Tip 1: Preferred Measurement.
Grains are used to measure the weight of bullets, gunpowder, and smokeless powder. Bullets are measured in increments of one grain, gunpowder in increments of 0.1 grains. Grains are also the measurement used for archery, fencing equipment, pre-formed gold foil, and some older drugs such as aspirin and nitroglycerin.

Tip 2: 15.432358353 Grains.
The above number equals one gram. The grain is an ancient unit of measurement that was originally based on the weight of a grain of wheat. A royal decree in 13th century England established what a ‘grain’ was, and how the individual grains should be selected from the wheat head, but the usage goes back much further in history. Grains of wheat or barley were used by Mediterranean traders to define units of mass, hence the term “grain.” Other seeds, especially those of the carob tree, were also used. According to a longstanding tradition, one carat (the weight of a carob seed) was equivalent to the weight of four grains of wheat, or three barleycorns.

Tip 3: Grain Isn’t Just for Cereal.
The grain is the smallest unit of weight in the avoirdupois, troy, and apothecaries systems, and it is identical in all three systems. It is an extremely small unit of measurement, with 437.5 grains in one ounce, or 7,000 grains in one pound.

Tip 4: Prove It.
A long time ago, when people were making and selling alcohol, there really wasn’t an easy way to tell exactly what was in that jug. Enter gunpowder. The buyer would mix some of the liquid with gunpowder and attempt to light the mixture. If it burned it was ‘proof’ of the alcohol content. This also may have lead to the nickname ‘firewater.’

Tip 5: Don’t Get Me Started.
We’ve dealt with caliber confusion here before, but here’s a new one I found, while looking up something else. I know that .30-caliber bullets are all .308-inch in diameter, but the .303 British rifle shoots a bullet that is .311-inch in diameter. So, is a .303 British not a 30-caliber, or is this just one of the myriad exceptions to the caliber rule? Some caliber measurements in barrels are taken land-to-land, while others are taken groove-to-groove. I’ve never seen one that is taken land-to-groove, but if I ever find one, I'm not going to be completely surprised.

Tip 6: Completely Useless.
For as long as I’ve been shooting, I’ve seen “Dram Equivalent” printed on boxes of shotgun shells, and I’ve finally found out what that means. I think. Blackpowder used to be measured in Drams, for shotgunning, which is a unit of volume. Smokeless powder is measured by weight. The “Dram Equivalent” is actually a result, not a measurement, that relates to the amount, in drams, of blackpowder it takes to propel a certain mass of shot at a certain velocity. So, a dram equivalent is proportional to both the velocity and mass of the shot column, and how much of a propellant I’ve never used would be necessary to equal the use of a particular weight of modern smokeless propellant. However, I have no idea of how much smokeless powder is used in a shotshell, because the use of smokeless powder was standardized decades before I was alive. So, it’s still a pretty useless term as far as I’m concerned.

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