I've been working on this project for a while now. I've been trying to recreate linen cartridges as used in the Civil War, mainly for the Sharps New Model, the Star and the Gwyn & Campbell carbines.
I partially disassembled a Sharps cartridge I had and found it was made of two layers of linen, the thickness being approximately 0.005". After months of trial and error and ordering dozens of different types of linen I have finally found what appears to be the correct product. Unfortunately it has not been made for 60 or so years. I managed to get a roll and it is a near perfect match to the original. Up until now the thinnest linen I was able to find was about 0.011" thick and not nearly the proper thread count.
My attempts making cartridges so far with the available material has had mixed results. The linen burns nearly completely and only occasionally leaves small pieces of completely carbonized fabric. We have been playing with the Sharps bullets up till now, unfortunately non that we have been able to get up till now are a match to the originals , and don't shoot consistently even without the cartridges attached . The second problem is that even with a single wrap of linen the cartridges have been to thick at the overlap with the bullet, causing loading problems. I think this problem will be fixed with the new material.
For the next phase I'm switching over to the Star carbine. I had a friend make me a mould using an original Ster bullet as the model. The bullets drop from the mould pretty close to the size of the original and shoot well without the cartridge and fairly well with my early thick cartridges. I'm in the process of rolling the new cartridges with the new material and they look pretty good so far. We will se how they shoot in the next couple of weeks.
What I'm having problems with is- The original Star and Sharps cartridges have a slightly glossy look and a smooth surface to them. In my research I have found no references that say the cartridges were lacquered, shellacked or waxed. I have tried Lacquer and Shellac. They did not make the cartridge perform better, and left more residue. There is reference to sizing/starching the linen, which I have done, but this doesn't leave the glossy surface of the originals.
So the question is - dose anyone have any reference to how the cartridges were treated ?
I've attached photos of were I'm at now.
