Rating  - HYPE FREE
Excellent survey of modern big bore handguns. Covers availability, use, ammunition and reloading. Practical, realistic analysis of pros and cons and practicality. Tells it like it is. Engagingly hype free and credible. I bought the book and then I bought a `big bore".
Rating - A must have for any sixgunner!
This a a must have for anyone interested in large caliber revolvers. It covers all of the major calibers, holsters, custom work and any other area the you can think of. If you hop over to sixguns.com you can get an autographed copy! It is a great book with great pictures- five stars all the way!
Rating - A Worthy Addition to Sixgun Literature.
Taffin is recognized as the foremost student of the big bore revolver at the end of the 20th Century.
Big Bore Sixguns is a worthy successor to the works of Keith and others and will stand alongside the seminal Sixguns as an important reference. While Taffin is well grounded in the technical and historical facets of revolver delopment, his emphasis on practical application sets this work apart from the coffee-table tomes dedicated to the collector and historian.
The photography is of the f/44 tradition, emphasizing detail and real-world perspective. His use of deep field self portraiture has become something of a personal trademark. One suspects that the arthor adopted this technique to maximize depth of focus for un-manned timer shots from the tripod but the striking result is a sharply focused image of the revolver in somewhat startling close proximity to the camera.
Trust Taffin on the fine details as well as the big picture. He is one of a small handful of specialty journalists who concentrate on these large hunting and utility revolvers and are in constant contact with the key players in this realm of the sixgun culture.
Rating  - Good but flawed.
Every twenty years or so, a book turns up that captures the shooter's art at a critical point in its evolution and becomes a definitive text. Sixguns by Keith by Elmer Keith and John Taylor's African Rifles and Cartridges are books like that, and remain influential nearly fifty years after they were written. In Big Bore Sixguns, John Taffin tries for the same goal, and almost makes it.
Big Bore Sixguns is an entertaining review of the dozen or so handgun cartridges considered "big bores," and includes Taffin's observations on them. It starts with a history of the revolver and ends with a review of using them in the 1990's, and Taffin more than covers the waterfront. The problem is that he has the irritating habit of casting himself as a peer of pioneers like Keith and Taylor. He never tells us why we should agree, except to say that he has load data he won't publish, or is good buddies with X, who gave him the first of this model or Y who loaned him the last of that one. That's fine in magazines, since gunwriters have to keep score, but if it is going to be in a book, it should be more subtle.
He also has the annoying habit of having himself photographed with a large, loaded and cocked revolver pointed almost directly into the camera, which gives the appearance of something extremely dangerous.
The other photography in the book is good, and there are more than enough pictures of odd, rare and interesting revolvers, cartridges and impedimentia to hold nearly any shooter's interest. Of particular interest are the photographs of the working revolvers of the 19th century, which give an excellent idea of how they compare to modern firearms. (Most gun books show engraved and cased versions of these older guns, and it's usually hard to tell what they really looked like.)
Ultimately, I think Big Bore Sixguns will stand as a solid if somewhat flawed recap of where revolver shooting stood at the close of the twentieth century. Taffin's writing is informative and entertaining, but I got the feeling there was a lot more he could have told us if he had chosen to do so. Maybe we'll get that in the sequel.
For all of my carping, you should still cough up the money for this book. It's worth it.
Go to the Product Information page
Customer Reviews for Krause Publications,0873415027,9780873415026,0873415027,683.436 |
