![]() ![]() If you prefer such nicety then your rifle's grooves are helicoid not spiral. Note again: that some make a distinction between spirals (that is, coiling around a fixed point - like a watch-spring) and helixes (that is, advancing around an axis - like a corkscrew). ![]() 'Rifle' derives from the French verb 'rifler' - to scratch or scrape. What makes rifles different from earlier guns are the spiral grooves inside the barrel, which cause the bullet to rotate and fly more truly. Note: that 'lock, stock and barrel' refers to muskets, not rifles. It may have been that the term migrated from cannons or other sorts of gun which were more barrel-shaped. After all, in the 15th century people would have been very familiar with barrels as the squat coopered tubs used for storage - hardly similar to the parallel-sided cylindrical tubes that were used in muskets. ![]() This is the least obvious of these three terms to have been chosen to name a musket part. The barrel, that is, a cylindrical object, is an even older word and was well-established by the 15th century. It was used as early as 1495 in association with Tudor guns, in a bill for 'gonne stokkes'. 'Stock' is the old term for wooden butt or stump and is a generic term for a solid base. The stock, which is the wooden butt-end of the gun.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |