This book has some either inaccurate or obsolete statements, Benson recommends for instance to buy ball bearings and then anneal them to produce the sought after fragmentation load..at 20 cents apiece this is about 70 times the cost/shot,compared to just buying steel shots for handloading waterfowl hunters (size F)..and you dont have to anneal them either.



Furthermore the propellant used in this book is three sticks of 80% "hi drive" dynamite..there are so much better propellants out there (even for the improviser)especially since he only warms the sticks and then bends them a little to conform to the concave shape..much better to knead them to a dough in such case.



Some of the pictures are of non-explainatory quality eg. with just a cloud of smoke and then a brief text:

"-Upon initial firing, it is obvious that a shaped charge effect has been ahieved." No, from the picture it might just as well be someone who has been eating (a lot) of beans the previous day..



However The book has some useful information aswell so not all is lost, but I do feel that if you already have knowledge about mines and explosives this book doesnt offer anything new, and if you have no experience, this book is not for you still, because it does not tell you all you have to know to produce these devices ( and certainly not to the standard the book tells you)



qoute:

"-Its sobering to realize that the homebuilt devices described previously will meet or exceed commercial military specs."



This is absolutely ridiculous, since nor the explosive used, nor the shape of the mine body is to the same specs as most factory made devices..he has forgotten that there is not just a convex shape to widen the spread horizontally, there is often also a slight concave form in the other direction (still on the front side) to help lessen the spread in the vertical direction, without this, much of the fragmentation load vill spread into the dirt or up in the sky.This is also not up to specs of hit propability.



If he had a cronograph to measure the speed of the fragments it would have been a little more substance to his claims perhaps, but as is now, he just makes educated guesses..

(As he usually does when guesstimating VOD:s in his other books.)

the test shooting through a piece of paper says nothing of the actual effect.



Not one of his best books, and the two star rating is set on a day when the sun is shining, its on the borderline of a one-star.