07-10-2008, 03:42 PM
Hi Duncan. Make no mistake that I highly respect the work and craftsmenship of those two men. A triumverate of two? 
I do feel though that, to do this artillary stuff right, the shortcuts in materials and techniques have to be minimized or eliminated, or putting forward theories based on the results of questionable interpetations will be detrimental for perhaps generations. The use of cotter pins, of nylon rope, and so on has to leave big ???? in the final results of the work. And if you undertake even a very small machine and find out just what the huge amount of time and funds will go into one of those splendid toys, why take those shortcuts?
I used to be involved in black powder US Civil War competition shooting. But the "serious" competitors glass bedded their Enfields and Springfields, and worked on the triggers etc. so they could maximize their scores...and thus, they were not experiencing what a private soldier of 1863 would have used in the great battles.
Is Alan totally fluent in Greek and Latin? Are his translations to be trusted, and have they been checked by other language scholars? Perhaps it would not be a bad idea to have multiple translations of the original documents compared and disected. Does such an animal exist?
Like all of us, I am interested in what this new machine does! And all the other new machines that are going to come down the pike. And I am guessing that every single new toy (I do think of my own work as big, lethal toys ) will create brand new discussions and passions.
I do feel though that, to do this artillary stuff right, the shortcuts in materials and techniques have to be minimized or eliminated, or putting forward theories based on the results of questionable interpetations will be detrimental for perhaps generations. The use of cotter pins, of nylon rope, and so on has to leave big ???? in the final results of the work. And if you undertake even a very small machine and find out just what the huge amount of time and funds will go into one of those splendid toys, why take those shortcuts?
I used to be involved in black powder US Civil War competition shooting. But the "serious" competitors glass bedded their Enfields and Springfields, and worked on the triggers etc. so they could maximize their scores...and thus, they were not experiencing what a private soldier of 1863 would have used in the great battles.
Is Alan totally fluent in Greek and Latin? Are his translations to be trusted, and have they been checked by other language scholars? Perhaps it would not be a bad idea to have multiple translations of the original documents compared and disected. Does such an animal exist?
Like all of us, I am interested in what this new machine does! And all the other new machines that are going to come down the pike. And I am guessing that every single new toy (I do think of my own work as big, lethal toys
) will create brand new discussions and passions.
Dane Donato
Legio III Cyrenaica
Legio III Cyrenaica
