In case you ever wondered why, when shooting steel plates, bullet jackets sometimes come back but not the core of the bullet. Here, at 1,000,000 frames per second, is an explanation. Awesome video:

Via email from Erick P. at work.

I finished up Monster Hunter International on Friday and started Monster Hunter Vendetta. There was so much mention made of Owen Z. Pitt’s specially modified Saiga shotgun which he calls “Abomination” that I had to get mine (stock configuration with none of Milow’s modifications) out and do a little shot gunning. Wal-Mart didn’t have any silver buckshot but they had Federal 00 in both 2.75 (9 pellets) and 3 inch magnum shells (15 pellets).

So today I shot up a couple USPSA targets:

Above is three shots of the 2.75” shells from 30’ away. One to the head, one to the center of the body, and one to the lower part of the body. The large holes are the wadding.

This is three shots of the 3” inch magnum shells and two shots of 2.75” #7 birdshot from 30’ away.

Unless there were a specific need for the extra payload I don’t see any need to use the harder recoiling 3” shells. My guess is that when firing multiple shots I can get just as much lead on target in the same amount of time with the 2.75” shells as I can with the 3” shells.

I also dumped a couple twelve round magazines of birdshot on some steel targets as fast as I could acquire a sight picture. That was fun and very invigorating. I need to do that more often.

Getting back to the books. These are really good books. I don’t even mind that Owen’s evil werewolf boss had the same name as my Grandfather. I do wish the troll was named MIkeB302000 instead of Melvin but I suppose that would be insulting to trolls and there might consequences.

And I can’t help but think that our gnome loving, daughter Xenia really should read the gnome fight scene.

Where is it written that most single action revolvers have to require chambers to be loaded/unloaded individually whereas a double action usually has a tip-out cylinder?  For that matter, where is it written that, if one wants to run a revolver in single action, one can’t buy a double action and run it exclusively as a single action, benefiting from the superior reloading system that is the tip-out cylinder?

If Major Schofield had come up with the moon clip back in the 1800s, and called for a double action, he’d have created what might be regarded as a modern revolver even by today’s standards.

It’s my understanding that the moon clip was created as a stop gap measure after W.W. I, allowing .45 ACP ammunition to be used in revolvers, with a minor alteration to the cylinder, at a time when 1911 pistols were in short supply.  Why don’t we see more moon clips, which allow faster reloading, used with rimmed cartridges?  Instead of carrying speed loaders, you carry the loaded moon clips and drop the whole business into the cylinder.

Cylinders with an odd number of chambers make it easier to place the lock notches in between chambers instead of at the thin spot right atop a chamber.  If I were getting a revolver chambered for a high pressure round I think I’d want a seven shooter or a nine shooter.

An 1858 Remington New Model Army, with its change-out percussion (“cap and ball”) cylinder, can be reloaded faster than the later Colt Peacemaker, so long as you have another loaded cylinder.  The consumable envelope cartridge of the 1860s can (if you’re willing to risk igniting the powder from the hot residue in the just-fired cylinders while you’re ramming the balls in) allow a percussion revolver to be reloaded almost as fast as the Peacemaker.  One problem was their fragility.

The French had combat caliber (10 and 11 mm) metal (pinfire) cartridges and bored-through cylinder revolvers years before the outbreak of our War Between the States.  I did not know that.

I can’t fully explain why, but I want a percussion revolver based on the 1858 Remington but with a lengthened and beefed up frame and cylinder so it can safely handle a 250 grain 45 caliber cast lead bullet and 60 grains of FFF black powder.  It’s what the Colt Walker should have been.  By comparison, the later .45 Colt metal cartridge used a maximum of about 40 grains black powder.  That and I want a matching carbine so they can use the same cylinders.  No fooling around with reloading metal cartridges – just cast the bullets.  Among the reasons I want these is that the way I read the WA State hunting regs for muzzleloader season (last year’s anyway) they’d be legal on deer.  Plus I think it would be cool.

On rifle she is a force to be reckoned with but Roxanna usually ends up in the middle of the pack at our USPSA pistol matches. Things were different on one stage today. She doesn’t appear to shoot it particularly fast but everyone else “had problems”. She didn’t have any misses and beat us all.

I tweeted about it here.

She asked for the video so here it is with Adam as the Range Officer:

As suggested by Alan I would like to publically invite Paul Helmke to a private Boomershoot party. I’ll supply the guns, ammo, and reactive targets. He just needs to arrange his own travel and accommodations.

Send me an email Paul. I’m nothing to be scared of. You shook my hand once, remember?

This (pages 2 and 3) would make an interesting starting point for an alternate history:

As Joyce Malcolm has extensively documented, the English perception of an individual right to arms arose out of a 17^th century reversal of policy course. Prior to the Stuart dynasty, English governments actively forced their subjects to own and use arms. All healthy male subjects were required to own arms appropriate to the time and their wealth, towns were required to construct shooting ranges, and all games other than marksmanship were outlawed in order to ensure that Englishmen would have but one legal sport.

Imagine if that were the case in the United States. No football, basketball, or baseball. Just hundreds of games involving shooting.

It would be totally unconstitutional (freedom of association would probably nix the idea) but it could make an interesting story.

Via Dave Hardy.

I’m not into collecting guns but maybe someone else out there is. Even if I were into collecting guns the sales price on these wouldn’t pass the wife test. And even worse—they don’t even shoot!

I do admire the mechanics though. That is very impressive.

Via email from K.W.