Old Gun Mill

Old Gun Mill, also referred to as "Colt Gun Mill", is a notable historic mill in Paterson, New Jersey where the Colt revolver was first produced in the 1830s, and where John Ryle produced and manufactured silk for the first time in the United States. As of 2008, the mill is in ruins near the banks of the Passaic Falls in Paterson but efforts to save this historic structure are still being attempted.

References

Coordinates: 40°55′04″N 74°10′44″W / 40.917898°N 74.178821°W / 40.917898; -74.178821

Antique firearms

An antique firearm is a term to describe a firearm that was designed and manufactured prior to the beginning of the 20th century. Although the exact definition of what constitutes an "antique firearm" varies between countries, the advent of smokeless powder or the start of the Boer War are often used as cut-off dates. Antique firearms are usually collected because of their historical interest and/or their monetary value.

Categories

Antique firearms can be divided into two basic types: muzzleloading and cartridge firing.

Muzzleloading antique firearms are not generally owned with the intent of firing them (although original muzzleloaders can be safely fired, after having them thoroughly inspected), but instead are usually owned as display pieces or for their historic value.

Cartridge-firing antique firearms are more commonly encountered as shooting pieces, but most antiques made from the 1860s through the 1880s were made with relatively mild steel and were designed to use black powder. They were limited to low bullet velocities and had heavily arcing "rainbow" bullet trajectories. However, advances in steel metallurgy and the advent of mass-produced smokeless powder in the early 1890s gave cartridge rifles of this new era much higher velocities and much flatter trajectories than their predecessors. These advances, typified by cartridges such as 8mm Lebel ( 1886 ), 7×57mm Mauser, .303 British, and 7.62×54mmR made many smokeless powder rifles manufactured in the 1890s quite capable of accurate shooting at long distances.