Monday 23 November 2015

Frontier Firearms Savvy from Louis L'Amour:

When I need something to read and don't have anything special in mind - I go to one of the hundred-odd of excellent 'Frontier Stories' from Louis L'Amour. His stories are mostly tales of good guys overcoming the bad'uns.

  - However, I wasn't aware that he wrote four of the 'Hopalong Cassidy' cowboy stories and films under the name 'Tex Burns' - until I found them among his other books.

A Winchester 1873 Short Rifle.

One recent read was titled "Lando" and in this tale our 'mountain man' central figure carries a Walch twelve shot 'Navy' cap & ball percussion revolver. - He likes and carries it - but I didn't read anything about him actually using it in this book .. which is probably fitting because these 12 shot revolvers with their superposed powder and ball charges are recorded as being low powered (because of the light powder charges used) and were perhaps unreliable - and likely to double-discharge when loaded with the twelve percussion caps placed ready at the back of that long cylinder.

The forward charge of each chamber has to fire first ("Derrrr") - then the rearmost.
- See my earlier post dated 19 June 2015 about the WALCH 12 shot - and there is good information to be found on Google.

My guess would be that a 'refined' modern built stainless steel replica 12 shot might be made to work very well using a tight wad to separate the twin charges - but the development costs would likely not be justified by the potential for sales .. maybe.

Here's a few words of "Sackett" wisdom from another Louis L'Amour book (this one actually called 'Sackett'):

"Pa used to say a gun was a responsibility, not a toy, and if he ever caught any of us playing fancy with a gun he'd have our hide off with a bullwhip.
 
None of us ever lost any hide."

Mr L'Amour wrote a distinct series of novels ( seventeen books) - about generations of the Sackett Family - historically accurate (as were all his books).
Audio Books Too.
I've got nine pages of these western frontier stories listed on my Kindle - so it may take a while to read them all eh .. but there's plenty of 'bad television nights'.

 Louis L'Amour  knew his frontier lands and his guns .. and boxing / brawling from close experience.

Marty K.


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