I am excited to announce that I have just published the next book in my Historical Shooting series, entitled Historical Shooting with Civil War Cavalry Arms, Second Edition. As with the other books in the series, this is not about the history of the Civil War of Civil War firearms, (although I do cover the subject at a high level for context) nor a military history of the period, but is, rather, a book about shooting these weapons as authentically as possible.
The book is perfect-bound soft cover in an 8.5x11 inch format. It is 344 pages in length and has many full-color photographs along with dozens of charts and diagrams. It has been published through Lulu.com, an on-demand publisher, but will shortly also be available from many online retailers such as Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and others after it has had time to work through their procurement process, but that will be several weeks after the date of this announcement.
The book can be purchased immediately from Lulu.com (my preferred vendor since I make a bit more from them) by clicking on the following link:
As an independent author not affiliated with any of the major publishing houses, I would really appreciate it if anyone who reads and finds value in this book would please leave a review about it, that really helps with books like this.
The first edition of this book was written in 2021-2022 and was my first attempt at writing a book about the hobby of historical shooting. Since then, I have learned a great deal about how to write these sorts of books. In addition, since 2022 several companies have introduced more tools and equipment for making cartridges, including historical bullet molds and cartridge-forming kits, which make it easier to make other kinds of ammunition. I have also learned better and/or more historically accurate ways to make and package that ammunition. All of this has led me to become increasingly dissatisfied with Historical Shooting with Civil War Cavalry Arms, so I decided it was time to prepare a second edition of the book that would expand and improve the first edition.
In the first edition I showed how to make only one kind of revolver cartridge and one kind of carbine cartridge, arguing that the book was primarily about shooting, not making ammunition, and those cartridges were just meant as exemplars. In reality, however, as I learned to make many other kinds of ammunition I came to realize that there is no historical shooting without the correct ammunition and that more was needed in a book like this.
In this book I briefly discuss some of the more important or interesting revolvers and carbines of the War, then I go on to give detailed, step-by-step instructions for making four different kinds of combustible revolver cartridges and their associated packaging; seven different kinds of cartridges for the Sharps, Burnside, Smith, and Maynard carbines, along with their associated packaging; a discussion of the appropriate equipment for historical shooting; information about the manuals of arms and loading methods for all the weapons covered; disassembly, cleaning and maintenance, and reassembly instructions for each weapon; and detailed information about the theory and practice of shooting in period.
All of these changes have made for a book that is dramatically different from the first edition. It is more than twice as long (and much more than half of it is new), is much better in format, is laid out better, many mistakes have been corrected, and it is both broader in subject and more focused in detail. I believe it to be a much better book, and that it has a lot to offer even to people who already have the first edition. If you are reading this, I hope you will agree.
Here is a preview of some of the pages from the book to give a sense of what it’s like.
