According to the company, these vents reduce friction by allowing gas to lubricate the bullet as it passes through the barrel and then act as a muzzle brake as the bullet exits the barrel. They apparently also reduce smoke, increase velocity (a rocket effect as they leave the barrel) and reduce muzzle flash. In other words, they are miracle bullets. [...]

As for the muzzle brake and “rocket” effect claim, the physics is beyond me. I cannot work out how gas venting out of the bullet for a brief moment in time would have any effect on recoil. Surely because the bullet is not fixed to the gun any muzzle brake effect would slow down the bullet not the recoil of the gun?

Do you think they would work?

Link | Company Website

Incorporate Them Into Bullets

A true hunter shouldn’t let death stop them from killing more animals. Fortunately, a new company named Holy Smoke is making efforts to ensure the last remnants of your physical remains can still be used to hunt down your favorite prey by incorporating your ashes into hollow-point bullets or shotgun shells. While it’s not among the suggested uses, you could also hire a hitman to use these bullets to take out your most-hated enemy, ensuring even death can’t stop you from exacting your revenge.

Image Via celest343 [Flickr]

Press Them Into Your Favorite Record

For those people who live and breathe music, there’s no better way to be remembered than to actually become part of their favorite album. And Vinyl will allow you to press your ashes into any record you want, including your own original album. They’ll even write a song for you for an additional fee. As a bonus, you can also have your ashes incorporated into a painting that will be used as the album cover. Now that’s a rocking way to go.

Tattoo Them Into Someone’s Skin

Granted, there have not been any long-term studies about the potential risks of tattoos incorporating ashes, but plenty of people have these memorials without any side effects and ashes are generally sterile, so it’s too much of a hazard as far as we know. Even so, if you’re going to ask a loved one to get a tattoo memorializing you, you might want to make sure they’re ok with the idea first, and, of course, make sure you can find a legitimate tattoo artist that is willing to work with ashes, since many are not.

Image Via Spy On Pea [Flickr]

Melt Them Into a Diamond

If you or your spouse loves bling, then why not make plans to turn yourself into a sparkly fashion accessory after your death? This is also a good way to ensure that your spouse won’t get remarried for a long time –after all, it’s a little weird to go on a date while wearing the remains of your loved one.

Create Art With Them

Be honest, it’s a little creepy when someone has a giant portrait of a long-deceased relative in their home, but if you really want to take the feeling of unease to another level, try incorporating the ashes of the person into their memorial portrait. Of course, if your family isn’t the type to line hallways with portraits of dead family members, you’re likely to end up decorating the attic.

While there are a number of companies that offer this service, such as Memories From Ashes who did the work above, they seem to go out of business on a regular basis, so you might want to talk to some local artists if you really want to get this done.

Melt and Cut Them Into Stained Glass Designs

If you like the idea of diamonds and artwork made from ashes, but wish there was an option that was slightly less creepy, then a stained glass memorial might be the way to go. This way you can be in the home of your loved one, shining light on them, but not staring down at them or tagging along wherever they go. You’ll be still pretty, but a lot more subtle.

Shoot Them Into Space

Is your favorite song “Rocket Man” by Elton John? Then you might just be the ideal customer for Celestis, a space burial company. For only $2,500, your remains can orbit around Earth. At $10,000, you can ensure they achieve lunar orbit, but if you want to go all out, be sure to save up for the deep space package that will run you $12,500. Wondering who else will share your resting place? Well, LSD advocate Timothy Leary and Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry have both has their ashes scattered in the night sky.

Burry Them In A Pringles Can

To be fair, this is a pretty strange idea for even the most hardcore junk food addict, but it was certainly an appropriate move for the inventor of the Pringles can. Fredric J Baur first created the prototype for the design in 1966 and in 2008, he was laid to rest inside an empty, original-flavor can, per his dying wish.

Image Via Roadsidepictures [Flickr]

Incorporate Them Into A Frisbee

Baur isn’t the only person to request that his final resting place incorporate his life’s work. While Edward Headrick wasn’t the inventor of the Frisbee, he was the person most responsible for the toy’s success. As a manager at Wham-O, Headrick made a number of improvements to the design and he also invented disc golf.

Before he died, Headrick requested that his kids have his ashes mixed in with a batch of Frisbees and that the proceeds from the special edition discs would be used to establish a disc golf museum. No word yet on the museum, but the Frisbees themselves became quite a popular collector’s item. These days, the two-disc collector’s set costs $200 on Amazon.

Use Them In Comic Book Ink

While plenty of comic book fans might love to have their ashes incorporated into the ink of their favorite titles, so far only one person (that we know of) has been lucky enough to have this wish made into a reality. Of course, it helped that Mark Gruenwald was an editor for Marvel Comics for a long time before he made the strange request. The reprinted version of his 1985 comic Squadron Supreme was printed in 1997 complete with ink featuring trace amounts of its creator.

If you could do anything with your ashes, what would you do? Would you pick any of the items on this list?

Once the caliber, gauge and other ammunition parameters have been selected, we will ask you (by way of your funeral service provider) to send approximately one pound of the decedant’s ash to us. Upon receiving the ashes our professional and reverant staff will place a measured portion of ash into each shotshell or cartridge.[...]

Our return shipment to the sender will be the finished ammunition, boxed in available labeled ammunition boxes. We also offer mantle-worthy wooden carriers with engraved name plates. Your return shipment will also include any unused ash in a separate, labeled container.

Link -via Sharp as a Marble | Photo (unrelated) via Flickr user kcdsTM used under Creative Commons license

The annual Jell-O Mold Competition was held in Brooklyn about a week ago, and the winning works are even more impressive than those from the 2010 competition. Take a look at amazing gelatinous versions of dentures, cups of espresso, a pancake breakfast, and more. Link -via New Jovian Thunderbolt | Photo: Francesca Signori

Etsy seller OldWorldCC made a complete chess set which uses .223 caliber cartridges as playing pieces:

The pieces are made using .223 caliber bullet shell casings, decorated with cuts, slashes, curls and bends. The light side pieces are set on red oak mounts, using steel cased shells and the dark side pieces are mounted on black walnut, using brass cased shells.

Link via Born Rich

There’s not much evidence to support the claim, but allegedly, this is a picture of two bullets that collided with each other, head-on, from opposite directions. One is French and the other is Russian, and the two met in 1854 during the Crimean War.

Link via The Firearm Blog | Photo: Odd Russia

Photographer Alexander Augusteijn captured several images of bullets hitting falling drops of water. Here’s how he does it:

These kind of images require a lot of experimentation, dedication, patience and willingness to endlessly clean spill of liquids and debris from objects shot to pieces. Several hundreds of trial shots may be needed to get timing correct. After that, the process is pretty well controlled, and often half of the shots will be usable, with 1 out of 10 really interesting.

You can view several more examples at the link.

Link via Make | Artist’s Website

This fantastic papercraft model of Hellboy’s revolver The Good Samaritan features a working hinge and loadable bullets. It probably takes dozens of hours of tedious cutting and gluing, so why don’t we just gawk appreciatively at the pictures?

Link (in Japanese) – via Geekologie