One of the 'joys' of writing is winnowing down the rough drafts to remove all the extraneous details that either don't move the story along or, worse, slow down the flow. It shouldn't come as any surprise that I have literally hundreds of pages of material I removed from the first two books before either began posting. Most of the removed material are details about such things as designing vent trees to go along with the layout and installation of indoor plumbing, detailed descriptions of septic tanks to include how they work and sanitation cautions, various methods of smelting and purifying gold, how lime is made from limestone, etcetera. You get the idea.
The scene in Chapter 15 on the development of hand grenades was originally just over two pages. Of course that was much too long and of no real interest to most folks as it's really nothing more than foreshadowing of something that won't happen until much later in the series. So, I removed most of it leaving a few short paragraphs that were hard to follow as I tried to differentiate between gauge and shot. Then I got lazy!
I asked myself how many folks know or care about the exact definition of shotgun gauge versus shot size? "Self," I answered, "Not very many! We'll just simplify the whole thing and just use gauge."
And, that's what I did, making the few paragraphs neat, clean, and easily understandable without a lot of thought and rewrite.
Man, was I WRONG!
Turns out there are a lot more readers who care about such things than I ever envisioned. The response to the scene was almost instantaneous and negative, in a very nice way. Every email I received on this, and there were so many I'm still trying to respond to them all, was politely worded and strove to explain to the village idiot why using gauge was wrong and the difference between gauge and shot size.
All I can say is Mea Culpa!
I've rewritten the offending paragraphs and they are now posted along with some other corrections found by eagle eyed readers.
To all those who emailed me and/or provided their thoughts in the Comments, my sincere thanks!