Sharps Breechloading Paper Cartridges

I have a modern reproduction Sharps 1863 Business rifle. It’s a .54 caliber beast (so the literature tells me). With all the Sharps reproductions that take modern center fire calibers with real brass cases — why the heck would I buy one of these ? Well…. The price was too good to pass up. The guy I bought it from was not into making ammunition and he thought it would be easy to convert to something else. Not likely. The juice wouldn’t be worth the squeeze.

I got busy doing some research and I bought a Sharps “Christmas Tree” mold appropriate for the gun. They’re called a Christmas tree mold because the driving bands are 3 different sizes in a triangle, you know — just like a Christmas tree. I pushed a projectile into the breech and took a measurement to the end where the block closes.

I ended up ordering some precut cardboard tubes called Hahn Tubes from a guy on the internet who makes them in different lengths based on the length of chamber you have in your particular gun.

I glued a cardboard plug on the bottom and filled the tube with powder. I believe in was able to pack about 70 grains of powder in by packing it tightly.

I glued another cardboard disc on the top and had a nicely sealed powder tube.

Next, I glued a projectile on top of the sealed powder tube.

I used a piece of cotton rag bond paper and glued this around the base of the bullet and the body of the tube.

The bullet itself has a ring tailed base for the purpose of tying the projectile to the top of the cartridge tube. So yeah — I tied it on with some heavy duty cotton twine.

The next thing I did was take a block of pine wood and drill a series of 5 holes each side opposite each other. This would be my wooden block to carry my cartridges in and a set of 12 percussion caps in a groove along the bottom of the packet. Look carefully at the picture and you’ll notice a thin copper wire in the middle running along the length of the wood. This is important later for opening the cartridge box to retrieve the individual cartridges.

Using heavy linen rag bond paper, I wrapped the pine box up just like the Colt paper cartridges and sealed the entire thing with boiled linseed oil to keep it waterproof. I copied an original style label and glued this to the front. I put a wire pull ring along the top of the box to tear open the paper and dig out the individual cartridges just like Colt cartridges.

When you open the breech of the Sharps, you can slide the paper cartridge into the breech, leaving just a tiny tail sticking out.

The knife edge of the breech at the top chops off the last bit of the cardboard cap and exposes the powder charge to the closed breech. I can then prime the gun with a musket cap and fire it just like you had a modern cartridge in it.

Keep in mind that this wasn’t the way the original Sharps cartridges were made. The originals were made with linen wraps that were nitrated to burn up in the breech. But here’s the trick….. once you fire the cartridge, the bullet travels down the bore and creates a vacuum. This vacuum pulls the remains of the cardboard and the rest of the paper tube with it. I didn’t think it would actually do this, and I was concerned that the mess of unburned case would be left behind to clog the bore. To my surprise, there’s no ash or unburned paper left behind. I grease the bullet grooves just before packaging the ammunition and I’m getting no excessive fouling, no ash or chunks of cardboard left in the gun. I do run a cleaning rod and brush down the bore during range sessions about every 10 shots just to make sure I don’t have any smoldering embers or powder crud in the gun. So far I’ve had no problems of any kind. I had to actually film the gun being fired from behind to figure out where the paper was going. Slowing down the video, you can see the impact of the bullet on target, but you can also see the was of cardboard and paper falling just a few short yards from the muzzle. So it’s definitely clearing the bore with each successive shot.