Background: In case you're not a reenactor, a "tompion" is a wooden clothespin-looking thing that reenactors use to plug muskets so that water doesn't enter to rust and corrode the barrel. (Tired reenactor wits call 'em "tampions" - get it? Heh, heh.) In September, 1991 at the Antietam reenactment (held on the Monmouth, NJ Revy War battlefield), someone fired a tompion out of his musket. (I say "someone" because there afterwards ensued a vigorous debate over whether the guilty party was a Reb or a Yank.) At any rate, the tompion knocked a hole into the drum of the 5th New York's drummer boy and exited the other side, glancing off the kid's belt buckle. Fortunately, no damage to the kid.

Making rudimentary trajectory observations, it sure looked like a Reb fired off the offending round.

Anyway, sensing a changing reenacting environment, I filed the papers for incorporation, hired managers, engineers, clerics and marketeers, rented office space in the Camp Chase Gazette World Headquarters building, founded Reenacting Mayhem International, Inc. and developed the two products you may view below.

Unfortunately for me, after the tompion brouhaha the Rebs became more docile rather than more belligerent, the safety infractions ceased and I took a financial shellacking. It was a sad day when I had to file Chapter 11 bankruptcy - now I know how defense contractors feel! - Jonah

Reenacting Mayhem International Product Catalog
October 1991

Jonah Arms, Inc. Division

The M1991 Explosive Tompion (tm)

The MX1991-1A Strategic Deterrence Tompion (tm)

Reenacting Mayhem International

...a new vision of what living history can be!