With our return to our original home site, I think it may be time for me to revisit a previous project of mine; the vintage SH Black Thoughts articles.
For those unfamiliar, these were a periodic series dealing with what's known and unknown about the physics of rifle marksmanship, sticking to the more common subjects and steering clear of speculation, written back in the early 2000's when SH was a new thing.
The concept, Black Thoughts, has many associations in many contexts, but in our context relates to the Black finishes often and originally associated with tactical objects, and is only a vague and passing reference at best. I don't own the term, and will gleefully entertain and cede to any such claims by others.
In its original time, the series was both popular and informative, a matter among ourselves here in SH, but it could not stand on its own today. Parts of it were dead wrong, based on what has been resolved in the interim. You folks, my current readers, would cut the original series to ribbons today, such has become the heightened standard of knowledge here at The Hide. All this is rightly so.
Further, I must take a back seat to far more well versed authorities here, also rightly so. I need cite no more than a single name, Brian Litz, to bring home the accuracy of this suggestion; any effort on my part to reiterate his subject matter, and others', would be doomed to failure, and be also highly and unnecessarily redundant.
Finally, I am not a devotee of the highly arcane; matters of precision more appropriate to the ultimate accuracy discipline, Benchrest Shooting. It's just not my forte. It deals with technologies and philosophies which venture far outside my own preferred niche, that which I consider as 'practical accuracy'. In the realm of "walk before we run...",, my articles will deal with the barer necessities involved with getting decisive fire on the target, and eschew the niceties about matters of whether the deer will notice whether it was just killed by a meticulously crafted match load, or a simple but diligently assembled, relatively generic handload.
The thing I value is simplicity, and the manner I choose to describe it is short and to the point. This will be my standard; to briefly, clearly describe what is happening, why it is important, and how we can hedge our efforts in favor of its success.
Please bear with me on this new, old venture.
Greg
For those unfamiliar, these were a periodic series dealing with what's known and unknown about the physics of rifle marksmanship, sticking to the more common subjects and steering clear of speculation, written back in the early 2000's when SH was a new thing.
The concept, Black Thoughts, has many associations in many contexts, but in our context relates to the Black finishes often and originally associated with tactical objects, and is only a vague and passing reference at best. I don't own the term, and will gleefully entertain and cede to any such claims by others.
In its original time, the series was both popular and informative, a matter among ourselves here in SH, but it could not stand on its own today. Parts of it were dead wrong, based on what has been resolved in the interim. You folks, my current readers, would cut the original series to ribbons today, such has become the heightened standard of knowledge here at The Hide. All this is rightly so.
Further, I must take a back seat to far more well versed authorities here, also rightly so. I need cite no more than a single name, Brian Litz, to bring home the accuracy of this suggestion; any effort on my part to reiterate his subject matter, and others', would be doomed to failure, and be also highly and unnecessarily redundant.
Finally, I am not a devotee of the highly arcane; matters of precision more appropriate to the ultimate accuracy discipline, Benchrest Shooting. It's just not my forte. It deals with technologies and philosophies which venture far outside my own preferred niche, that which I consider as 'practical accuracy'. In the realm of "walk before we run...",, my articles will deal with the barer necessities involved with getting decisive fire on the target, and eschew the niceties about matters of whether the deer will notice whether it was just killed by a meticulously crafted match load, or a simple but diligently assembled, relatively generic handload.
The thing I value is simplicity, and the manner I choose to describe it is short and to the point. This will be my standard; to briefly, clearly describe what is happening, why it is important, and how we can hedge our efforts in favor of its success.
Please bear with me on this new, old venture.
Greg
Last edited:
