Читать книгу The Complete English Wing Shot онлайн

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There would have been some sense in “standard velocities,” had it been impossible to increase velocities without also increasing recoil; but nobody believes that. The tendency has not only been the other way, but it represents the one and only great improvement in powders that has been made since nitro propellers were first invented. There is still a large proportion of recoil due to the “blast” after the shot has gone, or the momentum of lost powder-gas. It is not nearly abolished, and is only reduced. Consequently, it was no time to say, “Now we have arrived at perfection, and beyond this point it is a fault to go, and consequently we fix as a standard 1050 foot-seconds mean velocity at 20 yards as the correct velocity, above and below which nobody must attempt to carry ballistics of shot guns.” That may suit wholesale manufacturers, because it is a standard easy to accomplish in bulk, but here is what it means as a check to progress.

First, if we take a peep at Mr. Griffith’s own celebrated revolving target trials of just twenty years ago, we find that his mean velocities of those trials were all more than 1050 foot-seconds at 20 yards range. They were for the three guns and loads used 1073, 1124, and 1062 foot-seconds. But he has quite truly told us that during these twenty years the velocity has increased 100 feet per second. Consequently, the “standard loading” sets back the clock more than 100 foot-seconds and more than twenty years. That is not all: those beautiful trials exhibited the fact that the last pellets in a load had from 221 to 300 foot-seconds less mean velocity than the first, so that “standard” loading may mean 1050 foot-seconds for the first pellets, and 750 foot-seconds for the last, at 20 yards range. These trials were all conducted with cartridges loaded with 1⅛ oz. of shot. But years before that, when fine grain black powder was used, and gave to 1⅛ oz. of shot much higher velocities than those named above, Sir Fred. Milbank shot his 728 grouse in the day with ⅞ oz., on the ground that the ordinary 1⅛ oz. gave too little penetration—that is, too little velocity.