Today was an attempt at recreating a dummy cartridge in the 150 year old 11x50R Belgian Albini. This antique and long obsolete cartidge is actually very similar to the 11x52R Beaumont cartridge. This shouldn’t be too surprising given how closely related firearms development was regionally, politically and chronologically between the two conuntries. In fact there were some manufacturers developing arms for both countries around the same time from the late 1860’s to early 1870’s.
The starting point was an old Starline 50-90 Sharps case which had been cut slightly too short previously while making an 11x52R Beaumont cartridge. In fact given the closeness of the two cartridges, I ended up using my CH4D 11x52R full length sizing die to form the case. I found that while they are very close, it wouldn’t chamber in an 11x50R chamber as there are slight variances in the shoulder geometry. Just an ever so slight bump in the shoulder area with a 500S&W sizing die and that did the trick.
The 340gr Lee bullet was seated using a 45-75WCF die which comes in extremely handy for several of the old 11mm cartridges with large base diameters such as 50-90 Sharps. This was just a test dummy cartidge to work through its development but I’ll be using a heavier bullet in the future. The 340gr Lee bullet should work fine however the original was heavier and I’d like something more in the 400gr range to also help bring the point-of-aim down. The next step will be working through a low pressure charge for the cartridge but unfortunately current COVID restrictions won’t allow for the testing. Hopefully soon that will be remedied and a video will eventually be done with testing.