doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Dis-assembling antique collectible cartridge

Help wanted on how to do this.
I want to carefully dis-assemble a loaded antique 450/400 3-1/4" BPE paper patched round. I know this might offend some people, but I bought a box of ten, and carefully sacrificing one for science seems like a fair use of a limited resource. And I am only doing this after exhausting all professional and historic sources I can get (results varied, no exact conclusion reached).
Let's face it, this particular caliber is one funky round. The only way to tell what was used was to buy some old rounds and pull them apart. Hopefully without damaging the paper patch or the bullet, both of which have to be mic'ed and scrutinized.
Guidance on how to do this successfully is most appreciated.
Please forgive me if this subject has been dealt with in previous posts. It does not come up in search results.

I can't help you with technique except go slow and easy. Tap it gently and repeatedly to loosen and the bullet may pull out with or without the paper.

As a paper patch fanatic, I would love to see more of what you have and find and I'd be particularly interested in the diameters from the front of the paper patch (with paper on) to the back of the patch. It may taper.

I would also love to hear a detailed description of the wads you may find, and what you think they are made of as well as the consistency of the powder.

Pretty darn cool and interesting to me at least.

I would use an inertial bullet puller with a cushion in the bottom to cushion the bullet.

https://www.midwayusa.com/product/1012714588?pid=215517

Mike

P.S. that is if the internal cavity is large enough to handle
the cartridge

My preferred method for dissembling cartridges is to use a collet bullet puller. RCBS makes a good one. Check with any of ur buddies that reload as they probably have one. Might need to order the correct size collet but those are only 11 bucks or so.
WBLDon

It's likely that the cartridge is too long (and the base too large) for disassembly with most commercial inertia pullers. You'll probably need to use a collet type puller. Don't expect the powder charge to come out easily. The old black powder is probably a solid mass.

I assume you have a reloading press and the proper shell holder. Consider drilling a hole in the nose of the bullet and screwing in a screw. Put the round in the shell holder and run it up in the press. Clamp a vice grip on the screw and lower the ram. The bullet will be easily removed and none of the surfaces you intend to measure will be harmed.

Steve is correct
Drill a small hole and turn in a coarse screw.

I would use the inertial bullet puller. Drilling will distort the bullet for future purposes and also make it all but impossible to weigh. Carefully done, a bullet can be pulled, unwrapped, weighed measured, rewrapped, and reinserted, having done this myself.

What are you trying to find out by taking the loaded round apart? The 450/400 3 1/4" was fairly common.

Ken

The manufacturers of inertia bullet pullers generally indicate 'not for use with black powder cartridges'.

A commercially loaded paper patch bullet may have a considerable taper crimp on it.

I'd use a non impact method.

Manufacturers put similar warnings on their powder measures to cover their asses.

Think about an inertial puller and how that works.

Obviously, I have.

I'm not about to use one with 110 grains of explosive, nor would I recommend others do so against the advice of the makers of the tools.

Think again.

Then think about how paper patch cartridges are loaded.

Then go out in the garage 2 grains of powder on top of your vice's anvil and gently rest your hammer on it. Then jerk the hammer upwards and away really quickly and see what happens.

Next, beat that 2 grains of powder for all you're worth with that hammer on the anvil.

Finally, Go and tap the bullet out of the case using the inertial bullet puller.

It might trouble you to know that most if not all manufacturers of duck decoys recommend that you do not use their decoys for hunting due to danger.

Think about it.

I don't think drilling will distort the bullet.

Assuming you have the 450/400 3 1/4" Magnum BPE, according to the Eley/Kynoch cartridge book of 1935, the bullet will weigh 230 grains (copper -tubed) or 255 grains (solid).

I've thought about it sufficiently.

What else is there in that old antique cartridge that might be percussion sensitive and perhaps unstable due to age?

I'm not about to subject what is possibly a fulminate to a bunch of G force and expect the procedure to be safe.

Wow, you guys are FANTASTIC, thank you!
The inertia hammer bullet puller I have is too small to handle this big round. Danged shame, too. I feel comfortable pulling bullets from black powder cases, gently.
Steve, you have already advised me on loading this cartridge outside of the venue here. Recall I used "copper patched" bullets from Hawk, and they worked well at 60 yards, and I credited you, and you wrote back by email "color me surprised," which still makes me chuckle. Well today they, those same BP rounds, sucked donkey dog at 90 yards. If I have to drill the bullet, I will, although I am not choosing this as the first approach, because like others here, I am afraid the bullet will become deformed and the delicate information I am seeking will be lost.
Someone said above this round was common. Well, I haven't seen that. In fact, what I have seen is that it (ammo, guns, loading info) was uncommon. The gun is a Lancaster oval bore made in 1894 for the Raja of Poonch, who, according to the ledgers, ordered a second one in 1895. Having done as much historical research on the Rajas of Poonch (western Kashmir, quite a place for hunting and fishing) as anyone would care to know, I turned my attention to making the gun shoot right. Based on initial results, I thought I had it dialed in. Nope. After today it is back to the drawing board, and the two boxes of antique rounds from Drake should help me figure it out.
Just gotta get the bullets out in one piece and not deformed.
And I agree that this is cool and fascinating. The wads are of especial interest to me. I experiment with all kinds of wad materials in the BPE rifles in my care, using arch punches that I either make or order and then customize, and so far I haven't found anything better than the vegetable wad material by Walters Wads. So yeah, BrentD, you can bet I will post everything I get. One approach is to use a Dremel cutting wheel to slightly weaken the brass, so that it can be pulled back in strips or petals.

Hi Ken. So far, all of my research has resulted in me thinking the opposite; that the 450/400 3-1/4" was uncommon.
I am trying to determine the original BPE bullet diameter, paper patch thickness, and wad(s) size, thickness, and material.
I am seeking this information because the information I have been able to find online and in books has been scattershot. Of particular interest is the bullet diameter, because various sources list it at .405", .408", .410", .411", and .412". Although the .412" was really a Nitro Express size. If I am going to get this 1894 double rifle to shoot correctly, then I have to determine the bullet diameter. The powder charge is engraved on the gun, the bullet weight (and the exploding shell weight!) are listed in the rifle's ledger entry. But all we have to go on are various drawings and opinions about the bullet diameter. Gotta find out for myself.

One approach is to use a Dremel cutting wheel to slightly weaken the brass, so that it can be pulled back in strips or petals.

Might want to think twice about taking a dremel cutting wheel to a loaded cartridge, especially one loaded with black powder. Brass heats quite quickly and black powder doesn't take much heat to ignite and that could really ruin someone's day! A bullet puller like RCBS makes, as suggested earlier, is the safest way to break down a loaded round. But to each their own...WBLDon

Don, you know I am anxious about that! I have ordered a .41-caliber bullet pulling collet for the press. Hopefully it resolves the challenge.

You might consider just cutting the case with a tubing cutter below the neck.

Then you can get the powder out and proceed with your bulletectomy via the Dremel wheel.

If you desire to measure this to the thou, are you concerned about pulling the bullet through the neck distorting it?

You might consider posting over on Nitro Express.com as well. A wealth of info and very experienced double rifle shooters frequent that site. Graham Wright's books may shed some light on the subject.

Jones - all good points. Can you give me an example of the tubing cutter you mean? I will appreciate that. And yes, I am concerned about pulling the bullet out of the case without relieving the neck tension. That has to happen somehow, either through my Dremel cutting wheel very gently cutting light relief grooves into the brass around the bullet, or in some other but similar attack on that metal.

The cartridge is too long for an inerta puller? Well color me 'surprised' again. But come
to think of it - I said that in my original post.

The cartridge in question is 'rare' if you live in the American cartridge world. Otherwise,
it's anything but rare.

As to nominal bullet diameters, they were standardized in the early 20th Century. As you know already, what a literature search reveals is that nominal diameters are approximately .408 to .411 (Nitro) and .405 to .407 black. Bullet makers like Barnes would certainly know
what original factory diameters were.

Drilling a small diameter hole will somehow change bullet dimensions? You shouldn't be smoking that stuff.

Good luck in your circuitous search for the most complex solution.

PS - You might want to check with Superior Ammunition in SC. If they supply loaded cartridges, they likely have some 'grip' on proper bullet diameters.

Tubing cutter:

https://www.napaonline.com/en/p/BK_77690...BCABEgLtBPD_BwE

pamtnman,
Like the others here, I have an opinion, and here it is. You are more or less whistling in the dark, worrying so much about precise bullet diameter in antique ammo that may or may not shoot in your rifle. My own experience shows that old lead bullets, including paper patched, are very often( usually) undersized and depend on obturation to fit the barrel. The wads are there to fill the space between the powder and the base of the bullet. Since you (or anyone else) are very unlikely to "match" the powder, you will likely need different wads and powder. On the other hand, bullet weight may be important. If you listen to it, your rifle will tell you which bullet it wants, the old factory bullet notwithstanding. Likewise, the target(s) will tell you the powder load your rifle wants, using the best powder you can find, which will be different( not better or worse-different) than the old powder. You will have to decide your own trade off between close bullet fit and the residue left by the powder you use. Since you seem to be planning to use black powder, my advice would not be nearly as helpful as advice from BPCR shooters, coupled with information the targets give you. However, as an academic exercise, the information you glean from breaking down the old cartridges will be very interesting. Just as a matter of interest, I once broke down a thousand 43 Spanish black powder cartridges to salvage the cases. I used a pair of linemans pliers with a "caliber size" hole drilled through the "cutter" part. By gripping the bullet above the press, I could pull the case off it. It was difficult to get the compressed powder out and it didn't seem like weighing one charge would result in good data( maybe an average of 10 or 100 would).
Mike

If there were an award for the most colorful, funny, witty, learned, and interesting people on the web, our gang here would win it every year. Thank you for the many helpful responses, and every response has in fact been helpful.
"Good luck in your circuitous search for the most complex solution" wins the blue ribbon, and so thus is this endeavor named after "The Helsley Principle" - Defined as 'the commensurate joy received from deliberately making an already technically difficult project even much more so'.
Der Ami, it is a Lancaster oval bore. This means it shoots bullets that are smaller than than the muzzle diameter, which on this gun is .40825". So I bought a box of .408" 235-grain Hawk bullets and patted myself on the back when at sixty yards they shot perfectly. And then I cried when at 90 yards they scattered like 8-shot. The 230-grain weight of the bullet is in the gun's ledger entry, and the powder charge is engraved on the gun. Unlike conventional rifling systems, the Lancaster oval bore is notoriously finicky, because it operates the opposite. Conventional rifling can handle oversize bullets; bullets that fill the groove are standard. Oval bores shoot undersize bullets. So finding a bullet below the diameter of the muzzle and almost exactly the right weight left me confident of victory. Ha ha. In all the black powder double rifles presently in my care, I now shoot only Swiss and Olde Eynsford FFg and 1.5FG. These two powders shoot so well that they make up for the years of agonizing with GOEX. I like your pliers solution.
I plan to armor up and get out the Dremel. I will report back to you all from the hospital, I am sure.

How about using a bullet mold or a making an impression of the bullet with denture casting compound? Saw the cured block in half and file or saw the edges flat. Then line with thin soft leather and squeeze, not too tightly as to deform the bullet, in a vise and pull?
I've used the latter technique to remove stubborn breech plugs from muzzle loaders with no damage.

Well, we may be in luck, because my oldest daughter is in dental school. She has access to all kinds of interesting dental-related compounds. This approach definitely qualifies for The Helsley Principle. Therefore, I will have to do it

Excellent. A perfect addition to the complexity element. However, a caution. Using dental tools should only be used in conjunction with a spinning Tibetan prayer wheel.

Thank you. I was hoping for your blessing, Master.
The spinning Tibetan prayer wheel is an unfair addition, however.
I did follow up on your two suggested leads, Superior and Barnes.
Lonnie at Superior got right back to me at lunch time today: "Most of them started out as .408", later they began to use .410-.411 inch [I think he means later as in Nitro Express]"
David Little at Kynoch wrote to me earlier this year that he thought it was a .408" standard for the BPE.
As soon as I got the gun and slugged the bores, Accurate Molds made me a paper patch mold at .408. Have not yet poured any bullets from it, but it is probably time. My sense is these will have to be sized down to .407" and then paper patched up to .408" It is, after all, a Lancaster oval bore. Kind of the Tibetan prayer wheel of rifling

pamtnman,
You should be able to safely use any diameter bullet that will easily fit into the unsized neck of a case fired in that rifle. If the case can't expand to release the bullet, pressure will go up, but if the bullet is able to move before it enters the rifling, pressure won't go up significantly. This is true even for jacketed bullets and lead bullets are even less critical. I regularly shoot .321" bullete in a rifle with .318" groove diameter and .364" bullets in a 9.3x72R with .358" groove diameter. By the time a bullet has traveled it's length in the barrel, it has been sized to fit. I don't think you would be limited to the smallest dimension of the oval bore.
Mike

If the workmen on the factory floor at Kynoch's paid any attention to the drawings they were meant to go by, you ought to find a 1 in 12 bullet measuring .400 plus or minus a half thou wrapped in 3 thou paper. Or if they were loading grease groove metal based, .410 plus or minus half. But the buggers were English, after all, so you never know what you'll find.

The last 450/400 3 1/4" that came by here shot a 255 grain .400 bullet patched like that with 110 grains of OE 1 1/2F like that's what it was made for. But it is a Fraser. There's no telling what one of those contraptions the bodgers in London put together will do, is there?

Mike,
You don't think this because you did not spend two years trying to make the Lancaster oval bore shoot right. The question of bullet fit in the oval bore is not about pressure, but accuracy. Everyone before thought just like you do now, and they tried to make the oval bore shoot like you say it should here, and they failed. We now know that the Lancaster oval bore shoots a bullet smaller than the muzzle diameters. On the older tapered barrels, the bullet is almost ridiculously small. Do not ask me how this works, do not ask me why this is, I cannot tell you. I can only tell you that this is exactly how the Lancaster oval bore rifling works. If you don't like it, I don't blame you. It is contrary to every rule of ballistics etc et al ad nauseum. If you want to see all the work I put into this, the DGJ published three articles in 2017-2018 about it.
It is so irksome that my cut-and-dry little recipe for success on this new rifle is not working out. I am pretty sure I know why, and the ball is rolling to get it working right. I do appreciate your help with the bulletectomy...

Thank you, Mike! I ordered two boxes of antique rounds. The first are paper patched BPE rounds, clearly what was shot out of the BPE guns. The other box has a label saying "KYNOCH .450/.400 Nitro Express Cartridges Case 3 1/4" For Black Powder Rifles" stamped "Metal Base"... These have no paper patch. Opening up one of each should be interesting, and hopefully not exciting. I know you will be interested.

Hi Prairie. I have read Graeme's book many times, because I shoot so many rifles in different calibers that the book really is a necessity. Unfortunately, while the information the book has about the 450/400 3-1/4" round is pretty good, it does not have anything about bullet diameter. Thanks for the suggestion about NitroX. I have posted over at NitroX and I am due for another visit.

pamtnman.
Put me down as a student in your class room.
Mike

You are a gentleman, Mike, thank you for the compliment. Please believe me when I tell you I am not a technically skilled man. I am all thumbs, super Cro Magnon furrowed brow to figure out over a long time the most elementary steps. I do not understand technology, at all, and for me to make things or to get them to work requires a good trait, a trait that has stood me well from a young age. That is perseverance. I just do not give up. Not on anything that is worthwhile, to me. I am fortunate to have my own small business that allows me the TIME to persevere on things, which most men do not have. Where most people understandably gave up on the Lancaster oval bore, because they had exhausted the time they had to fool around on it, I just kept plowing ahead. Literally two years of constant work. After I had exhausted every single possible bullet mold and patch that could or should possibly work for the .450 BPE chambering, I went back and looked at the data from all my efforts. And this is an area where I do have talent - numbers. I looked at the numbers and they all pointed like a giant flaming arrow at sub-bore bullets. It made no sense, it was incredible. But when I loaded up the gun with bullets smaller than the barrel exit diameter, bingo, amazing accuracy. Lancaster oval bores are really a black powder rifling. Anything over 2100 FPS and they fail. Paper patch is required. Soft lead is required. Wads are required. A few years ago Helsley put me in touch with an old Jewish guy in London selling old patents, including gun patents. With the original engineering drawings all folded up. The guy had bought the entire contents of the Birmingham public library, which included actual original patents for old guns, including Colts and Winchesters, and Lancaster, as well as Purdey, Holland, Henry etc. I bought all the Lancaster/ Thorn patents he had, from 1850 to the 1880s. And I studied them carefully. And frankly, I don't think even the Lancaster people understood what their oval bore does or how it works. They just knew that it worked really well. And the sportsmen of the BPE era bought them by the wagon load, because they worked so well. So there, that is today's lecture and it is all I know. Now you know what I know. Thank you for being a nice man!

Good luck on the search. It�s not clear if this rifle is now shooting? Anyway, if an inertial puller was ruled out, I�d go with a collet puller, commercial or home made hole in a halved block of scrap on a press without a die in it.

The nose would get a little distorted, but that could be measured and verified before you pulled the cartridge apart. If(?) you can get all the info you need, I�d stick the powder and bullet back in and shoot it over a chronograph just for curiosity?

Even in an old time bore, I would suspect that for black powder pressure loads, soft lead bullets would bump up back at the throat, regardless of how an unfired bullet fits the muzzle? Anyway, continued fun with the journey.

Hey Craig, I did order the .41 caliber collet for the Rock Chucker press. We shall see. I am told by the seller that there are ten rounds of BPE paper patched and ten rounds of nitro-for-black rounds. Although nobody wants to see these neat antiques be lost or wasted, the information gleaned from opening up one or two of each will be shared publicly and I am sure put to use by at least seven or eight people around the globe :-). It will be a good use of a limited resource, and the plan is to do it slowly and carefully. Thanks for the guidance!

pamtnman,
I believe the purpose of the oval bore was to lessen problems caused by black powder residue. Several different forms of rifling were for that purpose, some with the rounded lands are sometimes mistakenly thought to be worn out.
Mike

No doubt they started with that stated goal, and marketed with that purpose, but it does operate totally differently than conventional rifling. And my experience owning and shooting several oval bore rifles from the 1880s, 1890s, 1910s is I�m not convinced it�s really a cleaning / non fouling advantage over conventional rifling. It�s actually more difficult to clean because the oval bore creates shallow pockets where fouling collects. Requires many many passes with really big brushes, lots of big wet rags. More than the conventional rifling BP guns i shoot.
Anyhow, I�m analyzing the antique 450/400 3-1/4� rounds that arrived today. Right now just aggregating exterior measurements. The average OAL of both the Eley 1880s paper patched and the Kynoch early 1900s-1910s NFB rounds is 3.8�, much longer than shown in the old Kynoch catalogue and which I had seen elsewhere.

Ding ding ding, give that man a cigar. Mike Rowe is correct, the bullet is .400� and the two wraps of very old, fragile, crumbling paper is between.002�-.003�, hard to tell exactly. The lead is very soft, with a copper post in the snout (no screwing, sorry, Steve). The stuff underneath the bullet is fascinating. I�ve never seen or heard of anything like it. These are paper patched �Eley London 450/400� rounds.

I stopped trying to reinvent the wheel quite some time ago.

Mike, can you direct me to a bullet mold or bullet manufacturer that makes this bullet? I could not find anything on the market now. Not at Hawk, Buffalo Arms, Barnes, Accurate Molds, etc. What�s intriguing is a .400� 230-grain bullet today is not even an afterthought on the market. At least so far as I can find. I�ll probably have Tom at Accurate Molds make the new mold, unless someone can point me in a faster direction.
Bulletectomy results:
�228.8 grain soft lead bullet @ .400� diameter with copper plug in nose
�106.5 grains of really nice looking black powder, like new, and enough rough corrosion on the case wall to account for the other 3.5 grains. More on the powder later
�Paper patch is deteriorated and lighter than air and crumbling, so it is tough to mic. Best I could assess, each side of double wrap is .003�. Might be a little less or a little more.
�Top wad mics at .085� and appears to be millboard saturated with oil or grease
�Bottom wad looks like cardboard, mics at .030� and is waxed on both sides, presumably to prevent grease from migrating to the powder. Both wads were in the case super tight.
I�ll do another post on the powder, which I compared to Swiss 2F and Olde Eynsford 1.5FG side by side. Fascinating to see.

The copper plug is actually a very thin copper tube, fixed in place during the final swaging operation. I have dimensions on them, too.
Tom should be able to make a mold - I used to, but I'm retired now. The 255 grain bullet is the same, but with no hollow and plug. You can fill the hollow with wax, it'll do the same thing.

Have you read "The Modern Sportsman's Gun and Rifle Vol.2" by J.H. Walsh 1883? If not, you need to.

The only guy making correct Express bullets (only for the .450) is Jim Poynor in Virginia. Very deadly with a lung shot on deer, that's for sure.

Mike, Walsh is one of those books I have read discrete parts of, and not the whole thing, not even half of it. He was opinionated, occasionally wrong, and never in doubt, from what I read of his own words. I do agree with you that his book is a must-have for the people shooting these old British double and single BPE rifles.
Someone riffed the flat-nose .450 BPE PP mould I had Tom make me, and now there is a historically accurate (pointed) 350-grain PP bullet design for the .450 BPE at Accurate Molds.
After fruitlessly searching everywhere for a 220-230 grain .400" mold, I concluded Accurate is going to have make one for me. If this round was as common as Helsley says, you would think the molds or bullets would be out there, even listed in the old catalogues, which they are not (that I can see). Then again, he is the Originator of The Helsley Principle , so I am automatically condemned to having to go through all kinds of gyrations to get this gun to shoot.
Thanks for your advice, Mike, hope you enjoy retirement. Sorry that you are not working, and it is nice you are still lurking about these forums, chipping in whenever.

A possible starting point.

www.brooksmoulds.com

What was the bullet diameter with the paper patch?

Walsh wrote that book when black powder was the only propellant available, and the Express rifles were at their zenith.
It's a tome to which it is worth paying attention.

I might have missed it, but if you want a round nose bullet, I don't believe Accurate can do that for you. Accurate though, can cut two different cavities for a very modest premium if you feel the need to do some experimenting. I'd second the thought that Brooks would not be a bad place to get a really good mold. Good luck with it.

I will second Steve and Gayle Brooks for moulds. They are great people, and I have quite a few custom paper patch moulds made for me by them. The most recent about two weeks ago.

You will want to know exactly what paper you are going to use before you draw up your mould design and it helps to know about what alloy mix you will be casting with so he can hit the diameter(s) you want.

If you are going to shoot in a fouled barrel vs. wiping between shots, then you will probably want to adjust your diameters as well. Having just returned home from a 4-day match I haven't read this thread in detail but I'd be very interested in the diameters of the bullet with the paper on it particularly at the top of the patch and at the base of the bullet.

I wish I could post photos here, because when I say the paper patch disintegrated, you could see it yourself. The patches are all already in rough condition. The one I removed was stuck to the inside of the case. The bottom of the patch pulled off altogether and had to be fished out separately. Taking a whole bunch of measurements of the patch on the bullet and off either captured the correct thickness or created a muddle of different results.

The bullet itself is .400�, and appears to be pure lead.
The patch, loosely on the bullet but obviously compressed for measuring, yielded .408-.410� total thickness. When mic�ed by itself, the double wrapped patch measured from .0025�-.003�, which would result in a patched diameter of .405� to .406�, not the .408-.410� with the patch flopping about the bullet. Just finding two wraps to measure became increasingly difficult as the patch fell apart with handling.

Measuring the patch thickness was difficult. It is so light and delicate, just manipulating it into position without destroying it was tough, and each operation caused more of it to flake off. Looking at it, I�m going to hazard a guess it was originally at .408�.

Mike, I hear you on Walsh. But re-reading The Maneaters of Kumaon and Baker�s Wild Beasts and Their Ways for the first time is absorbing my time.

Thank you for the advice to try Brooks. Probably the one mould maker I have not used. Accurate does show pointed bullets in their catalogue.

Of all of this cartridge dissection, the gunpowder was the most surprising.

Was the gunpowder black and shiny like crushed glass?

Brent, absent photos, I was looking for an apt description, and I think this 'crushed glass' will do. Yes, the powder has a high shine polish on it, almost like broken obsidian; the pieces are irregularly shaped; and what really got my eye is that the pieces are different sizes. There are bigger jagged pieces and smaller jagged pieces, all mixed together. When I read about what Curtis's & Harvey's #6 powder was, which this probably is, it was an aggregation or mix of different screen sizes of powder. It was not uniformly sized. I dumped out this Eley's powder (probably C&H #6) and then put a pile of Swiss FFG and a pile of Olde Eynsford 1.5G all lined up. The OE 1.5FG Was the closest to the Eley's/ C&H #6, and yet that was just in grain or kernel size. OE itself is highly uniform, but lacked the high polish of the Eley's. Swiss FFG had much smaller and totally uniform grains but is similarly highly polished like the Eley's / C&H #6.
If I had to pick a powder that to the eye appears close to C&H #6, I would say it is the Olde Eynsford 1.5FG.

It sure behaves like it.

Good to know you think so, Mike. While I have been shooting OE 1.5 and 2FG, I have gone back and forth with Swiss, which really is a nice powder. More range time, coming up, I can see it

I have not seen original C&H #6 that I know was definitively C&H, so I can't comment on appearances, but performance wise, Swiss 1.5fg is generally deemed closest to the haloed C&H. Swiss, however, is not shiny in the same way that my unknown vintage powder is shiny. I see I have several more of those cartridges so I could pull another for comparison with yours, but as you said, shiny like cracked obsidian. Strange stuff. Swiss is shiny from being tumbled with graphite.

OE is dusty stuff and suffers for consistency and is difficult to make precision loads with.

I'd be interested in how thick any lube/wax cookie was in your cartridge. Do you think it was straight beeswax?

Is the shank of the bullet parallel sided or slightly tapered? I'm wagering it may well be the latter, but its a guess. How much paper was sticking out of the case and how deeply was the bullet seated?

Brent, all excellent questions. Given the popularity of C&H #6 in express rifles, it is not a big leap to say these powders, in these popular rounds like Eley and Kynoch, is probably #6. I wouldn't know #6 if it fell on my head, but I felt pretty sure I was looking at it when I saw it the other night. From the old descriptions of it.
The shank of the bullet is straight/ parallel, not tapered.
The 0.85" thick grease wad appeared to be millboard soaked in some kind of grease or oil, either of which would have deteriorated by now. It is not beeswax or some other oil-tallow-wax combination. I was hoping to see the fabled "greased cloth" myself.
About 1/4" of paper patch was sticking out of the case. All of these paper patches are tattered. This one reminded me of a mummy being pulled out of a sarcophagus, with tatters hanging off.
The 228.8-grain bullet is exactly 0.9" long.
The bullet was seated deeply, almost to the place where the ogive begins to turn. A good half inch was in the case, probably a hair more. That surprised me.
OAL was all over the place with these rounds, and one can believe the bullets moved. They are not crimped in place. Average OAL seems to be [EDIT] 3.7" (my cartridges) to 3.8" (Ken's cartridges), which is what Ken found with his antique 450/400 3-1/4" cartridges (sorry if I stole your thunder here, Ken, I just have not heard from you for a while and can't tell if you are away on vacation). I think Ken also has these same Eley paper patched cartridges.
Back to the surface shine on the powders. I now know more about black powders than I did a week ago, as a result of looking at this old stuff. It really grabbed my imagination; it is in great condition, actually like new, and it will surely function properly if touched off. That old surface shine must be from being polished, and not coated with graphite. The Olde Eynsford looks close to this Eley/#6 powder, but it lacks much of a surface shine, which could be a good thing or a bad thing, I don't know.
I have been using Swiss FFG in a lot of my express rifles lately, and it works well, and sometimes it almost seems a little too hot, too fast. With harder lead alloy, it works great.
Anyhow, I hope this answers your questions. Dave Weber, proprietor of this fine website, says he might update its software to include an easier way to post photos. If that happens, I will be able to post pictures of this process, although by then we will also be into hunting season and my mind will be far far away from computers.

You know, for all the "You'll shoot your eye out, kid!" warnings I got last week, it is surprising that no one has asked how I opened up the cartridge.

Josh,

If you are referring to me, the 450/400 3.25" antique cartridges I have are not PP. They are Eley cartridges with a 195 grain hollow point type of bullet. I have 10 rounds and the OAL is 3.7225 to 3.681. Six rounds are over 3.7+, three rounds are 3.68+, and one round was 3.69+. Unfortunately, I don't have original box for the cartridges.

Ken

I am still lost how you get OE to look anything like what's in your case, but regardless, your cartridge is darn interesting.

Personally, I would bet that you pulled the bullet out with your fingers. One does not roll crimp paper patches. Might taper crimp them slightly but that's all. Target cartridges often fall out of the case if inverted. Double guns will require a little resistence to deal with recoil and especially handling in the field. Taper crimping with dedicated die or by removing the core from a FL sizing die and touching it fairly gently gets the job done.

I think I'll pull another one of my cartridges and photo the powder to post it here. Yes, it does, most certainly, ignite. And with plenty of vigor. BP has basically no shelf life limitations if keep at reasonable temperatures.

Brent, first I engraved a channel in the brass using a pocket knife, then an exacto knife, and then an engraving tool. Then I used the Dremel at low RPMs, around 7,000, with the thinnest cutting wheel I could find. Wearing jeweler's glasses that allowed me to get just a couple inches away and see everything perfectly, the Dremel made very slow and shallow passes, with no heat generated. Eventually opened it up without hitting anything below, and I was able to carefully pull the case apart with needle nose pliers and tweezers to pull stuff out. I agree with you about the taper/ sizer crimp in general. These cartridges have paper that stuck to the case wall and which could not be pulled out en toto with the bullet. I did try to pull all of the bullets out with my fingers, and any one that would have been loose was going to be the one I took apart, but none of the bullets were loose. Or rather, all of the bullets were glued in by virtue of their old paper adhering to the case.
The powder looks closest to the 1.5FG size. It might not just be OE, could be Swiss, too, but I only looked at Swiss FFG, not Swiss 1.5FG. Truth is, none of today's powders look anything like the powder in that old Eley case. It has a variety of grain sizes; all of the grains are jagged and highly fractured (your shattered glass) appearing. They are highly polished, unlike the OE. So the high performing old C&H #6 wasn't just its manufacturing quality, it was also the way the different screen size grains mingle with one another and then fire up when ignited. I am not aware of any black powder made today that resembles anything like C&H #6. Then again, what the heck do I know...
Ken! Thank you for posting your data!

Man, that's crazy overkill and a dremel grinder but not an inertia puller? Whatever.

Meanwhile I'll pull a cartridge apart. I know mine is not English powder. And yes, that's my point, nothing in these cartridges looks like modern powder at all. That stuff is totally different in composition somehow.

If the bullet had been pulled out by force, then none of the paper patch would have adhered to it, and none of the paper patch would have been left in a state where it could be measured. As it was, some measurements could be taken. Not as exact as I would like, but well within the expected range, and probably at or close to what it was originally. That paper patch was thinned with age, too. So that is why I cut the case open. To get at the components without disrupting them or at least minimally impacting them. The wads for sure would not have come out the case mouth, because they were absolutely jammed in there super tight. By cutting around them and peeling away the case, they could be gently tweezed out and studied whole and intact. Archaeology!
The powder in these Eley cases is British, of course, and probably C&H #6. Can't see what other powder it would be. Every British double rifle BPE and single shot I have seen calls for C&H #6. That is what Eley would have loaded.