AmBraCol , The Center Of God's Grace
Excellent point! On the otherhand...
Saturday, November 05, 2022, 10:41

mango trees make very good targets. I'm curious as to how many rounds or how many pounds of lead I ended up burying in the mango tree that was about 50 feet from the bedroom window "back in the day". It's still there, or was when they took a Google Earth picture of it a few years ago. The soft wood soaks up lead quite efficiently.

A gunsmith I knew had a Belgian half automatic rifle. It would automatically eject the shell and lock open for the next one to be inserted, then you'd press a button and it'd close on the fresh round, ready to for the next shot. He got to playing around one day and took the powder from a dud 22 shell and dumped it in a fresh cartridge, then pushed the bullet back in place. Then he shot it through his little Belgian rifle at a mango tree a few meters away.

The cartridge fired perfectly well. The rifle, however, wasn't up to the pressure and the bolt cracked in two. I'm guessing the head blew off the cartridge as well, but don't recall that part of the story for sure. He almost cried when he saw how he wrecked his rifle, but then got busy and welded it back together (everything he did was manual and his welding/soldering/brazing was done over a charcoal powered forge) and the old rifle kept on chugging along afterwards.

He said that he used his longest chisel and never did manage to reach that 22 slug.

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I'm a peaceful man and prefer the pursuit of peaceful sports. Those involving teams and balls of any sort tend to be deleterious to one's body and promote violence by both spectators and participants.