined in my video titled Ammunition Essentials. It’s a must see series of videos for a lot of ammunition manufacturing tips.

After casting and lubricating the projectile, I run it through. A home made push through sizer.

Getting the outer wrapper ready to apply to the cartridge form.

Adding simple glue stick to hold the tube shut.

I tie the end of a paper tube and insert the projectile in all the way to the front.

A smaller paper tube is rolled to make a separate powder chamber.

Filling and inserting the remeasured powder chamber into the back of the cartridge.

A stack of pre tied and ready to shoot cartridges. These are Burton style .577 rifle musket cartridges.

Each packet of cartridges come 10 per soft pack, along with 12 percussion caps. Now before anyone has a fit about me not including EVERY possible step in the process of making these cartridges and what the measurements for paper forms, powder charge, etc, I recommend you look for the video series Ammunition Essentials. This video will explain things in greater detail than this simple blog.