That's some really strange looking Brass!

Terry

A Burnside with a half-dozen cases, mold, and a home-made seater sold at our local gun show last year.  I was tempted, since it went for about $1,000 but I remained sober.

Had fun with a Smith carbine years ago, used neoprene tubeing, a Dixie mold, and about 35 grains of Dupont ffG and Italian musket caps.  Worked well except for cleaning.

James

The shooters in the North-South Skirmish Association love to play with these old cartridges and rifles. 
Froggie

Actually the Burnside predates by several years any fixed ammo guns by Colt. And there were straight cases in several other outside primed breechloading carbines of the CW era.  Just Burnside's variation on easy loading and extraction.  Gummint was so desperate for arms, and breechloaders were so new on the military landscape that they bought MANY variations on breechloaders during the war.  The war became a giant test laboratory for small arms and artillery development, watched by military scientists around the world.  Too bad so many of the "test subjects" had to give their lives in the 5-year "experiment"

The Burnside is one of only a couple firearms that contains platinum in it's construction.  Burnside's patent claims an "inoxidizable bushing " in the breechblock which is the silver ring around the plunger in the rear half of the breechblock, and the silver flash channel. (The other is the 1853 slant breech Sharps, which contains a platinum ring in the face of the breechblock to resist gas cutting.  Didn't work all that well, and they moved on to the Lawrence patent gas seal plate in later versions)