Firearms Curiosa by Winant:

The postman ('mailman' to US citizens) has brought me an early x-mas present from myself in the form of a paperback copy of 'Firearms Curiosa' written by  Lewis Winant in 1954.

  - It cost me NZ$41.60 (delivered free) from The Book Depository in Slough, UK. They provide a great service shipping books around the globe freight-free at a cost that saves plenty of bucks on what a local book-shop would want to charge - if they had even thought about stocking this kind of book.

Filled with photographs (rather small, poor resolution) and informative text on weird shooting stuff -it comes with my approval. - Here's an example of something new to me that works by the suns rays being focussed onto the black-powder to fire the miniature cannon as a 'noon-gun'.

- Like all sun-dials it has to be aligned properly north-south and the angle of the gnomen thingy has to be correct for the longitude / latitude stuff. - Where I hang-about is roughly Latitude 43.5 degrees South - that's the angle that the Gnomen needs to be made for here - and we are approximately 172 degrees East Longitude. The magnifying glass also needs to be adjusted/focussed for the high summer sun and the lower cool winter angle - but it should work fine.

Google show several different versions in the pictures file - what a great service we get from them and Wikipedia - thanks to the "world-wide wait".

- Lots of other rare and interesting guns lurking inside the books covers for me to discover while snacking and not-watching TV between the ad breaks..

Marty K.