I had some special demonstration bullets and cartridges made for my trip to Gettysburg last weekend and thought I'd share the pics. The bullets were made 1.75x actual size for two purposes: 1 - Large enough to easily see the details, 2 - There is no way these could accidentally be loaded into a musket!
A local artist, Michael Jones, turned them on the lathe for me. You really need to check out his work at
www.mljwoods.com.
An actual size .58 caliber Minie is in the center of the photos for reference.
This second photo shows the bullets painted and the cartridges wrapped with paper, as is correct. The Union "Burton" bullet and cartridge are on the left, the Confederate "Gardner" bullet and cartridge are on the right. Both were .58 caliber with bullets about 500 grains, propelled by around 60 grains of black powder. Muzzle velocity was around 950 ft/sec. Actually both designers were Southerners. James H. Burton was a Virginian working at the Harpers Ferry arsenal when his design was adopted by the US Army in 1855. Frederick Gardner was a North Carolinian who designed a machine to swage the bullet to correct size while crimping the paper cartridge into the base. His Confederate patent is dated 1861.
You should have seen folks eyes pop when I got these out of my cartridge box before explaining that they were over sized!