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The Technical Rifleman
The official Gun Digest blog of Wayne van Zwoll, covering all things rifles, optics, ammunition and ballistics.
Read More on Fine Rifle Stocks
When I was a lad, you could buy a fancy American walnut stock blank for $25. I paid $7.50 for the plain but semi-inletted blank that went on my first deer rifle. Now even American walnut has become costly. Black polymer is taking over. The problem with walnut is that you can’t manufacture it. You [...]
Wayne van Zwoll Explains: Minute of Angle and Milliradian (Mil)
Enter your e-mail address below for 10 timeless gun collecting articles from Gun Digest. Then receive even more information in a weekly e-newsletter. Though shooters carry the terms as common coin, not everyone can define “minute of angle” and “mil” (milliradian). Minute of Angle A minute of angle, usually used as a measure [...]
Wayne van Zwoll’s Top Hill Country Rifles
The Hill Country of Texas boasts a passel of dedicated shooters and seems like a good place to look for a new rifle. That was Matt Bettersworth’s thinking when he set out to give Hill Country Rifles (HCR) a national face. I called him up to see how that face looked. “Sure. I’ll ship one. [...]
Why Some Guns Have Soul and Others Do Not
Opinions are like shopping bags: cheap and ubiquitous. Mine get about as much notice. Most recently, I’ve held forth on Chihuahuas, subsidized soybeans and motorists who drive 55 in the left lane. The soybean has kept its record reasonably clean, so I’ve managed one positive review. Firearms have tripped me up. To report on them [...]
Big Game Rifles: What Happens Between Shot and Down
Big game that drops instantly to a shot is cause for concern. Bullets don’t hurl animals to earth; an immediate collapse usually mean you’ve struck the spine. A severed spinal cord anchors the beast. If your bullet has also sent fragments through the chest or so shattered the forward spine as to deliver fatal shock, [...]
Wayne van Zwoll: Get the Right Scope for the Right Rifle
A lever-action carbine is as lithe under a scope as a sports car under a roof rack. On a double rifle, optics make no sense at all. While my aging eyes need glass for sharp aim, not all rifles need glass to be useful. Many animals are shot very close to the muzzle. In Africa, [...]
Wayne van Zwoll: What You Didn’t Know About the .22
Far from the most powerful, the .22 Long Rifle is arguably the most useful cartridge of all time. It dates to 1857, when Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson came up with a rimfire round while working on a lever-action rifle. That primitive Volcanic rifle would evolve into the Henry, the foundation of Winchester’s 19th century [...]
Wayne van Zwoll: Why Bullet Trajectory Doesn’t Go Straight
Bullets travel in arcs. You knew that. Actually, they’re parabolic arcs. A bullet drops faster as it goes farther. Well, not really. Gravity determines how fast a bullet drops, and its force doesn’t change over the course of a bullet’s flight. But the arc does get steeper at distance. Why? Gravity’s Effect on Bullet Trajectory [...]
Wayne van Zwoll: Thinking Inside The Boxlock
About the time George Armstrong Custer made ready to round up wayward Sioux on the flanks of the Little Bighorn, a couple of gunmakers working at Westley Richards of Birmingham, England fashioned a new rifle mechanism. Like the dropping-block rifle John Moses Browning would build just a few years later (marketed by Winchester as its [...]
Wayne van Zwoll: The Science of Recoil
Launching a bullet sends a surge of energy in the opposite direction. We feel it as recoil. Boost bullet speed or weight, and recoil increases. Adding weight to a rifle reduces felt recoil because the mass absorbs the thrust. But shooting position also affects what you feel. If your body is free to “give” under [...]
