Excellant! Are Maynard's the ones that use the paper primers? Or are the Burnside's the ones that use the paper primers. I have looked at Romano's web page numerous times. Beautiful looking carbine.
Mogorilla,
Gee, thanks! They were kind of a missing link in rifles ... they had a cartridge that had a small hole where the primer usually was ... then they were ignited by a hammer falling on a cap-gun like paper roll(filled with fulminate of mercury) ... or a standard black powder (#11) cap that sat on the trigger ... in the humid south, the rolls often turned to a paper mache type thing and then caps were used; in the Southwest with it's dryer weather, I am told that the rolls worked quite well.
In any case, the explosion from the paper 'Cap' or the explosion from the traditional 'cap' went down a small tube/tunnel in the rifle, through the hole in the back of the cartridge, and ignited the powder within ... a better system than cap-and-balll, but still open to the weather (slightly) for the powder to get moist ....
See the shells in the earlier post ... these are actually battlefield finds from the War of the Northern Aggression...