I was having a conversation today that brought up an old colleague, Bill, who was a top-class pistol shooter.
He told me once about a member of his club bringing a flintlock Dragoon pistol along to the range, now Bill was used to “state of the art” Olympic class pistols where the trigger travel was tiny, the object was to have the lightest components moving the shortest distances in microseconds to ignite the fastest-burning propellent.
Now, here he was with massive lump of wood, steel and brass, a trigger that creaked back for half an inch and a hammer that swung in a lazy arc.
Bill said that, as he pulled the trigger, he was thinking, “When is this thing going to go off” then, as the hammer swung, the same thought, same again when the flint crunched down in a shower of sparks, again as the priming sizzled in the pan, again as the golf-ball sized lump of lead rolled down the barrel, then everything disappeared in a cloud of blue.
Funny the conversations that stick in your head. 😂