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01:13 – Rifles that arrived too early
04:14 – DETAC Arms’ new rimless 12ga shotgun
09:55 – WWCD (What Would Cooper Do)
13:34 – The P7Pro
15:14 – Mauser bolt actions with aperture sights?
16:16 – If NATO had adopted an intermediate cartridge, what would it have been?
19:35 – PM63, Stechkin, or vz61?
21:58 – How much does old metallurgy contribute to weak antique actions?
25:29 – Current US-made FAMAS
27:14 – Long & convoluted feed paths?
29:35 – Japan’s reduced-power 7.62×51 NATO loading
32:57 – Did German engineers help perfect the stamped AKM?
36:10 – 6.8 SPC vs 6.8×51 / .277 Fury
42:53 – AR charging handle options
43:55 – Why squared-off trigger guards on pistols?
46:00 – What collections are the most difficult to access?
48:32 – Market for collecting vintage suppressors?
51:50 – With the NFA transfer tax gone, will the whole law be scrapped?
54:08 – Are replicas worth collecting?
57:54 – Amorality of firearms
Rifles that arrived too early — how about the US Hall rifle? The idea was good, but paper cartridges, black powder fouling, poor metallurgy leading to breakage, and troops who just weren’t the cream of the crop and could not take advantage of the technology.
The Ferguson Rifle, and the various Austrian air rifles come to mind, as well.
One thing that Ian doesn’t get into, and which you allude to is the user. Lots of rifle designs basically fell off when handed over to technically unsophisticated types who were unable to handle the mechanical complexity they represented, and when you go a layer deeper into things, the organizations behind the soldiers weren’t able to handle the necessary maintenance and supply issues, either.
All too many people think of these things as singular issues: “If only we could go back and show the Union/Confederacy how to build a Sten gun, or an AK47…”, while completely ignoring the rather massive range of ancillary problems and issues you’d have to address in order to get things like the ammo made…
It’s one thing to posit handing off an improved sword design, or some sort of superior pole arm to an ancient army, but the reality is that you’re also going to have to somehow get the necessary background cultural stuff going at the same time, before it’ll be more than a flash in the pan.
Case in point: Compare the absolutely shambolic state of military discipline and drill there at the end of the late middle ages, compared to the Romans and what evolved a few generations later. A European musket-based army trying to tackle the equivalent Japanese force (geographically unlikely as that was…) of the same era would have likely had its head handed to it, simply because the Japanese were way ahead of them in terms of developed drill and maneuver technique.
So… Let’s say that the Ferguson was somehow mass-produced. You’d have to figure out how the hell to effectively use that weapon in combat, and the mental leaps necessary might take a good while to manifest. If ever… We’re still having problems with the US Army being unable to figure out what the hell the individual weapon and machine gun are supposed to be doing, and that’s some hundred years after the lessons were delivered home the hard way in WWI.
That’s why I don’t generally take Harry Turtledove’s “alternate histories” too seriously, especially not Guns of the South. Look how much trouble the Confederates had in actual history with the “Richmond Sharps”. Even an original machined-receiver AK would have been too much for their tech base, let alone 7.62 x 39mm smokeless ammunition.
A cleverer time meddler would have settled for putting them one or at most two rungs up over the Union. Like giving them the specs for converting the Pattern 1853 Enfield (that they already made perfectly adequate copies of) to the Snider breechloading conversion with iron head plus paper-body cartridges.
For a repeater, give them the 71/84 Mauser with 11.15 x 60R centerfire black-powder rounds. Or the Swiss Vetterli 1871 repeater in 10.4 x 38Rmm centerfire. Either one was a match for a Henry or Spencer.
Give the cavalry metallic-cartridge double-action Adams revolvers or Remington 1868 New Model Belt revolvers in .44 centerfire. John Singleton Mosby would have known exactly what to do with either one.
To get really nasty, give them the early Maxim HMG Ian mentioned in .577/450 Martini-Henry. That would have given several battles an entirely different flavor.
clear ether
eon
Here’s the rub, though, eon…
Say you did go back and “gave” the Confederacy (or, the Union…) the design package for the Snider conversion, and all the necessities for that. Probably doable, technically speaking.
Now what?
You put a hundred thousand of those rifles out there in the field, in the hands of the troops. What, pray tell, will they do with them?
The problems you’re going to have are going to stem mostly from the “software/firmware” issues inherent to the enterprise. None of the officers or non-commissioned officers are really going to know what the hell to do with the things, in terms of actually getting good tactical effects out of them. Odds are, they’re going to be treated exactly as the old rifled muzzle-loading weapons were, and you simply won’t see much results for your efforts.
There’s an entire mental/technical ecosystem that has to be in place for these things to actually work, and I can’t see being able to go out and imprint that into the armies in the field with any real faculty or ease. Some few will no doubt “get it” with the new rifle technology, but the vast majority? Dear God, most of the Union troops were still learning their drill out of Napoleonic War-era textbooks, as they were marching off to the battlefields. It wasn’t much better in the Confederacy.
The same factors as supposing a European army from before the era of drill having to take on Japanese forces who were already doing extensive drill in their tactical evolutions, say from around the era of Sekigahara.
If you wanted to really effect changes in the outcomes of the Civil War, you’d want to go back and do things to improve/simplify drill and professionalize the leadership cadres, especially in the North.
The same issue arises in Flint & Co.’s Grantville stories. OK, the French can reverse-engineer the 1863 Sharps cavalry carbine and can manufacture percussion caps and etc.
(Note to Grantvillers; stop whining “No source of mercury for fulminate!” Potassium Chlorate, for fuck’s sake.)
Then they issue them to cavalry commanded by Turenne.
What they have no fucking idea about is how much cavalry tactics and etc. were changed just in one decade from Sevastopol to Gettysburg by the breechloading cavalry carbine.
Sorry; the only reason Turenne & Co. would have had a hope in Hell of success in that raid on Magdeburg was that the minimal troops defending it were even more unfamiliar with the kind of tactics required than they were.
I’d estimate it would take two to five years to train either 1632 European cavalry or infantry from scratch to use their new toys correctly.
First, having to teach them to aim instead of just “point”.
Second, get down off the friggin’ horse.
Third, for guys with breechloaders, learn to fire while prone.
And last but not least, for cavalry, don’t count on that shiny saber to save your ass.
–Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen, H. Beam Piper 1964.
Piper had a far better grasp of the situation than any of the Baen’s Barflies.
I can’t tell you what I’d do. I’m a crime lab geek, not a Ranger or even Infantry. But at least I know vaguely how much I don’t fucking know.
In the case of the Confederates, they at least knew what a “repeating rifle” was.
That put them at least one or two “up” on Turenne.
cheers
eon
I borrowed one of the 1632 novels, back when they first came out. The “willing suspension of disbelief” was asking way more than I could give, knowing what I know of that era’s military history.
I mean, sure… You could probably graft on a bunch of improvements, but then getting them to really take?
I spent way too much time training the modern “lowest common denominator” sorts on things that I really shouldn’t have had to. Like, OK: This is how you put the M-60 machine gun together… There’s only one right way, and a half-a-dozen wrong ways to do it.
Do you have any idea how many people I personally beat about the head and upper body with dimensional lumber in garrison training, only to have them show up at a range I was running with mis-assembled weapons that had left my Arms Room properly assembled and functional? Do you?
And, these are supposedly “modern” Americans who’re presumably at least somewhat familiar with mechanisms and mechanics. Or, so one would think…
You’d probably have a minority of comparative geniuses that could get the most out of your technical and tactical improvements, but… Wow. The rest of the mob, behind them? I have severe doubts.
What is most maddening about a lot of it is that many of those obtuse idjit types demonstrate extreme technical wizardry in other aspects of their lives… One of my worst offenders with the M-60 was a doper, and I know for a fact that that guy could improvise a water-pipe bong out of stuff found in the trash in about five minutes, flat, any time he needed to. Mind-boggling. Same guys who couldn’t manage to put the M-60 together to save their lives…? Had cars with old-style carbs on the engines that they’d tuned to the nth degree, using improvised tools. But, somehow… Weapons? Fuhgeddaboudit, they were clueless.
Some of it may have been “silent mutiny” strategic incompetence, but there were a lot of motivating factors militating against that in many of the units I served in.
Kirk,
I just got the mental image of you returning to the armory after all the M60s were turned in after range qualification and finding one turned into a “ DIY tobacco health pipe”. “Hey look it’s been improved. It’s water cooled now.”
@Mikawa B,
You are not far off. I was once instructed to sign out a pair of M60s with full kit to a group of National Guard types who were going to be acting as OPFOR during an exercise supporting MLRS fielding at Fort Sill. One of the spare barrels came back to me with the barrel plugged with aluminum foil at the muzzle, and the gas system containing obvious hash/marijuana residue, which made it look like someone had turned it into an improvised smoking rig. Informed the commander, they had me take it to CID, who looked at it, sighed, and said “Ain’t worth the time…”
This was during the mid-1980s, when we were regularly getting 80% results for drug use, whenever they did mass urinalysis, a period I wasn’t entirely unhappy to see end shortly thereafter.
Kirk,
I’m making a joke and you come back with a story about someone smoked “tree” out of one of the spare barrelstoo funny. “ With the Stellite barrel even the ickiest of the sticky don’t stick” What kind of bore cleaner you use for resin? I really enjoy your stories about your time as an armorer even though it sounds like a quiet a bang your head against a wall experience.
“(…)Rifles that arrived too early(…)”
I would pick land variant of Burton 1917 https://guns.fandom.com/wiki/Burton_Model_1917 for that. This intermediate-cartridge firing full-auto weapon might gain more traction, if it would appear in 1942, rather than 1917.
“(…)If NATO had adopted an intermediate cartridge, what would it have been?(…)”
NATO actually did that in 1980. Result is known as 5.56 NATO.
“(…)convoluted feed paths?”
I pick Korobov TKB-022PM https://modernfirearms.net/en/assault-rifles/russia-assault-rifles/korobov-tkb-022-eng/ (see animation inside video) as contender for that challenge.
“Long(…)feed paths?”
I do not have possibility to measure that, but I want grant honorable mention to Szczeniak https://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Browning_Automatic_Rifle#Wz._37_Szczeniak
Karabin maszynowy obserwatora wz. 37 (“Observers machine gun M1937”) is a Polish aircraft mounted flexible machine gun, based on the Wz. 28 Browning. The main difference between the base Wz. 28 and the Wz. 37 is a new feeding mechanism that uses a 91-round pan magazine mounted on the standard receiver. The buttstock of the infantry machine gun was replaced with a spade grip…
Therefore, described weapon has mag-well at bottom surface AND magazine sticking upwards.
WHOOP! ANIAN RANT!!
I do not understand how questions made interact with legendary Strait of Anian https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/strait-of-anian Please be more lucid.
Who cares what Coper would do. And the so called ‘scout rifle’ is a solution looking for a problem.The concept is beyond dumb
@ Col. Beausabre: We have satisfied ourselves that Col. Cooper scattered numerous hints about the scout rifle’s envisioned mission throughout his writings. To wit, a post- nuclear world where the Gunsite faithful would man the old manse. As member of a survivalist militia one would have to be prepared to engage targets ranging from gila monsters and jack rabbits to pronghorn antelope and Manson family members. These drug- addled last, of course, armed and fumbling with DA autos. Against such opponents the scout rifle would be a nearly ideal weapon with which to fight one’s way back to his 1911, the true gunner’s grail. (Apologies to Jeff Cooper’s shade but as the old lion aged he suffered from hardening of the pet notions.)
IIRC, here are a few cartridges made for a black powder weapon with a reduced smokeless charge
“(…) Why squared-off trigger guards on pistols?(…)”
Interestingly TAURUS applied similar angular trigger guard to their new version of JUDGE https://www.taurususa.com/product/revolvers/home-defense-revolvers/new-taurus-judge-3-black/ which replaced ovoid trigger guard used in older models. They claim it makes it easier to use trigger (see promotional video).
Mostly, people don’t “use” squared trigger guards because in trying to get at least the first pad of their offhand index finger on the front, they jam that finger against their trigger finger. I don’t use them for that exact reason.
The squared trigger guard was an IPSC fad that persists today because some designers think it just “looks cool”. Mostly, it’s a problem in holstering.
clear ether
eon
Even at the height of the fad, I couldn’t come up with a good use for the hooked/squared off trigger guard.
It’s one of those weird style cues that’ll mark weapons from that era into this one, and who knows when common sense will finally say “Yeah, that’s stupid… Stop.”
What I have noticed with that technique is that you’ll often find that the users of it have a bit of a tendency to pull their shots off to the side in the direction of the off hand, and that you’ll have to train them out of it.
You can color me in as “Not a fan…” of the whole thing.
One of the hardest things in teaching cops proper DA revolver shooting was breaking them of pulling the muzzle sideways by not having the revolver centered in the thumb/forefinger “pocket” plus pulling the gun to the side by improper finger placement on the trigger.
The only thing worse was teaching them not to “push” the gun toward the target, which tends to push the muzzle up and throw the shot high. As in “hit somebody in a third-story window two blocks away” high.
The Weaver stance was supposed to cure both these problems. News flash; it doesn’t.
It wasn’t for nothing that old-time duelists and “pistoleers” advised novices to “aim for your opponent’s hip”.
(Except that they didn’t say “hip”…)
cheers
eon
‘Easier’ is a highly optimistic word to use about the trigger in question. ‘Less hard’ might be better. The only way to budge most Taurus Judge triggers is with a scissor-jack
People, including designers, often don’t grok the interplay of forces involved in the revolver trigger pull. Mostly, they forget that the trigger is moving both the hammer and the cylinder simultaneously.
On a big piece like the Judge, that’s a Hell of a mass of steel being rotated etc. by…the strength of the shooter’s index finger.
One thing I taught was that to be a really good shot with the double-action trigger, revolver or automatic persuasion, the absolute first thing you needed to do was get a hand grip exerciser and use it. Especially your trigger finger.
cheers
eon
In 1863, an American inventor named Regulus PIlon patented a self-cocking, self-ejecting rifle using a reloadable steel cartridge. The patent model still exists. Exactly what sort of loading system he had in mind is unknown, although the model’s layout suggests a belt feed.
It’s on page 217 of the Bonanza edition of Guns of the World, edited by Hans Tanner, 1972.
clear ether
eon
“(….)1863(…)American(…)patent(…)reloadable steel cartridge(…)”
Wait. This sounds like preloaded steel cartridge-chamber used in Gatling gun of 1862 http://www.victorianshipmodels.com/antitorpedoboatguns/Gatling/gatling1862.html however there it is cartridge-chamber as it does both hold propulsive charge and is able to withstand explosion of said charge without external support.
Pilon’s cartridge had a ring around its midpoint. Exactly why the photograph doesn’t make clear. The overall structure of the “rifle” (Pilon’s term, not mine) is what makes me suspect some sort of belt feed, which was already known at that point at least as a concept. (See “Bailey machine gun 1876”.)
cheers
eon
Stamped receiver on AKM?
The Russians didn’t need any German help with that. Look at the PPS-43 SMG. They’d learned all about stampings in the 1920s, mostly from the U.S. auto industry.
The AKM receiver was stamped by American methodology, not German.
clear ether
eon
I dunno…
Why the hell go to the trouble of taking the team from Grossfuss and all those other stamped-metal specialists to Ishevsk, and then just… Not use them for anything?
Does that make any sense? At all?
I’ve seen a weapon that had the look of an AK, but which had the stamped sheet metal receiver wrapped up around the trunnion block, containing it entirely. Not at all like the known early stamped AKs. Where the hell it came from, or what the actual provenance was, it was found in Afghanistan. Maybe a Khyber Pass production item; I don’t know. It was stamped as though it were Russian, however. If I had to describe it, it’d be as “An AK, but with German production characteristics…”, due to the same sort of embedded trunnion block as the StG44 designs.
I’ve heard arguments that the Soviets had the Germans they’d taken doing industrial engineering stuff for production, and that makes sense because that’s what Grossfuss specialized in. What doesn’t make sense is that you’d actually want to start upstream from that, in the design, in order to maximize the benefits of going to stamping parts vs. machined.
I’ve no doubt there’s documentation, somewhere, about just what the hell they had all those German specialists actually doing, but… Who the hell knows, without it?
My personal guess is that there’s at least some German input into the industrial production aspect of the AK. How much? No idea, and I mostly base that on “What the hell else would those Germans have been doing at the arsenal, if not…?”
An additional argument for that being the case would be the failure of the initial stamped versions, which could well have been caused by intentional industrial sabotage by those Germans. Were that the case, you’d hardly have anyone Soviet admitting they’d had anything, anything at all to do with the production setup.
Absent the actual data, it’s all speculation. Made almost inevitable by the Soviet mania for obfuscating security.
“(…)Why the hell go to the trouble of taking the team from Grossfuss and all those other stamped-metal specialists to Ishevsk, and then just… Not use them for anything?(…)”
According to https://en.topwar.ru/82386-nemeckie-specialisty-v-izhevske-1946-1952.html Grüner (former employee of mentioned entity) was working at metal bending machines, which was later used in Soviet Union as equipment for the production of motorcycles (namely Izh-350). Therefore statement of “Not use them for anything” is not true.
Daweo please, do not add another misspelling (usually it Grunow, who actually was a ballistician).
The name is Gruner, Werner Gruner.
After returning from the Soviet Union he chose to live in East Germany. There he was a professor for agricultural machine technology. His original doctoral dissertation had been about sawing rock with smooth metal strips.
Ok, after closer inspection of linked article it does first use form with error, then switches to correct form.
Kirk, what do you mean wrapped around trunnion; there is a sight on AK on the top.
As for the stamping stories, one must take a note that german stampings were from mild steel and with extensive ribs and progressive dies, on the other hand, AK receiver is simpler, thinner but also it is heat treated, which is I suppose the biggest hurdle, maybe they cracked a lot and/or they needed years to find or develop the right steel type for the receiver that is not too crispy or easily bent like a cooked spaghetti.
I always wondered could AK receiver be factory made from mild steel and what its endurandce would be.
I know some US diy builders heat treat only several fcg holes and not the whole thing, of course, they use it in semi.
All of the usual stamped AK receivers I’ve ever seen had the front trunnion basically acting as the front end; rivetted in place.
This one, whatever the hell it really was, had the look of a German StG44, in that the front trunnion was basically embedded into sheet metal that formed the receiver and then wrapped entirely around the top of the front trunnion, with a sight base fitting fastened on somehow. I’d guess it was spot-welded, somehow…?
I saw a package of pictures of this thing, did not get to physically handle it. The guy who had the pictures said it was a battlefield pickup from somewhere around Kandahar, and that he’d turned it in for evaluation and never heard back from anyone on it.
It was worn all to hell, as well. Apparently, still functioned. All we could conclude was “Super-rare early AK variant… Or, Darra Adan Khel one-off…”
How on earth a presumed prototype from early AK production would have wound up in Afghanistan? Ya got me, there. I mean, it looked like an AK, used AK magazines, was in 7.62X39, but when you looked at it close up, it was like “WTF?”
One thing to add though, we are yet to see the early AK receiver example that failed in testing, I’m sure there needs to be photos of that, since many old photos of russian obscure prototype stuff surfaced in last 10-15 years, as well as some variations and reports what worked and not, they were very meticulous about that. Only, it is possible they hid it like snakes legs for fear of AK historical reputation damage.
We could then analyze what were the failure points on ak47 receiver and compare it to AKM one.
The main problems with the early AK stamped receivers weren’t failures while in use. The real issue was the rejection rate during production, from what I understand, which was obscenely high for the receivers.
A lot of people don’t “get” that about some aspects of production; the weapon itself, that passes all the gauging and production-line tests may be fine, but the number of failed receiver stampings or other parts may drive the whole thing into technical bankruptcy due to that factor.
This rejection rate is often heard argument, though as far as I know, there are no documents to support it, maybe its just some kind of logical conclusion that got seeded on the internet and spread around – though soviets being versed with product. of ppsh and pps, why should AK suffer more stamping rejection then these 2 guns, its not so much different and extremely complicated stamping. I think/hope maybe one day we will found out some explanation what really happened…
My hypothesis, as stated above, is that something was off with heat treatment or steel used. Theoretically, today one could analyze steel from 1st model ak47 and akm; if its not the same, that means something
Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot.
Look at the Ruger No. 1 Single Shot. It’s basically a 19th Century Alex Henry falling block in modern steel. And it’s been chambered in such high-pressure numbers as .458 Winchester and .220 Swift, not to mention some fairly hair-raising “wildcats”.
The Snider-Enfield would probably work for high-pressure rounds if made in modern steels. It’s basically a steel “brick” inside a steel “box”. In modern 4140 chrome-moly steel, at 655 MPa annealed or over 1500 MPa after heat treating, it could probably handle any of the Weatherby or A-Square rounds without hiccuping.
And of course there’s the Remington Rolling Block, which can handle ridiculously-high pressures even in original 1880s form. In an overpressure event, the barrel invariably fails before the breech lets go.
On the other hand, the Springfield Trapdoor was iffy even with blackpowder service ammunition, less from metallurgy than inherent weaknesses in its locking principles. I never trusted it in .45-70, let alone in anything more emphatic. In blowups, it acts exactly opposite of the behavior of the Rolling Block; the breech always blows before the barrel fails. I do not consider it a “safe” breech system, with anything.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
clear ether
eon
A lot of the older designs, when they were executed properly, were actually intended to compensate for lousy metallurgy.
Which, when you think about it, tends to explain just how massively over-engineered the Spencer action is.
Compare the early “sporting” Spencer .44 of 1859-60 to the final “Boston Spencer” from Burnside Rifle Co. in 1864-65. There’s a lot more metal in that breech than you’d expect, even for a .56 caliber cartridge. My SWAG is that Spencer or somebody deliberately beefed everything up to make very sure there would be zero breech failures. Compared to the .56 Boston, the original .44 looks positively svelte.
Even more overengineered? The Gallagher. Whatever you might think of its cartridge, the rifle itself is built like a crowbar and the action is built like a frame jack. Again, going for zero failure when firing. No wonder rechambering it for. 50 Spencer postwar was considered no big deal. Ditto the Starr carbine.
The designers back then apparently understood pressure. Well, most of them, anyway.
I’m not so sure about that Allin guy at Springfield…
cheers
eon
Old gunmaking was absolutely the art of aligning the weaknesses in anisotropic materials, into the directions where they could do the least harm.
twist barrels are a really good example.
before fluid steels became available and more importantly affordable to use in more items than just watch springs…
gun makers were stuck with using wrought iron, or some sort of brass or bronze.
wrought iron is effectively a composite enclosing inclusions of brittle, glassy slag.
a twist barrel requires a strip to be formed, which elongated the slag inclusion into threads
winding the strip into spiral to form the tube, aligns those threads of slag around the barrel, into the orientation that is stressed the least
polishing, not only looks nice, it minimises the surface defects where cracks can begin from
an etched and browned finish, highlights the twisted structure and discloses any harmful oxide inclusions in the forge welding
it clearly shows that the barrel has been forged from the correct materials and in the correct way.
“(…)Ruger No. 1 Single Shot. It’s basically a 19th Century Alex Henry falling block in modern steel. And it’s been chambered in such high-pressure numbers as .458 Winchester and .220 Swift, not to mention some fairly hair-raising “wildcats”.(…)”
What could Lee-Metford accommodate in terms of pressure if it would be made from said modern steel?
Rear-locking action? Other than the 1970s Colt-Sauer bolt-action with its flap-locking system, there aren’t too many rear-locking bolt-actions around that post-date 1945.
I’d be dubious about the Lee-Metford, Lee-Speed, or etc. with anything higher-pressured than standard 7.62 x 51mm, no matter what it was made of.
cheers
eon
All the reasons for rear-locking went away with smokeless powder, which also introduced a bunch of stuff that made rear-locking a bad idea.
Another factor is that they finally figured out that a front-locking design meant that the receiver could be a lot lighter, a feature that also obviated the idea of tilt-locking the system. All of the earlier designs that did the “Don’t lock at chamber’s edge” thing were meant to overcome fouling from black powder, and the fact that they persisted for so long has a lot to do with sheer habit vs. actual mechanical necessity/logic.
With modern metallurgy and propellants, I doubt we’ll see a return to “anything other than front-locking” until things change. A lot.
I honestly can’t see a future need for rear-locking actions or tilt-locking. Maybe in specific environments, like moon dust? Dunno… I think sealing the action would work better.
I cringe at the thought of conventional actions in vacuum. Doubly so in the lunar environment.
L. Neil Smith got it right in The Venus Belt. Extreme low temps, pull the trigger, powdered steel. Not to mention the effects of breech pressure on a chamber already subjected to cryogenic temperatures.
Lubrication boils away in vacuum. Dissimilar alloys weld themselves together. Let’s not even talk about chemical propellants’ reactions to lack of atmosphere as a stabilizing environment.
No, the sidearm of space will likely be electrically-powered, one way or another. Either an electromagnetic accelerator (“gauss gun”) or else more simply and directly a high-energy laser. (Ruby or free-electron; there are good arguments on both sides.)
But for ground use on a “Class M” Planet, no doubt our future Space Soldiers will probably have at least a few 1911s in the arms locker.
cheers
eon
“(…)persisted for so long has a lot to do with sheer habit vs. actual mechanical necessity/logic.(…)”
Was designer of what is today known as Remington Model 788 https://www.chuckhawks.com/rem_788.html from 1960s giving priority to former rather than latter?
Was designer of what is today known as Steyr SSG 69 https://modernfirearms.net/en/sniper-rifles/standart-caliber-rifles/austria-standart-caliber-rifles/steyr-ssg-69-eng/ from 1960s giving priority to former rather than latter?
Nikko Model 7000 Golden Eagle, Schutltz & Larsen M68 DL, Steyr SSG 69….
What about something along the lines of an FGC-9 for space use? Mostly plastic, so no metals welding themselves in the absence of an atmosphere. Again, because it is mostlt plastic, it can be run with graphite lube only, so no boiling lube. I dont know how glass-filled nilon would react to very cold tempratures, but I suspect that the weapon could be fitted with a small chemical heat pack if it was truly an issue. That said, since dissepating heat in space is also a challenge, you would need to do whatever you needed to do in the first few magazines, before things got too hot. Unless you wanted to bring a spray can of coolant to spray into the action.
NASA found out in the Sixties that plastics don’t work well as moving parts in vacuum. They don’t work well as moving parts in things like car doors in atmosphere, either, as GM found out the hard and expensive way with the Chevrolet Lumina and etc. in the Nineties.
So, you’ll need metal alloys, ceramics, composites, or two or more of the above. The smart money is on ceramics and composites; greater temperature range tolerance, hardness and ductility can be adjusted as needed, moulded to initial shape or even final shape desired, machining only if you really want to, assembly with heat, adhesives, or whatever you prefer.
For electrically-operated systems, the wiring and etc. can even be incorporated with the structure moulded right around the bits, providing stability, protection, and insulation, both electrical and temperature.
The Space Sidearm might look like a child’s “gun-shaped” pencil box from the Sixties. Just a flattish, rectilinear thing with an angled grip. The grip would be where you would insert the power pack, just like the magazine in an automatic pistol. The “trigger” would likely just be a button (SPST momentary switch type).
A “gauss” weapon would likely have a magazine with the battery pack in the bottom half.
Any or all of same would have simple sights, non-adjustable. Since a laser pulse has no “drop” and a gauss projectile would be going fast enough not to “drop” much in a gravity field, and have no variance in microgravity (“free fall”) at all, adjustments would be unnecessary. Point and click.
A pulse laser would keep firing, pulse after pulse, as long as the battery lasted. A gauss weapon would fire until the magazine was empty. A nasty idea for the latter would be a thumb-button on one side; hold it down with your thumb while pressing the trigger, burst-fire or full-auto. No such option on the pulse laser; it would exhaust the power cell too fast on any sort of “continuous fire” setting.
So the Pistol of the Future won’t have all sorts of interesting-looking “greeblies” sticking out of it. It will be smooth, flat, nearly featureless on the outside, and be “styled” to slide easily into and out of a “holster” that will probably be just a pouch sewn on to a spacesuit or etc.
And for temperature control purposes, to paraphrase Henry Ford, you will be able to get it in any color you want- as long as it’s white.
clear ether
eon
The use-case for the Gyrojet might actually exist, in vacuum…
With a Gyroc, you would probably have a big enough projectile to put in electronics, so you could go the precision-guided route. You’d probably have to, since the original was noted for being unable to hit anything until it had fully “spun up” (maximum RPM) about ten meters from the muzzle.
Danger space without PG? I’d estimate the first two meters, then a gap of “wandering” from there to ten, then settling down to stability out to whatever distance it got to after fuel exhaustion.
Of course, in space, that could be anything up to a couple of AU’s.
cheers
eon
“(…)Gyrojet might actually exist, in vacuum(…)original was noted for being unable to hit anything until it had fully “spun up”(…)”
If we entertain vacuum, with no air resistance, then what would be source of destabilizing forces acting at said projectile?
@Daweo;
An elongated projectile with insufficient RPMs of spin-stabilization within ten meters of launch. At close range, where you normally would use a pistol, the MBA Gyrojet was about as accurate as a kid’s dart gun.
cheers
eon
Mention seen of the late L Neil Smith
I keep forgetting that he was a gunsmith as well as writer. hence characters in his stories with things like Gabbet Fairfax Mars pistol as carry guns.
I wonder if he was another clot shot victim?
I don’t think a reduction of 1 bar / 14.7 PSI is going to make any difference to the safety of firing a gun.
when you aren’t worried about air resistance drag on a projectile, and you are probably in a low gravity low acceleration environment as well
you probably don’t need a huge charge of propellant to get long range performance
you also don’t need a pointy projectile, and you need much less stabilisation.
Theres a big bunch of problems removed.
I can’t walk down the street in Chicago, gad up the car, or order in McDonald’s using English, but we’re planning how to conduct gun fights on the moon? That is optimism.
A lunar gun fight would best be conducted with something we know works in such conditions.
A rocket launcher.
As per Elmer Keith’s Third Law of Gunfights (“Never bring a pistol to a rifle fight”) the optimum solution for a lunar “dust-up” would most likely be an AT4 aka M136.
clear ether
eon
Is anybody aware of any test that have been performed regarding the use of convetional firearms in space-like, or at least very low pressure, very cold, conditions? Also, the rocket launcher observation is certainly a good one