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Home of the Old Ammo Guy's Virtual
Cartridge Trading Table Featuring a wide range of antique, obsolete, and modern ammunition for collectors Picture Page September 2008 A very uncommon .32 S&W cartridge........
The .32 S&W is one of the more common cartridges available to collectors, but on occasion, the .32 S&W headstamp will show up where it is least expected. The cartridge on the right in this picture with its magnum length case and self-lubricated bullet is one example. Most of us were first exposed to this cartridge in Charles Suydam's book U.S. Cartridges and Their Handguns; he dubbed it the .32 Special. He speculated that this cartridge may have been produced around 1899 as one of a series of improved cartridges produced for Smith & Wesson by UMC in .32, .38, .41, and .44 caliber, from which evolved the .38 Special and perhaps the .44 Special. There also exists a very rare cartridge with a U.M.C. 41 S&W. headstamp and an inside lubricated bullet which was considered by Suydam have been the .41 'Special' contender in the Smith & Wesson foursome of beefed up cartridges. . .
And a very uncommon cartridge loading tool........
This rather substantial tool is for loading the 12mm French Galand 'reloadable'
cartridge. It performs some of the same basic functions in the same manner
as many of the other scissors style loading tools, including de-priming the
fired case, re-priming it, and casting a new bullet. The left picture below
shows the de-priming plunger on one handle and the hole that allows the
spent primer to fall out of the way on the other handle. The picture on the
right shows the hole in one side of the mold block that holds the cartridge
case in position for re-priming. A flat raised area on the other mold block,
seen in the
.
.
. . . Here is an illustration of the Galand reloading tool taken from an 1879 French publication; except for the mold cavity that is obviously not depicted correctly, the tool in the drawing is a very close copy of the actual tool.
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upper
picture to the right of the bullet cavity, presses the new battery style
primer in place in the case. Two functions that this tool does not perform
are seating the bullet and crimping the case neck. The reason these
functions have been omitted is that they are not necessary for loading the
cartridge the tool was designed for. What I assume to be a unique
characteristic of this type of tool is that it casts a bullet that is
intended to be screwed into the cartridge case. This close-up picture below
of the mold cavity shows that it produces a 'heel-type' bullet with what on
first glance might appear to be grooves
around
its heeled portion. However, closer examination will reveal that these
grooves are actually angled to form a right-hand thread (as in righty-tighty,
lefty-loosey). The cartridge case, described by the maker as indestructible,
had a thick wall with a matching thread in the mouth to receive the bullet.
On firing, the bullet threads were intended to be sheared off. It is evident
from the cavity that the leading edge of the threads is angled towards the
nose of the bullet; I suspect this is to ensure that the sheared off lead
remains in place in the mouth of the case rather than being deposited in the
barrel where it might cause problems with succeeding. Shortly after
obtaining this tool, I heard from someone who had
found a similar tool at
a gun show earlier in the year. Pictures that he provided revealed that the
two tools differed most notably in the shape of the head of the bolt that
holds the two halves together, and in the size of the stud that presses the
new primer in place, his being significantly smaller than mine. I can only
surmise that the size of this stud was related to the size of the primers
the tool was intended to be used with; more on this in just a moment. 
Here's
a picture of three Galand 'reloadable' cartridges that was provided by a
French collector. The one
on the left a 9mm, and the other two are both 12mm showing the thick and
thin rimmed versions of the iron cases and two sizes of the battery-style
primer that was used in the earlier cartridges. Later cartridges will be
found with what I believe are Berdan primers, about the same size as the
smaller battery-style primer. I can only surmise that it was the evolution
of the primer that was responsible for the change in the size of the
primer-seating stud on the tools, as noted above, with the smaller studs
being adopted as the primers made the change from the large battery-style to
the smaller battery-style, and then to the Berdan. The headstamp on all
three of these cartridges is GALAND PARIS BTE. I have found a
copy of the patent, nor anything else definitive regarding when the Galand 'reloadable
cartridges were first introduced, but I would guess it was in the early
1870s. 
This
next picture looks down inside one of these thick-rimmed iron 12 mm cases,
and clearly shows the threads in the mouth of the case, into which the base
of the bullet is screwed.
A
Galand 12mm revolver.