Quote Originally Posted by Smokeless Coal View Post
Nah not really Jim, I'm a lifelong engineer and can appreciate technical and chemical ingenuity. Such as Forsyths experiments with fulminates to create the flash, through roll primers and the tipping flask to fill the flash pan. Things moved at a fast pace and just about stopped with the first cartridges. There has been refinements but little real innovation.

Some stuff just defies logic, like how the hell did they come up with the crazy idea of pin-fire. It's kinda like inventing a wheel with flats on so it dont roll away.
Yes, it IS strange that there's been so little innovation in firearms technology since the introduction of cartridges in the 1870's and of smokeless powder in the 1880's. I suppose we could say that's a tribute to how well what we have now works.

Pinfires ARE an odd sort of contraption, aren't they? and to think they predate modern-style cartridges by decades, yet never replaced percussion. I own a little 8mm pinfire revolver: often wonder what stories it could tell.

Jim