Category Archives: Historical

Most folks don’t realize that the US Army rarely issued the .45 Colt cartridge, and when they did, it was often not a full-power load. Mike Venturino has a January 1874 vintage box of Frankford Arsenal .45 Colt ammunition. The box label clearly indicates that it was only loaded with 30gr of blackpowder, not theContinue reading “Mythbusting – The .45 Colt Cartridge in US Military Service”

From 1870s on British interests in South Africa was being threatened by the expansion of Boer settlers, A small war had been fought between the two groups in 1880-81 which ended in a stalemate. The standoff didn’t last long and in 1899 a large military force was sent to deal with the problem of theContinue reading “Boer Rifleman”

After the FBI’s deadly Miami, FL shootout in 1986, the 9mm Silvertip bullet was scapegoated. Winchester’s answer was to create a more robust version of the Silvertip.

We have another pair of projectiles today: one AP and another looking for a purpose. The story starts with US Army ordnance engineer Abraham Flatau. One of his earliest experiments with tubular projectiles came about when he was trying to develop an improved grenade launcher projectile. The issue 40x46mm grenades had a high trajectory andContinue reading “Totally Tubular! – The GEA “Cyclone” and the PMC Ultramag”

Keeping with the hardware store theme of the last couple of posts, today we’ll be covering a hole-saw projectile design. The difference is this one was originally meant to cut into wood. Stanley W. “Bill” Kaswer was a gunsmith and avid bowling pin shooter. His goal was to design a projectile to cleanly knock pinsContinue reading “Kaswer Pin Grabber Family Data Dump”