1/2/2023 0 Comments Lefaucheux revolver loading![]() ![]() Basic military ammunition is still called Ball ammo, despite no longer being spherical.įlobert Parlor Pistols, 6mm (.22cal). A musketeer, if his view was unsullied by smoke, could watch the unhurried passage of the ball form a shallow parabolic arc as it wended its way into the heart of darkness. The balls were big, slow, and heavy, between one-half and three-quarters of an inch in diameter. The leaden balls would yaw and arc through space, inaccurate and going their own way, hoping for a chance hit upon their unfortunate adversary. ![]() Keplarian globes would sail through the air in constellations from massed volleys of smoothbore muskets, from the ranks of British Red Coats and American Revolutionaries alike. What we know today as a “bullet shape” started out as a perfectly round sphere of lead used for centuries in matchlock, wheel lock, and flintlock muskets and pistols up until the 1830s. The real price of life is unambiguously mirrored in the simple form one is exchanged for the other. And not to be forgotten is that, when the chips are down, the cartridge becomes currency, not worthless paper money. The raw power of that noise, whose only parallel in nature is a thunderclap, feels like all the noises of the world have been compressed into a split second. Who would have known that such ghastly termination could be born from such pure form? The clue is the ear-splitting crack-bang that accompanies each shot. Yet, for all its modernist austerity, a bullet is pregnant with the capacity for a life changing, visceral, nasty, messy, causality. The nose cone of a bullet is a round ogive shape, designed to slice through wind with optimum efficiency. 2 From the outside, a cartridge is haunting in its reduced simplicity: little more than a truncated cylinder of gleaming brass filled with gunpowder, into which is wedged a lead bullet. So what happens in the brain when it hears something so reduced in size and economical in its symbolism as two numbers, juxtaposed either forwards or backwards?įor all of the Steampunk cogwheels and curly-cues of the Victorian age, cartridges and bullets are amongst the most abstract shapes to come out of the Industrial Revolution, a perfect union of straight line and curve. The number 45 can be flipped to make 54, and pleasure seeking Baby Boomers come to mind, singing along with the Village People’s iconic tune YMCA against the backdrop of Studio 54, New York’s iconic 70s disco. John Wayne stands tall with his “Colt 45,” and Clint Eastwood faces off with his “S &W 44 Magnum.“ 1 There’s only a hundredth of an inch separating the two calibers, and a generation of contention as to which is the finer round or revolver. When these two numbers are put together, people usually sit up and pay attention. ![]()
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