From British ball to American 1911s

There has been no shortage of “250th Anniversary” special edition firearm models released so far this year. Savage has them. Auto-Ordnance. Heck, Ruger has a whole series of them in five flavors, while Henry has three. Spoiler alert: all are pretty ho-hum, being standard models with the addition of a little extra laser-etched scroll or Cerakote splash. Nothing really stands out. Well, except for what Cabot did, which is something altogether special. They took a 4-pound British cannonball recovered from Lake Champlain in the 1950s– almost surely from the 1776 Battle of Valcour on said lake– and transformed it into Damascus carbon steel billets. Then, from that salvaged vintage ore, they precision-crafted triggers for a small run of 50 custom “America 250” series 1911s. “Once an instrument of British military power during the struggle for independence, this relic has been reborn as a symbol of American freedom,” says Cabot of the guns. The cannonball’s iron was meticulously refined by…