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- Herausgeber: Merlin Unwin Books
- Kategorie: Lebensstil
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014
This book explores in practical detail many of the ways, old and new, in which people can shoot bullets by their own force, without the aid of explosives. David slew Goliath with a stone from a sling, but it was a large stone and Man has long been shooting small stones and carefully rounded bullets of clay, glass – and latterly steel and lead – from a variety of weapons without recourse to gunpowder. The bow and arrow has been Man's choice for the last 10,000 years, when modern firearms have been unavailable or unsuitable. There is currently an explosion of interest in making primitive archery equipment. The author has been building bows and shooting flint-tipped arrows since adolescence. But the addiction has led to stronger stuff: to experiments with making and shooting pump-up airguns, stonebows and home-made lead musketballs. Richard Middleton's narrative is lively, humorous and full of exciting information and experimentation. In this quirky and clever book, he invites you to share the thrills of his garden shed experiments.
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Towards the end of the eighteenth century cannonballs came to be made of cast iron. They were not very spherical and today we are surprised at the extent of their irregularity of shape (see page 5).
This 3 lbs 15 oz cast iron cannonball was found in a house in New Zealand, possibly dating from 1840-1870. Diameters are given in millimetres. It is in the possession of Dr G. Anderson.
THE PRACTICAL GUIDE TO
MAN-POWERED BULLETS
EXPERIMENTS WITH CATAPULTS, MUSKETBALLS, STONEBOWS, BLOWPIPES, BIG AIRGUNS & BULLETBOWS
Richard Middleton
Contents
A WORD OF WARNING
When I was young and had nothing better to do, and finding there wasn’t one in any of the bookshops, I wrote a book about catapults. It didn’t stop there: it never does. People who build catapults invariably go on to construct all manner of other doubtful objects; I did it myself and this is the somewhat expanded version of that book.
Since I knew from bitter experience that they always went wrong in some fashion and it always hurt, I rather thought that an enterprising lawyer would hop about with excitement and bring some legal action against me.
Therefore I issue this very plain warning. I’m not a qualified engineer, but I’m as careful as I know how to be and I check my materials with every technical textbook I can lay my hands on to make sure they’ll do the job I ask of them. And yet I still get hurt.
Whenever you’re trying to control or harness large amounts of energy, the energy will find the weak point in your design or calculation and it will let you know in the most direct possible way. Something you hadn’t anticipated will break. If it’s a catapult, a roofing bolt screwed into the endgrain of an elmwood handle (see Fig. 4.13) might split free despite the strength of elm and come screaming back into your eye socket at a hundred and fifty miles an hour. There’ll be a moment’s shocked pause while you think “Oh. Damn!” to yourself, and then you’ll go hobbling along to your local Accident and Emergency Department where there’s someone whose job it is to sew people up after they’ve tried to free a bit of wood from a table saw without switching the motor off. And after that you’ll either eschew these things altogether and vow to concentrate on growing obscure varieties of fuchsia, or you’ll wait three weeks and be back at it again until the next time something goes horribly wrong.
I still can’t anticipate what’s likely to go wrong. Although I’ve survived the building of a number of airguns, I’m always fearful that I’ve miscalculated the strength of the tube I’m using for a compressed air reservoir, or that there’s a scratch-mark I hadn’t noticed and I’m about to discover, the hard way, that I’ve actually made a pipe-bomb.
My favourite legal disclaimer is from a website
www.ourfamily.com.sg/ Faired.html:
Disclaimer: The boat plan shown here is not professionally designed blah blah blah. If you sink or suffer mental anguish or whatever, don’t come crying to me.
It sums up my position nicely. I’ve had a lot of fun writing this book and I hope you have fun reading it but it is not a step-by-step guide to making any of these weapons. If you use this book as anything other than an account of my own experiments you’re likely to get hurt, probably quite badly. Most importantly of all, if you’re going to make airguns, go and read every textbook on pneumatic machinery and pneumatic seals you can find, and don’t base anything just on what I’ve put here. I have checked everything as thoroughly as I know how but I’m not a professional pneumatic engineer and I’m not advocating that anyone, based on my experiments, follows my example. It is too easy to get yourself maimed or killed.
Now there’s one other point, and it’s a legal one. I happen to live in a country where you may own any of these weapons, even powerful airguns, without a licence. Most countries are not this liberal. I used to live in England where it was so crowded that shooting any gun even in the countryside was a potential hazard, and the authorities quite wisely limited the power of air rifles to a muzzle energy of twelve foot-pounds. It’s more than ample to knock over a rabbit in the cabbages, and if you needed a more powerful airgun you simply applied to the Police for a Firearms Certificate. I can’t check every legal code in every country, so if you plan on building any of these things, it’s your business as a citizen to ask your authorities if it’s allowed or what licences you need. You’ll seldom find your country’s laws – especially about airguns – corresponds with any other country’s. And don’t offer any weapons for sale until you’ve checked the law where you live. I happen to know something of the reasons for the formation of Proof Houses. Too many guns have burst and killed unsuspecting purchasers.
Finally, beware of the Internet. There are an awful lot of people - bless ’em - making ingenious things like this round the world, but not all of the things they make are especially safe, so for your own sake do your own research and find out what the tolerances are for any materials you use, and don’t rely on any single source.
And I do hope I don’t need to echo the basic safety rules of gun-handling. Even a crossbow string, zipping along the stock, will fairly sting any protruding fingertips. And a blast of compressed air alone, without a bullet, can deafen or blind someone. Jolly well be careful.
DISCLAIMER
This book is offered for sale on the condition that it is understood and accepted by any purchaser and all readers that making any device that stores and releases large amounts of energy is extremely dangerous, that the Author is not a professional engineer and that any mishaps or injuries of whatever severity incurred in the building of any thing device or weapon alluded to by or in this book whether by default or design of the Author shall be wholly and solely the responsibility of the individual reader.
