Today’s Q&A is sponsored by Kyrö – get 10% off all their spirits with code SAUNAWHISKY10 at:
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00:01:25 – The .30-06 experimental Thompson
Thompson 1923 auto-rifle video: https://youtu.be/EMO4o4yANpY
Thompson .30 Carbine prototype: https://youtu.be/lW-IjtiVthc
Previous owner talking about the .30-06 1943 experimental: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Dse6kd1kDc
00:07:57 – Why side-mounted magazines didn’t catch on
00:12:28 – Other Maxim gun designs?
Maxim-Silverman pistol: https://youtu.be/F1ElpucXu6A
00:14:36 – Double-clip experimental Garand
00:17:45 – US “last ditch” rifles today
00:20:50 – High Power with 1911 trigger?
00:22:42 – Using the same action in rifles and pistols
00:26:34 – Bottom-firing revolvers
00:30:39 – What anti-tank rifle would I choose?
00:33:25 – AI in firearms manufacture or design?
00:36:02 – Just on tweak away from success…
00:38:42 – Connections between MAS-40 and AG-42 Ljungman?
00:41:10 – Viable reproduction guns
00:45:24 – Longevity of the Maxim machine gun
00:50:21 – A better Italian interwar LMG option?
00:51:56 – FRTs and belt-fed ARs in competition
00:57:38 – Mag-fed vs belt-fed LMGs
00:59:45 – Best small arms of WW1
01:01:32 – Why no more delayed blowback rifles?
01:04:07 – Parts kit builds vs pre-import-ban semiautomatic rifles
01:06:42 – I get to choose new US small arms in 1939
01:11:10 – NATO assault rifle or SMG book?
NATO Battle Rifles book:
01:12:27 – Undervalued area of gun collecting
“(…)Other Maxim gun designs?
Maxim-Silverman pistol(…)”
He also entertained possibility of using action similar to that of machine gun inside self-loading rifle, which resulted in patent, see https://www.historicalfirearms.info/post/183898674679/hiram-maxims-rifle-patented-in-may-1885-sir
1. Those new double-stack 9 x 19mm 1911s basically are “High Powers with 1911 triggers”- and 1911 everything else. Once Para-Ordnance and Caspian began making double-stack .45 ACP 1911 frames with those extra-wide trigger stirrups, this was pretty much inevitable. If I could afford one, I’d buy it to rplaace my PJK-9HP.
2. Bottom-firing revolvers are handy in Magnum calibers for rapid fire in CQB. But then again porting the muzzle on a “conventional” DA revolver like the Taurus 627 gets about the same result, i.e. less muzzle flip. “You pays your money and you takes your choice.”
3. Anti-tank rifle? IMHO, they all suck. Give me an M20 3.5in any day.
4. Longevity of the Maxim? Like the Browning machine guns, M2 and M1919, it just f**king works and never f**king stops working. Machine-gunners like that for obvious reasons.
5. Mag-fed vs. belt-fed LMG? If it’s belt-fed and has a quick-change barrel it’s a GPMG. Put a proper tripod under it and a properly-trained crew behind it and it’s the apex killer of the battlefield. If it’s box-magazine fed with or without a QC barrel it’s a machine rifle, and trying to use it for any sustained-fire type mission is mainly an exercise in futility.
6. Best small arms of WW1?
Rifle- Any Mauser bolt-action or variant thereof.
Pistol- Colt 1911 .45 automatic, P.08 9mm automatic, S&W or Colt M1917 .45 revolver
Machine Gun- Maxim, no matter who made it, where, or in what caliber. Second choice; Hotchkiss, especially the “Portative”; definitely more reliable than the Lewis gun.
Shotgun; Winchester m1897 or M1912 Trench Gun. Although I’d rather have
Machine carbine; Bergmann “Muskete” or Winchester M1907/M1910.
Honorable mention; Stokes 3-inch mortar. As the Marines say, “Only bring artillery if you intend to kill everybody“.
7. New U.S. Small Arms 1939?
1. Accelerate development of the .30 Carbine, issue it as selective-fire from the start.
2. Develop a true GPMG in .30-06; the Johnson M1941 might be a good start unless you can steal the blueprints of the MG42.
3. Don’t bother with the M1/M2 versions of the Thompson- go direct to the M3A1 Grease Gun, and make damned sure the 9mm conversion units are readily available.
4. Do not build the M1919A6, period.
clear ether
eon
Ironically, the companies who took the cheap and easy approach (replace half the milled steel frame with plastic) all charge a relative fortune. The companies doing it the hard way (brand new doublestack frame from scratch) are all much more affordable. Most also use magazines originally / rationally designed around 9×19.
Side Mags: Utilization of occupied volume. A ~7.5″ bottom mag makes an AR ~1.5″ taller; it makes an LMR ~7″ wider. A rectangular box to hold a loaded AR would be about 15% taller than one for an unloaded AR. A rectangular box for an LMR would be wide enough for 4 unloaded ARs. Unlike a STEN, that width is right at the balance point (i.e. your abdomen).
“(…)Accelerate development of the .30 Carbine, issue it as selective-fire from the start.(…)Don’t bother with the M1/M2 versions of the Thompson- go direct to the M3A1 Grease Gun, and make damned sure the 9mm conversion units are readily available.(…)”
But if first will end in success, would there be need for later?
As my uncle the Sherman troop commander related, getting any personal weapon longer than a Grease Gun with the wire stock retracted in and out of any hatch on an M4 Sherman was a huge PITA. Even an M1A1 “paratrooper”-stocked Carbine was longer than the M3A1 with stock folded.
Also, the M3A1 with 9mm conversion unit was highly suitable for air delivery to Resistance groups in occupied France and etc., because they could use captured German 9 x 19mm ammunition.
The Grease Gun may have looked wonky, but it was rugged, reliable, and could fit in places other weapons wouldn’t. It stayed in service as the standard IW for U.S. Army tank crews, including M1 Abrams crews, up through Operation Desert Storm (1991) for those exact reasons.
The crews who later traded their Grease Guns in for M9 9mm pistols weren’t too impressed with the latter. Having used both, I can understand their opinions.
clear ether
eon
Observe that M1 Carbine has gas port relatively aft, thus making it possible to shorten it considerably. In 1970s SUPER ENFORCER
https://m1carbinesinc.com/carbine_ijenforcer.html
was offered, which is pistol made by cutting M1 Carbine. At 18 3/8 inches it is actually shorter than M3 with stock folded. It is missing stock to make it pistol for legal purposes, however adding one should be not problem for military user. Naturally muzzle velocity would be lower than for full-length M1 Carbine, though I was unable to find how much.
110-grain GI FMJ comes out of the Enforcer’s muzzle at 1650 F/S for 660 FPE. With hellacious blast and flash. That’s “warm” .357 Magnum 125-grain performance, in all respects.
(My agency used Enforcers back in the day, mostly confiscated in drug busts. We were never too impressed with them.)
The .30 USC cartridge requires at least a 16″ barrel for proper propellant burn. In pistol-length barrels, only about half the powder charge is consumed in any barrel length under 14″. The same phenomenon is seen in its parent cartridge, the .32 WSL as used in the Winchester M1907 self-loading carbine.
While you can handload the .30 Carbine for optimum performance in a shorter barrel (such as the Ruger Single-Six .30 USC revolver’s 7.5″), ballistically you end up with a .32-20 WCF. While this can give you near-357 Magnum performance, using an actual .357 Magnum (or a .327 Federal, for that matter) makes more sense.
The .30 USC is a rifle cartridge. It was designed as such for a specific function, namely outperforming pistol, SMG and shotgun rounds in engagements out to 150 meters.
Leave it in the full-length Carbine barrel and you’ll be a lot happier with the end results.
cheers
eon
“(…)The .30 USC cartridge requires at least a 16″ barrel for proper propellant burn. In pistol-length barrels, only about half the powder charge is consumed in any barrel length under 14″. The same phenomenon is seen in its parent cartridge, the .32 WSL as used in the Winchester M1907 self-loading carbine.(…)”
SUPER ENFORCER shows how big cut is possible. I do not see reason why you could not apply lesser cut. SUPER ENFORCER lengths are:
– barrel 10 1/4 inches that is 260 mm
– overall 18 3/8 inches that is 467 mm
M3 Grease Gun overall length with folding stock is 570 mm
Therefore SUPER ENFORCER is 103 mm shorter. If it would be cut to M3 Grease Gun length, that would result in 363 mm. That is more than 14 inches.
@ Daweo;
Yes, but the M3 in .45 ACP or 9 x 19mm doesn’t dazzle you with flash and deafen you with report.
The Enforcer had its origins in cutdown Carbines concocted by “irregulars” dating back to the 1940s. Based on actual experience with same in both semi-auto and full-automatic variants, I’ve yet to be convinced that it’s a good idea.
cheers
eon
Good point….
“(…)Bottom-firing revolvers(…)”
Note that using quirky advantage-giving layout fire-arm in competitive matches might result in organizers making such guns verboten, compare to MTs-3 https://guns.fandom.com/wiki/MTs-3_Rekord
Yeah, i shoot a lot of competitive revolver, ICORE and USPSA.
Chiappa Rhino is rarely used. Triggers are nasty compared to s tuned Smith, and tuning a Rhino is something even the gods have abandoned. And they’ve been around over a decade, plenty of time to figure it out if it was worth the trouble.
We all want one to play with, but for serious competition…most of us will stick with what we’ve got.
What about Austen?
Australian Sten schmeisser MP 40 hybrid
They were issued
Not as popular as Owen
There were a lot of experimental compact SMGs coming out of Commonwealth
And the Charlton 303 ?
Austen was overly complex at a time when simplicity was needed. The Owen (which began before the war as a semi-automatic-only sporting/utility carbine in .22 rimfire) was clearly the better choice.
As for the Charlton, it was a full-auto rendition of the 1918 experimental “Sword Guard” pattern semi-automatic SMLE conversion. Both were kludges, and the Charlton was a full-autofire kludge.
The Aussies were far better off with the Lithgow-made Bren MK I.
cheers
eon
Anti-tank rifle? Ammo no problem? a fully developed U.S. experimental .60 caliber with greater reach and power than any of the .50/12.7 mm guns in the world in the 20th Century. Also known as 15.2×114 mm-ballistics 1180 grain bullet at 3450 feet per second.
Developed for the USAAF as a potential fighter gun in 1944. The idea being you could put it in a space originally designed for the AN-M2 .50 Browning (RoF 800 R/M) and have a 15% heavier burst (in terms of projectile weight delivered) even with a slightly lower 720 R/M RoF.
What did it in was its recoil forces, which were nearly twice as heavy as the AN-M2. It literally could bend or break the main spar of a P-51D’s wing. Imagine three in each wing all going at once even in half-second bursts.
In the end, the .50 remained the standard fighter gun for USAAF until the mid-1950s, when the M39 and then M61 Vulcan 20mm weapons entered the inventory in the F-100, F-104, and etc.. And in those cases, the aircraft were literally designed around the guns, much as the later A-10 Warthog was designed around the GAU-8 Avenger 30mm rotary cannon.
cheers
eon
AI in gun design
probably great for automating stress heat and tolerance studies, constructing digital models and optimising materials choices and tool paths…
for things like summarising actual gun literature – it would be an absolutely terrible idea. So much of even therelatively expensive literature is a circle jerk of ever repeated misconceptions.
incidentally
the south African government has been caught using AI to write its AI policies
the AI hallucinated many of the references it cited
Watching two large language module Turing mods (which is all these “AIs” really are) playing Scrabble would probably be The World’s Most Deadly Joke.
“F-L-O-O-C-H-B-L-A-N-N-G. Triple Word Score.”
“No. W-A-A-R-R-N-J-G-L-I-B-B-L-E-V-L-E-E-N-N-C-H-H. Quadruple.”
“S-P-L-A-A-N-N-G-G You.”
And so on.
clear ether
eon
I found that if one argues with AI most versions back down and sound uncertain.
My take on the state of AI art is that the whole thing is about where personal computers were at circa 1985. You’ve got just enough there to say that there’s something worthwhile, but the interface and underlying tech simply wasn’t there, as of yet.
I think back to my days of screwing around with CP/M and MS-DOS, and then try to remember what a pain in the ass all of that was, compared to modern systems that are full-on graphical user interface and real power under the hood? It’s like you aren’t even talking about the same thing, at all.
AI is going to go places, but where those places are? No idea. There are shed-loads of things I think we should be able to do with modern systems that nobody’s even bothered with.
Like, I would love for there to have been an “AI backup” for all the crap I’ve read/experienced/seen/heard/done in my life, so that I could index the whole thing and be able to go back and find that one reference I need to win an argument or connect with something new I just found. You could do something close to that with your phone, but… Ain’t nobody working on anything like that, ‘cos we’d rather be looking at idiot girls Instagramming their food.
There’s tons of utility to utilize with modern tech, even before AI, that we simply aren’t doing.
Eventually, AI is going to be the equivalent of power tools for the mind. As of now, the tech isn’t there yet, and because of our deranged priorities and goals with it, it may never be.
I’m kinda disturbed by it all, TBH. I mean, it’s exactly like the pharmaceutical industry: There’s more profit in stupid crap like boner pills and baldness cures than there is in doing things like curing the common cold. The incentive systems are all off, all over the place. If you cured the cold, bam… You just killed a hugely profitable industry selling supposedly cold-curing nostrums over the counter.
Which is why the cold ain’t cured, folks. The stuff you see not being built in the computing world? All stuff that wouldn’t make money, so it’s not being done.
We very badly need to automate and produce things that could perform “knowledge connection” across the board. I’d be willing to bet you long, large money that nine-tenths of our problems are already actually solved, but the issue is we haven’t connected the dots as of yet.
At some point in the future, for example? You’re going to be able to feed an AI system all the data you’ve got on some insoluble criminal case, and the AI will be able to go through it all, taking in reports from multiple sources, digest it, and then pull all the connecting pieces together to find the criminal in question.
The other thing it’s going to be able to do, and the reason you likely won’t ever see anything like it, is go through financial records and find chicanery like the SPLC crap that was going on.
“(…)love for there to have been an “AI backup” for all the crap I’ve read/experienced/seen/heard/done in my life(…)”
In this case I must warn you that might result in ability to revive you, like this https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/stan-lee-ai-hologram-l-a-comic-con-1236375354/ which result in brain-exercises for students of law: Do you need permission for that? Can you just assume that (name) could be revive as did not giving any resistance for this action (due to being dead)? Can you revive just for purpose of asking permission and then would that be binding?
Kirk,
AI is going to be used by its wide array of users just like the internet – maybe 20% for learning and useful stuff, and 80%-90% for even more stupidity, vanity and trivial, asinine humor.
00:26:34 I have to disagree with Ian here. Muzzle flip is exactly the most annoying part of recoil, and the most punishing for the wrist. Bottom cylinder firing revolvers excel exactly in magnum calibers. They are not more widespread only because revolver enthusiasts are usually traditionalists that likes the shape of revolvers as they are. It’s the same reason you don’t see many “tacticool” revolvers.
00:50:21 The best candidate was the Scotti LMG, that was infact adopted, even if only in limited numbers as a vehicle and Motorcycle LMG. But no army revert a decision taken only few years before for only a marginal gain in effectiveness. It’s a given that, when you adopt something, something better will be available in few years.
At least some of the famous smiths that converted customer revolvers to wildcat magnum cartridges would only use DAs, or SAs with “bird’s head” (more vertical) grips for that reason. The rolling recoil of the traditional “plow handle” grip could endanger the shooter.
On “00:26:34 – Bottom-firing revolvers” – something to keep in mind with the Mateba Unica 6 is that it was available chambered in .357-Magnum, .44-Magnum and even .454-Casull (but the latter being scarce) – however the very action of it cycling as a semi-auto revolver, even if short on travel, is that allowed for some of that recoil to be absorbed even though its direction of the energy was straight back toward the grip/wrist.The entire upper of the gun including the barrel provided some resistance and cushion by moving backward in the same manner as a semi-auto pistol, minimizing that felt recoil. It even came with different springs to operate on whether you were using .38-Special vs. .357-Magnum, and .44-Special vs. .44-Magnum. While you would not get that with the Chiappa Rhino, it is certainly a noticeable advantage of the Mateba when comparing shooting the two.
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Could you put bumpfire not stock but grip on revolver ?
So that whole thing recoils into the grip, with stiff springs
Ruger’s “Decelerator” neoprene grips on the Super Redhawk and etc. work pretty much like that, except using carefully-formulated medium-durometer neoprene instead of internal springs.
Taurus’ “Ribber” grip is another example operating on a slightly different design architecture.
Neither one will “bump”, but both make firing maximum-effort ammunition considerably easier on the hand.
cheers
eon