Regular readers here already know about my thing for old gun (and pipe) ads.  I knew when I started getting into this that I would learn things from them just by reading the ads.  I've also been learning from some of the partial articles on the backs of the ads.  I got very lucky with one two-page ad for the Nylon 66.  On the backs of these two pages is a complete article titled ".22 Magnum Rimfire" by Pete Brown.  This is from a 1959 issue of Sports Afield.

This article is just flat-out fascinating.  Nowadays we all take the .22 Magnum for granted, and I daresay many of us also take our convertible-cylinder Ruger Single-Sixes for granted.  This article was written the year the .22 Magnum was introduced, and in fact, the box the writer received from Winchester for review was only a "prototype" and not exactly what they intended to end up with.

I might have violated some copyrights by doing this, but seeing as how it's out of a magazine that is 47 years old and might otherwise be pretty much lost to history, I've scanned it and patched it into a single *.jpg in a large enough format that it can be read easily.

Articles like this are, in my opinion, important bits of firearms history that should not be consigned to obscurity.  This article is a fascinating (I know, I said that already) glimpse from the perspective of 1959, and it seems that the prophetical opinion at the end has turned out to be true.

Also noteworthy are some things that would never be done, or at least never be written about, in these oh-so-politically-correct times, even in a gun mag.  Like testing penetration by seeing how many porcupine corpses the bullet would penetrate.

I mean it.  You should read this.

Download it here.

UPDATE:  A request was made for hi-res *.pdf files of this article.  I'm sorry, but such files are more than 2.5 megs and uploading two files like that with my connection is very difficult, to say the least.  However, I'm posting hi-res *.jpgs that are much smaller than the *.pdfs would be but should still be easier to read.

.22 Magnum Rimfire -- page 1 (700 kb)
.22 Magnum Rimfire -- page 2 (785 kb)

Info here.

the CZ 52 Tac Rail allows mounting of lights and lasers by means of a 13/4-inch 1913 Picatinny rail. The Tac Rail is CNC machined from solid aluminum and bead blasted. It’s sold in the white and can be finished in any conventional way. The pretapped rail is easily attached to the dustcover of the pistol using supplied screws; some simple drilling is required. The unit gives new life to the surplus pistol as a defensive firearm.

Looks kind of interesting, although I don't think I'd ever use mine as a carry gun.  I've always wished I had the opportunity to use it for whacking varmints, though.

Found on the back side of one of my gun ads, this is one that really brought back memories.  Although this was in a 1959 magazine, this is the same ad that they ran well into the 1970s.  Back in my fur-hunting days I ordered a lot of stuff from them.

I was never able to call animals, I guess I just didn't have the knack.  But my dad did, many times.

Note the instruction records available in 45 or 78 rpm.

Mr. Big has posted Everything You Need to Know about Al Qaeda over at Sam's place.

Great post, and something more people need to understand.

I deleted the post-that-shall-not-be-named.  It appears that using Eponym's firewall to block G00gl3 images doesn't work.  Since the blog came back this morning (around midnight, I guess) there's already 72 page views and 27 megs of bandwidth used.

I'm going to put it up at my old blog so it does still exist somewhere.  But not here anymore.  I just hope it gets re-indexed pretty soon so people will quit coming here for it.