On Nov 1, 2008, at 2:05 PM, Julia Thompson wrote: >> Given that the first time I heard of Necco wafers was as >> competition . >> 22 rifle targets and only much later that they were in fact edible, >> I've always wondered if more of them have been shot or eaten .. :) >> >> On Nov 1, 2008, at 1:41 PM, Julia Thompson wrote: >> >>> The only invention in either of the neighborhoods I grew up in that >>> I was >>> aware of was the man down the street who had invented the machine >>> that >>> stamped "Necco" onto Necco wafers. > > You know, shooting them sounds like a better idea to me. :) I came > to > the conclusion as a pre-teen that the only decent ones were the > chocolate > ones, and I'd buy 1 or 2 rolls of those a year. Gave that up about 10 > years ago. > > (They have the advantage of being at least vaguely chocolate, but not > melting easily.) > > Julia
I sometimes wonder who first got the idea to use them as targets, although having gone through the typical .22 rifle shooting age myself, I'm guessing there were youthful male adventures involved in the early experiments. :D They do work rather well for "reactive" targets of a sort, being about as fragile as the clay pigeons used for trap shooting, and back in the days when people used to do exhibition shooting, they'd often use Necco wafers because the audience could see easily when they were hit. I know of one exhibition shooter who set up a stunt shot using Necco wafers and a heavy steel backplate, knowing that as long as he hit the backplate, the fragments would almost certainly shatter both wafers quite nicely. The gag was splitting the bullet on a knife blade, which impressed the audience quite nicely. (Although he later examined the setup and found that he had, in fact, split the bullet cleanly in half on the knife blade, so it wasn't really a gag after all, only amusingly ironic. :) _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
