Jim Taylor
Cleaning Day(s)
Wednesday, September 30, 2026, 06:15

I pulled out an old holster and gunbelt that has not been used in 25 or 30 years. The cartridges were stuck in the loops and when I got them out they were mostly green! They are old Balloon-Head cartridges and I did not want to throw them away, so I set out to see if I could clean them. It took me 3 days but I got it done! I did not take any BEFORE photos sadly. But they were a mess.

I used Brake Cleaner on them to get rid of the verdigris. Under that the cartridge was blotchy. Tarnished. I used metal polish on them, adding it to ground corncob in my vibrating cleaner. After running 8 hours there were still dark spots on them. I put a polishing tip in the Dremel Tool and polished them. Then I ran them overnight in the cleaner. This morning they looked like this:

Balloon-head cartridges were phased out of production for the solid head cartridges by the 1940's/
I have a little over 100 balloon-head cartridges. The headstamps are:
REM-UMC ... 10 are nickle plated ...
WRA
WRA CO
WESTERN
WC CO
PETERS

Some of the ones I have could be close to 90 years old. Peters and Western went out of business by 1944.

Most everyone here probably knows what the balloon-head cartridges look like. Here's the comparison to the solid head.

You can get 40 gr. of 3Fg blackpowder in the balloon-head but not in the solid head.