For the “old hands” here, many will recall a number of years ago I tinkered with making some homemade “old timey” cartridge boxes. These were for metallic cartridges. I really enjoyed making these, and have a “kit” put aside when I get the urge to crank another one out. Here’s the link to that original post:
http://www.levergunscommunity.com/viewt ... tridge+box
Looking up the old post, I can’t believe this was eight years ago!!!
Well, those were for metallic cartridges. I’ve always wanted to do some for paper or “combustible” cartridges for black powder cap & ball revolvers. Getting back into shooting these the last year or so, made me want to do so even more. Finally, earlier this year I cleaned up a pair of cap & ball revolvers for a family friend. Since he had nothing to shoot in these, I broke out the old “paper cartridge making kit” – which hadn’t seen the light of day in over two decades – and made a bunch of combustible cartridges for the .44 caliber revolvers.
This really gave me the itch!
Anyway, long story "somewhat" short, I finally had a week in my home office this week, instead of being stuck in a hotel 100’s of miles (or more) from home, so I actually had some time in the evenings. I decided to try making a Paper Cartridge box. Here’s my first try...
I did a little research on line, and decided to use some poplar as the wood. I marked my holes, cut it to size, then cut it for the top and bottom pieces. Here’s what the wood cut looks like:
Next, I drilled out the holes on my drill press. Still free-hand; something I will address in the future by making a jig. Here is the box cut, drilled, and filled! The paper cartridges fit into the larger bottom section, while the top covers the round ball itself. The red string is used to pull through the paper cover to open the box. Red string was Y2K’s idea, since I used red string to tie the paper of the paper cartridges (and I use red string for 30 grain loads).
Original boxes often included percussion caps. Instead of a sleeve of them wrapped in paper, I decided I would drill out a smaller diameter hole to use for the percussion caps. It is on the right, and you can see the percussion caps from this view:
Here is a view with one of the paper cartridges out of its holder. I’ll do another post on making these (I know; I should have done that one first!)
Here is a close-up shot of the back of the cartridge box. The “hinge” is a piece of heavy craft paper – like the paper or cloth used in the originals. I though this design looked appropriate and “vintage”. You can also see the pull string. In the future, I will use thin wire for this versus thread.
I looked on the internet for pictures of vintage paper cartridge boxes to get ideas for my “cover”. Here is what I came up with. Certainly not 100% authentic, but I do think it keeps with the spirit of those original boxes.
So, here is what it looks like assembled:
I created “wings” or “tabs” for mine. On the top is the same “company name” I used for the metallic cartridge boxes. What else? “Ysabel Ammunition Works”!
On the bottom I included load data. Not necessarily period-correct, but who knows, some future grandchild or great-grandchild might be the one to use these, and I want them to know what the heck I loaded!
Here’s a good view of the front face, bottom, and pull string:
And last, the pull string on finished box (as compared to earlier on the unfinished one). Now you see that it would be pulled across to rip the label into two sections, along the divide of the wood, allowing access to the combustible cartridges contained within.
This was a fun and pretty quick project. I have decided I want to create a jig, and make some of these in .44 caliber, .36 caliber and .31 caliber for the various cap & ball revolvers I own. I’m going to alter the design a little bit. I don’t need as much room as I gave myself, so the future boxes won’t be as wide (i.e. – I’ll space the holes closer). As I said above, I’m going to use a thin wire for the paper tear – when I make a label like this one. I got another idea off the web (the capandball YouTube channel, where I got the thin wire idea). I am going to make a cardboard sleeve, so I can reuse the box over and over again without destroying the label. I’ll probably make at least one paper-label version for each “ladies group” in my sorority (as Old No7 calls my collection), then a few of the cardboard-sleeved ones to use repeatedly when I take them shooting (and probably use oak as the wood in those ones).
What do you think?
Then right at the end, the fine idea of the cardboard sleeve. Nice work and very professional looking. 
