"Before the Advent of Cordite" deserves to be a short story title. I'll likely poach that, at some point.
And I'm curious: Have many people here have actually seen Cordite? Because when I was high school-aged, I pulled a bullet from a circa 1947 military .303 British round because I wanted to make something decorative from the empty casing, and it looked exactly like precisely-cut short fragments of spaghettini. My eyeballs bulged. I'd been expecting something dark and granular.
I remember setting a strand of it on fire the next day at school, for the benefit of a friend and classmate who was also into military history and firearms, and I remember it burning very slowly, with a bright blue flame, and a peculiar aroma. Our English teacher was not amused. I may have been asked to leave the classroom.
