Category Archives: Historical

You can’t seem to swing a dead cat these days without hitting another scalloped projectile design claimed to promote increased temporary cavitation and tissue disruption. In rifles, the initial blame might be placed upon CETME engineer Gunther Voss who designed the asymmetric löffelspitz (spoon-point) bullet for use with the 4.6x36mm CETME/HK assault rifle cartridge startingContinue reading “A Collection of Screwdriver Bit Projectile Patents”

In lieu of another data dump, here is a photo gallery of vintage Super Vel ads from 1967 to 1984

Speer had a early contender in the Gucci handgun bullet race, but they just lacked a fancy marketable name for their Plated Hollow Point (PHP).

Today, we have the Jim Boland-designed Mitchell Arms Alpha widebody pistol. If certain price-guides can be believed, this was cataloged from 1995 to 1997. However, any escaped from the factory for retail sales it would be news to me. The Alpha had a weird set of design features. It could be user configured as eitherContinue reading “Mitchell Arms Alpha – The Ill-Fated Jim Boland Factory Widebody”

Mickey Fowler gives Ichiro Nagata a look at the custom pistol he used to place second at the first Steel Challenge in 1981, and fourth at the 1982 match.

I’ve been intrigued by this design ever since I saw it on the cover of a 1977 issue of American Rifleman. In the 1920s, French inventor Charles Auguste Théodore Levé began patenting designs for magazine-fed variants of the Darne sliding breech side-by-side. One even held four shells in reserve, two for each barrel. Belgian gunmakerContinue reading “1920s Vintage Repeating Double Barrel Shotgun”

Back in the day, Smith & Wesson went toe to toe with Ruger in full-page magazine attack ads without having to call out their legal departments. Compare and contrast with the current lawfare going on between Springfield Inc. and EAA over their competing ads for their Hi-Power clones.