Solid Brass Knuckles / Knuckle Duster 2015

Solid Brass Knuckle Duster - A Solid Brass Traditional Style Knuckle Duster, Based on the classic design that's has been around for many years.
This design and finger hole shape are perfect for most hands depending on size of knuckle duster, they are very comfortable and safe too use, the large palm rest and finger hole shape make these comfortable and sit in the palm of the hand securely and safely.




These took approx 6 - 8 hrs to make and was one of the hardest type of brass the maker has ever used, drilling was very hard with two drill bits breaking, luckily when the fileing the finger holes the maker used a rasp type bit in a drill to shape the fingers holes very quickly

The size is suited to Medium or Large hands.
Features oval finger holes and a curved palm rest, weight is quite heavy due it being brass, brass can feel heavy when carried or worn and some people find them too heavy, and certainly is considerably heavier when weighed against aluminium of the same thickness.

Features the makers mark wc-15 and 2015
Overall I would say Brass makes a very attractive knuckle duster and due to its design is also practical too, at a later date I will re-sand these to a mirror finish, thats should happen sometime later in july 2015
 
Dimensions - 120mm wide, 67mm high, 6mm thick, Finger holes are 25mm wide.

Please leave a comment letting me know what you think! Thanks.

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BRASS KNUCKLES FOR SALE BELOW FROM AMAZON - IGNORE PIC IN FIRST LINK - ITS THE OTHER ITEMS THEY ARE SELLING WITH THE BRASS KNUCKLES

Off For a Few Weeks

To the faithful readers of this blog... I'll be heading off to Europe on a much-needed vacation for a few weeks. Fear not though, I plan to carry my camera when visiting museums and historic sights and perhaps I'll find something interesting to talk about. See you guys and gals next month!

Handgun Shooting Analysis

In today's post, we will study the causes for inaccuracies when people shoot handguns. There is a handgun shooters chart, that helps shooters analyze what they are doing wrong. There are various variations of the same chart, but here's one public domain version, as designed by the US Army Marksmanship Unit.

Handgun Shooting Analysis chart, courtesy US Army Marksmanship Unit. Public domain image.

The above chart is designed for a right handed shooter. For a left handed shooter, the chart is mirrored vertically (e.g.) "Thumbing" is on the left, "Finger not on trigger correctly" is on the right etc.

The chart is pretty self-explanatory. For instance, if a right handed shooter is shooting too much to the left of the target, he or she is not placing the finger on the trigger correctly. However, some of these terms may need some explanation, so we will study those below.

Thumbing: When the shooter is squeezing the trigger, he or she pushes the right thumb and/or left thumb against the side of the frame, causing the front of the handgun to aim to the right (for a right-handed shooter. A left handed shooter will push the front of the handgun to the left). This causes the shots to end up to the right of the target.

Tightening grip when pulling the trigger: The shooter is tightening their hands along the grip, as the trigger is being squeezed. This causes the front of the gun to dip low and to the right.

Breaking wrist: This is caused because the shooter anticipates the recoil of the gun and does not lock the strong wrist properly. If the shooter tries to mimic the recoil, he or she breaks the wrists upward and shoots above the target. If the shooter tries to counteract the recoil, he or she breaks the wrists downward and the gun fires below the target.

Jerking: This happens when the shooter tries to fire the trigger as soon as the moving sights cross the target, adding excessive pressure to the trigger. This causes shots to end up low and to the left of the target.

Finger not on trigger correctly: This is caused when there is too little finger on the trigger. The trigger finger should cause the trigger to pull straight backwards. However, if there is too little finger area on the trigger, it will pull the trigger sideways and cause the shot to end up to the left of the target.

Pushing: This happens when the shooter jerks the trigger finger forward, just as the gun fires. The solution is to practice a proper follow-through and hold the gun steady during and after the trigger is pulled.

Heeling: This is caused by the shooter putting too much pressure with the heel of the hand, while the weapon is being fired.

Wacky Non-Functional Firearms

In today's post, we will look at an unusual object, something that is designed to look like a firearm, but actually isn't. We will look at something called a "scare pistol".

First, we will look at the origins of such a wacky invention. This class of "weapon" dates back to the 1880s. During this time period, the streets of Paris, France, were a dangerous place to be. Several criminals were roaming the streets and committing muggings and assaults, especially on women. Many women were urged to carry a small firearm with them, as a means of self-defense. However, some of these ladies did not wish to pull the trigger on another person. Seeing an opportunity, some French and Belgian manufacturers began to make "scare pistols" for these ladies.

A Scare Revolver from the 19th century. Public domain image.

The above looks like a commonly available Lefaucheux pinfire revolver model of that time period. This particular model is even made of brass and beautifully enameled and gold-plated. However, a closer look at the revolver reveals some interesting details. For one, the trigger cannot be pulled and is merely screwed on to the frame. The cylinder and hammer are non-functional as well. In fact, the only part of this so-called "revolver" that works or even moves, is the lanyard ring at the back of the handle!!

The idea behind manufacturing such a useless weapon was that even the sight of a firearm would be sufficient to scare off your average mugger (at least, that was the theory at that time). Therefore, for people who would hesitate to pull a trigger on another person, they could walk around with a non-functional, but realistic looking firearm.

The contents of a so-called "scare revolver" model. Public domain image.

In the above image, we have another so-called "scare pistol", Pulling back on the hammer causes this "revolver" to break at the cylinder. Inside is a mirror, a pair of functioning scissors, some needles, a thimble, two spools of thread and a crocheting hook. The front of the cylinder is a functioning pin-cushion and what looks like the shell extractor rod is actually a pencil. The butt of this "revolver" contains a small bottle to store perfume. This device is actually a scare revolver that also doubles as a functional sewing kit for carrying out minor repairs on clothes!

The Mad Minute

The next shooting sport we will look at is called the Mad Minute. It has its origins in a British Army exercise, which is described in a manual called "The Musketry Regulations, Part I, 1909).

The aim of this exercise is to demonstrate rapid fire shooting with good accuracy. The original exercise required the soldier to fire at an official "Second Class Figure" target, at a distance of 300 yards, using a Lee-Enfield service rifle and hit it at least 15 times within one minute.

A second class and first class target. Click on the image to enlarge.

Image taken from Musketry Regulations Part II. Public domain image.

The figure in the middle of the target is intended to resemble the silhouette of a man with a rifle peering out of a trench and measures about 12 inches x 12 inches. The next image shows a close up of the silhouette, including details of the actual colors used.

Details of the silhouette. Click on the image to enlarge. Public domain image.

As this was before World War I, notice that the silhouette resembles a man wearing a cloth cap.

A Lee-Enfield Mark I rifle. Click on the image to enlarge.

The soldier was allowed to load the rifle with one cartridge in the chamber and four in the magazine and get into the prone position. The target would then appear at a distance of 300 yards and the soldier would be expected to shoot with it. Reloading was allowed in groups of five cartridges from a pouch or bandoleer and the total time of the exercise was one minute. 

As long as the target was hit anywhere with a bullet, that counted as a hit. However, points were scored as follows: hitting the silhouette scored 4 points, hitting inside the inner ring scored 3 points, hitting inside the outer ring scored two points. Soldiers would be classified based on their accuracy, as marksmen, first-class shot, second-class shot and third-class shot. This exercise was one of a set of training exercises to grade soldiers. People who scored enough points to be classified as "marksmen" were given extra pay and a special crossed-rifles badge.

While the exercise only required 15 hits on target within a minute, many people would continue to fire even after 15 hits, to see how many times they could hit the target within that one minute. The smooth operation of the Lee-Enfield rifle's bolt action allowed soldiers to fire rapidly and accurately. Several people in the British Army could hit the target over 30 times within this time period! There are records of soldiers in the British Army scoring 36 or 38 hits within a minute at 300 yards.

By the time World War I started, the average British soldier was a better shot than his French or German counterpart. During the Battle of Mons, several German units reported that they were facing British troops armed with machine guns, when in reality, it was groups of riflemen firing rapidly using their bolt-action Lee-Enfield rifles.

These days, while this exercise is no longer part of military training, some people still organize "mad minute" competitions to see how many hits can be scored in a minute.

Three Gun Competitions

In our last couple of articles, we studied some sports where shooting formed a part, but those sports also involved other activities (running, skiing etc.) In today's post, we will study a sport where shooting forms a larger component. This sport is not an Olympic sport unlike the other two we studied before, but is popular in North America. We are talking about the three gun competition, otherwise spelled as 3-gun competition.

In the 19th and most of the 20th century, shooting competitions generally meant people were in fixed positions and shooting at targets with a single weapon. In these competitions, sometimes the targets are at a fixed known distance (e.g. pistol shooting, rifle shooting, biathlon, pentathlon etc.) and sometimes the targets move (e.g. trap shooting, skeet shooting etc.) However, the user stays in a fixed position and shoots at the targets. In some of these shooting events, e.g. pistol shooting or rifle shooting, time is not considered a huge factor (as long as the shooter stays below some fixed time limit). Reloading time also is not considered in these events and people generally have plenty of time to reload. Target types also stay the same throughout the competition (e.g.) pistol shooters always shoot at paper targets, trap shooters always shoot at clay targets etc. Another point about shooting competitions like this is that people generally become good at one type of firearm (e.g.) pistol, but aren't so good at using another firearm type (e.g.) rifle.

World famous shooter Jerry Miculek walking through a 3-gun course.

Three-gun competitions are a newer type of shooting competition that was started in 1980 by Soldier of Fortune magazine and gained popularity in America soon afterwards. Unlike the other competitions, the three gun competition is designed to simulate combat or self-defense scenarios. Shooters are expected to use three types of firearms in this type of competition:

1. A handgun (pistol or revolver)
2. A shotgun 
3. A semi-automatic rifle.

Shooters proceed through an obstacle course and shoot at a variety of targets along the course, using different firearms at different stages through the course. The targets are all at varying distances from 1 meter to 500 meters or so, and are a variety of types (clay targets, paper targets, steel targets, empty cans, silhouettes, moving targets etc.). Shooters also engage these targets in a variety of positions (standing, kneeling, prone etc.) Shooters also carry firearms, holsters, spare magazines and ammunition with them and load and unload magazines as they proceed through the course. There are some rules such as the minimum calibers that can be used (handguns must use at least 9x19 mm. cartridges, rifles must use at least 5.45x39 mm. cartridges, shotguns must be larger than 20 gauge), types of sights, types of stocks, magazine capacity limit etc. but any firearm that meets the minimum requirements is allowed. Targets also have different zones that score more points if hit. In addition, if a heavier bullet is used, then more points are awarded for some targets, on the grounds that a competitor using a heavier recoil weapon isn't at a disadvantage against someone using a firearm with little recoil (in many competitions, .223 and 9 mm. are considered minor calibers and score less, whereas anything over .308 or .45 ACP are considered major calibers and score more for hits). In addition, unlike other shooting competitions, 3-gun competitions also feature targets that are supposed to be ignored by the shooter.

Competitors score points by hitting targets in specific areas and lose points by hitting the "no-shoot" targets (e.g. hostages, friendly targets etc.). Competitors also lose points for procedural penalties, such as shooting too close or too far from the target, knocking overhead material over while crawling through a tunnel, not performing a mandatory reload, using the wrong firearm type at a target etc. The time taken to complete the course is also factored into the final score. Therefore, the winner is decided by a combination of fast time and shooting accuracy. Competitors may be disqualified for safety violations, such as accidental discharges or unsafe firearm handling.

For firearms, competitors generally use a 9 mm. or larger pistol for the handgun stages, an autoloading or pump-action shotgun (commonly 12 gauge) and an AR style semi-automatic rifle. There are various divisions of 3-gun competitions: Limited, Tactical, Heavy Metal (He Man), Open and Outlaw. The difference between these divisions is generally the types of equipment used. For instance, in limited division competitions (which is for entry-level shooters), the rifle is allowed an unmagnified red dot, whereas in the tactical division competitions, a magnified optic is allowed. For the heavy metal division, the rifle must be at least .308 (or 7.62x51 mm.) or larger, the shotgun must be at least 12 gauge and the handgun must be at least .45 ACP or larger, and all sights should be ordinary iron sights with no optics allowed. The different divisions allow poorer shooters with inferior equipment to participate in these events as well. The majority of shooters tend to participate in the tactical division of a 3-gun competition.

Here's a video from the National Shooting Sports Foundation, showing how the three-gun competitions work:

Courses for 3-gun competitions have to meet some basic minimum standards, but beyond that, they are pretty much left to the match organizers' imaginations. This is why every competition is different. In some places, competitors are generally given a few minutes to walk through a course to familiarize themselves and form a plan of how they are going to proceed through it. In other places, the courses may be run blind (i.e.) the shooters do not know what to expect beforehand. Some competitions feature multiple stages with different courses at every stage and people get bonus points for winning a stage or finishing near the top, therefore a person who did well on every stage, but did not win any one of them, can still end up winning the overall competition.

Here's a couple of videos by Mr. Nick Leghorn showing a competition with multiple stages.

Happy viewing

Modern Pentathlon

In our last post, we studied the Biathlon, a winter sport that has shooting as one of the events. In today's post, we will study a summer sport, where shooting also plays a part. The sport we will study today is the Modern Pentathlon.

The Modern Pentathlon has its origins in the modern Olympic games. You see, in the ancient Olympic games, there used to be a sport called the Pentathlon, where athletes competed in running, long jump,  wrestling, throwing the javelin and throwing the discus. These five events were based on skills that were useful in battles of that era, therefore the athletes participating in this sport were considered very elite soldiers as well.

When the modern Olympic games started in 1896, the founder, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, wanted a similar event in the modern Olympic games. However, since warfare tactics had changed since the ancient Olympic games, his idea was  to create the modern Pentathlon, based on skills that were useful to a soldier of the late 19th century, specifically cavalry soldiers. He imagined a situation where a cavalry officer was trapped behind enemy lines and had to escape back to his own lines. To do so, a cavalry man must be able to run over a cross country course, swim, ride an unfamiliar horse through an obstacle course, fight with a sword and shoot with a pistol. The first modern pentathlon event was held in the 1912 Olympic games in Stockholm, Sweden.

Interestingly, for many years, the Olympic games were only open to amateur athletes. Why? Some people claim that this was because Baron de Coubertin thought that ancient Greek athletes were amateurs and wished to copy the same principle in the modern Olympics. This is not true, because it was a well known fact that the winners of ancient Olympic events were paid huge sums of money and were set up for life. The uncomfortable truth was that Baron Pierre de Coubertin was an aristocrat and a bit of a snob. At a time when most people worked hard for a living, it was generally the wealthy upper classes that could afford to devote training time to sports, as "amateurs". Working class people found it hard to compete in the highest levels of sport, because of the need to go to work all week. However, as sports became more popular and attendances to sporting events increased, some competitions began to award monetary prizes, which made it attractive for working class athletes to skip work and concentrate on sports full time. This led to the first professional sports people of that era (e.g. professional baseball players and professional soccer players played for factory teams, professional runners competed against horses etc.). Baron de Coubertin didn't like the idea of a lower class professional athlete beating the pants off an upper class "amateur" aristocrat. Therefore, he made the restriction that the Olympic games were only open to amateurs. Over the years, many countries made a mockery of this restriction (for instance, most sportsmen from the Soviet Union, East Germany, China etc. were amateurs only in name, because they were full time athletes with the state supporting them, while they were officially enlisted in the military and were therefore considered as "amateurs") and in the late 1970s, the Olympic games slowly started to allow professional athletes in some events (e.g. the "Dream team" in Basketball for the 1992 Olympics).

In the 1912 Olympic games, when the first modern pentathlon event was held, the amateur athlete rule was very much enforced. Only officers were allowed to compete in the event, not ordinary cavalry troopers. This was the case until the 1952 Olympic games, because ordinary cavalry troopers were considered as professional athletes, as they rode horses for a living! On the other hand, most cavalry officers of that era were from upper class backgrounds, and so they were considered "amateurs".

The athlete who participated in the modern pentathlon event in the 1912 games for the US, was a young Army cavalry officer named George S. Patton.

Olympic athlete and Army General,  George S. Patton. Click on the image to enlarge. Public domain image.

In case you think that name sounds familiar, yes, this same officer later rose to fame as one of the most famous generals in America!

Patton did pretty well in the Olympic games, finishing fifth in the overall events (the top four finishers were all Swedish. Sweden was the host country of the 1912 Olympics). Interestingly, the event he did the worst in was one of his stronger skills: shooting. He finished 21st in this event. However, there is some controversy associated with his performance in the shooting event. As it turns out, competitors were allowed to bring their own firearms and many of them chose .22 caliber pistols. Patton, on the other hand, brought a revolver chambered in .38 caliber. This was because the standard US military revolver of that era was the M1892 revolver chambered in .38 Long Colt (the .45 caliber Colt M1911 pistol had just been adopted the previous year and was not delivered in large numbers to the US military yet). Patton claimed that the first few shots from his .38 caliber bullets produced large holes on the paper and some of the later shots passed through these large holes and the judges decided that he'd missed the target completely and subtracted points from his score. If his claim is true, it was agreed that he would have received an Olympic medal. Nevertheless, the judges ruling was upheld and Patton accepted their decision as a sign of good sportsmanship. In modern times, the background behind the target moves, so that the judges can specifically track multiple shots through the same hole. Patton was also selected to represent the US in the 1916 Olympic games, but they were cancelled due to World War I.

These days, the modern pentathlon event has changed a bit. The shooting part was changed to use a small caliber air pistol and in 2009, they combined the shooting and running events, so athletes now have to run three 1000 meter laps, each prefaced by taking shots with a pistol until they successfully hit five targets. Once five targets have been hit, the athlete can resume running the next lap and so on. In 2011, the pistols were changed to use lasers instead of actual bullets, with an electronic device to provide a small delay between pulling the trigger and firing the laser, to simulate a pellet leaving the muzzle (the use of laser pistols instead of real pistols has created some controversy). Since 2013, the athletes shoot until they hit five targets and then run an 800 meter lap and repeat this four times. Unlike biathlons (which we studied in the previous post), athletes do not carry their pistols with them while they are running. Missed shots are not penalized and the only requirement is that the athlete should make five successful hits to the target before running again. The winner is the one that first crosses the finishing line.

The modern pentathlon is still considered part of the Olympic games (at least until 2020) and there are annual world championship events held as well.