✅ SOLVED Ideas on these BP cartridges?

[Mason Jarr]

I found these three cartridges at one of my Indian War fort sites. From my reference materials, I think they are .50 Remington Army casings. Apparently Remington made some rolling block pistols in a Navy and Army version, but they weren't very popular and were replaced by revolvers. I've never seen cartridges of this type before so I'm hoping someone can verify what they are.

 

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[Mason Jarr]

I found this photo online of an example of the Model 1871 Remington Army. A single shot, but some serious lead from a handgun. I'm still trying to get dimensions on the ammo so I can check them against the casings I found.

 

[ncsuwolf]

Interesting find. The one base I can see seems to be a centerfire, but I don’t see obvious firing pin marks on any of the 3 (rim or primer). Quick google says there was a 50 army and navy…..yours looks closer to army, but wiki has dimensions on navy if you want to check.

And unless I’m mistaken, from looking at the pics…..the brass in your second photo appears to be navy, not army.

 

[DCMatt]

Here's a screen clip from a YouTube vid showing the height of the brass as .860 inches.

 

[Mason Jarr]

Interesting find. The one base I can see seems to be a centerfire, but I don’t see obvious firing pin marks on any of the 3 (rim or primer). Quick google says there was a 50 army and navy…..yours looks closer to army, but wiki has dimensions on navy if you want to check.

And unless I’m mistaken, from looking at the pics…..the brass in your second photo appears to be navy, not army.

They are all centerfire, yes, and none seen to have been struck by a pin. In reading about the Model 1871 I found the original cartridges were rimfire, but were converted to centerfire. The second photo is just one I downloaded from the web for background info. Thanks for the reply!

 

[Mason Jarr]

Here's a screen clip from a YouTube vid showing the height of the brass as .860 inches.

View attachment 2172043

Mine are all just over .87 on a caliper, but I expect there was some variation in manufacturing. I'm going to go with these as being the .50 Remington and call it solved. Thanks for the help!