Pete-
I haven't found any text that discusses the manufacture or field assembly of these cartridges, but I am positive that they were meant to be carried and loaded as comple cartridges.
Break the gun open, load them, close the gun and set the caps, then go hunting.
Shoot and clear the tubes with the ramrod if necessary, load and repeat...
As you might have noticed, I jumped on them and went for the buy it now option. I'd surely have paid that if I found them anywhere else, frankly these are the first I've seen or heard of that actually made it through the last two centuries and are still intact.
Very cool to have found them.
I'll be carefully studying them and without taking them apart, doing all I can do to reverse-engineer the assembly (shoudn't be so difficult), then set up to make imposters to run in my gun, complete with imposter Eley over-shot labels!
I'll likely counterfeit some sort of period-proper box and label for them too.
--Tinker
