Wax bullets will stop against any hard backstop, such as a piece of plywood or multiple layers of cardboard, but an even better backstop is an old bed sheet hung behind a paper target.

So, what are bullets made of. Here's your guide. ... Wax bullets are sometimes used for training and most pure-lead or lead-alloy projectiles have grooves with wax in them for lubrication.

Before there was paintball (which wasn't around until the 1980s), there was the much more painful game of wax bullet dueling! In the early 1900s, those who pined for the days of real duels decided ...

Duelists fire wax bullets at one another in New York City in 1909. | Library of Congress Real dueling had very little to do with recognition of one’s skills and a lot to do with meting out ...

DUEL WITH WAX BULLETS.; Carnegie Club Gives Amusing Exhibition of French Sport. Share full article. March 11, 1909. Credit... The New York Times Archives.

The bullets, however, were wax. Duelists were dressed like fencers in heavy canvas clothes with wire-and-glass face masks, their pistols augmented with metal hand guards.

Though shot with a wax plug bullet, what we’d now call a blank, the shot caused injury and Smith died at Georgetown Hospital three days later.

Q. I have an old box of Winchester-Western Super X .38 Colt hollow-point ammo. On the side of the box is “Lubaloy coated Bullet special dry wax lubricant.” ...

Wax bullet dueling exhibitions even made a splash at the 1908 Olympics in London (photo above). Reported Popular Science that year: Great interest was taken in the bloodless dueling tournament at ...

According to Mental Floss, dueling pistols became an Olympic event during the unofficial games in 1906.Athletes would shoot a pistol with wax bullets at dummies made of plaster that were dressed ...

The event started at the 1906 Intercalated Games, where shooters would fire bullets at plaster dummies from either 20 or 30 meters away. Things took a very strange turn when it was added to the ...

Sports like skateboarding, surfing or break dancing have been added to the Olympics in recent years, but there are lots of events that have been taken out -- like hot air ballooning and arts.