The Practical Guide to Man-powered Bullets

Book excerpt: People have long been shooting small stones and carefully rounded bullets of clay, glass, steel, and lead from weapons without using gunpowder. And the bow and arrow has been man's choice all over the world and throughout history at times when modern firearms have been unavailable or unsuitable. In America, there is currently an explosion of interest in making primitive archery tackle--wooden bows, flint arrowheads, natural fiber strings. The author has made and shot flint-tipped arrows from many bows of his own making. He first noticed, twenty years ago, that no one has written a book on catapults, and started to keep records of his own experiments in that and other related fields, leading to this book, which explores many of the ways, old and new, in which people have shot bullets by force of their own muscles.