Great pictures, and your post is a good one… THANKS!

For the British round (Pritchett Ball) to work as designed, you need it to be smaller than the rifle bore by a correct margin. (.550" to .568" being normal for .577-.58" bores)

When you loaded this style of ammo, you tear the paper on top of the cartridge, poured the powder into the barrel, then turn the whole cartridge over, and stuck in the bullet end paper and all, into the barrel. You break off THAT portion of the bullet away from the cartridge, discarding the upper section of the paper cartridge, and ramming down the paper-wrapped bullet onto the powder charge.

The bullet was smooth sided, with the paper greased in bees wax-tallow, for the bullet lubrication. You have to have some kind of lube on, or around the bullet, or gun barrel fouls quickly!

I have dug an actual dropped Confederate style (copy) of a Pritchett Ball, (from a battle field) that was crudely nose cast, and is .577+ in size. That MAY be why it was dropped, because if it were surrounded by paper, it would be TOO big to load. The Brits had stringent quality control to make sure their ammo was absolutely correct size to work.

If a bullet designed to have waxed paper surround it in loading is too big, the paper around it only makes the problem worse. It makes me wonder if quality control in the CS Arsenals was not at it’s best sometimes. Those that argue they were casting bullets like this out in the field, and were making them into cartridges, then the quality assurance had to be little to be desired.

I make reproduction Enfield rounds for Living History, they have paper in place of the lead bullet, but you can load these as per originals. They take a long time to produce due to the 4 papers it takes to make them…Outer wrapper, inner wrapper, powder cylinder, and gummed label strip. If I don’t use proper components, the “bullet” end can get stuck in the barrel when ramming, and jam up down the barrel…embarrassing in front of a crowd of folk!

Do you have a Dial Caliper, so you can measure the actual diameter of your bullets? I'd bet being british, they would be from .550"-.568"...you have me currious!
Kevin Dally