barnbwt
member
- Joined
- Aug 14, 2011
- Messages
- 7,340
"Browning's designs might have been specific in their use, but in their use they were the best of all designs in which they competed."
Up-bup-bup-bup-bup-bup, bup. Some of Browning's designs were the best of all designs in which they competed. Important distinction, especially if we're talking autoloading rifles, specifically. The 81 and BAR are the two which Browning is most known for, but they are hardly the best at what they do, even amongst available designs of the era. Namely, both are quite clunky (in terms of recoil for the 81, size/weight for the BAR) in practice, rapidly replaced by competing, then newer, designs, and like all Browning masterpieces, were kind of a bear to take apart, since field serviceability was neither his forte nor his primary concern in design.
What Browning excelled at, was designs that actually worked. By which I mean an understanding of actions that would reliably cycle, would not bind up, which were typically more resilient in adverse conditions than the competition, and which had impressive service life for the important parts. This in an era of needlessly complex or poorly made 1st gen LMGs like the Furrer or Chauchat, or needlessly massive & inefficient Maxims & Schwarzloses. Guns that actually worked were far more valuable than those with the best design layout or smoothness of operation (hence his ongoing reliance on recoil operation for most things, which was far more reliable in that era than gas operation)
By the time Stoner was on the scene, operation and handling of the now-perfected gas gun design concepts (the gas-expansion action was novel, but the underlying physics was highly developed and perfected when he went to design it, unlike Browning who barely had the luxury of being able to determine when it was safe to open the breech in a firing cycle) was the key order of the day, namely getting them to be controllable in a rapidly fired or full-cyclic operation, with a secondary goal of making most use of a glorious new field of wonder-materials and machine methods. Talk about a decadent luxury of design consideration for designers in Browning's time; metallurgical quality had finally become consistent if not fully understood, fatigue fracture mechanics was still 20 years to be developed (along with quality welding), and mill tooling was still so hideously expensive that metal shapers were required to slowly scrape out all those forged-ingot receiver designs along with lathes --all manual, of course.
Browning was a master of the machinist capabilities of his day, so he could work around them to devise machines that worked (much as his progenitors had for steam engines). Stoner had a good feel for the cutting edge techniques of his day, though probably not to the same extent in a professional sense, and didn't really need to know quite so much about the physics side of things since design practices for gas actions had already been perfected.
I also need to mention to all the folks going on about how 'brilliant' the modularity of the AR is, that many guns just as modular have been around since the early '30's. The MG15 is probably the quintessential old-school modular gun; quick change barrel, tiny little tubular receiver, rotating bolt lockup into a barrel extension (threaded, not lugged), screw on stock, grip/fcg unit, swappable barrel jacket/shroud, removable bipod, and they even developed high, and very high capacity drum mags for it. IIRC, you could even set it up to feed from its mags at various clock-face positions by rotating the grip parts. Basically, it was an effective aircraft turret gun until WWII, at which point it was quickly modified into a ground-LMG role with water cooling (making it extremely well suited for volume fire from a single gunner)
Despite such highly-modular weapons, it was determined --then as now-- that while the feature was 'nice,' it was hardly the most important aspect of operation (not that we'd ever learn, of course)
TCB
Up-bup-bup-bup-bup-bup, bup. Some of Browning's designs were the best of all designs in which they competed. Important distinction, especially if we're talking autoloading rifles, specifically. The 81 and BAR are the two which Browning is most known for, but they are hardly the best at what they do, even amongst available designs of the era. Namely, both are quite clunky (in terms of recoil for the 81, size/weight for the BAR) in practice, rapidly replaced by competing, then newer, designs, and like all Browning masterpieces, were kind of a bear to take apart, since field serviceability was neither his forte nor his primary concern in design.
What Browning excelled at, was designs that actually worked. By which I mean an understanding of actions that would reliably cycle, would not bind up, which were typically more resilient in adverse conditions than the competition, and which had impressive service life for the important parts. This in an era of needlessly complex or poorly made 1st gen LMGs like the Furrer or Chauchat, or needlessly massive & inefficient Maxims & Schwarzloses. Guns that actually worked were far more valuable than those with the best design layout or smoothness of operation (hence his ongoing reliance on recoil operation for most things, which was far more reliable in that era than gas operation)
By the time Stoner was on the scene, operation and handling of the now-perfected gas gun design concepts (the gas-expansion action was novel, but the underlying physics was highly developed and perfected when he went to design it, unlike Browning who barely had the luxury of being able to determine when it was safe to open the breech in a firing cycle) was the key order of the day, namely getting them to be controllable in a rapidly fired or full-cyclic operation, with a secondary goal of making most use of a glorious new field of wonder-materials and machine methods. Talk about a decadent luxury of design consideration for designers in Browning's time; metallurgical quality had finally become consistent if not fully understood, fatigue fracture mechanics was still 20 years to be developed (along with quality welding), and mill tooling was still so hideously expensive that metal shapers were required to slowly scrape out all those forged-ingot receiver designs along with lathes --all manual, of course.
Browning was a master of the machinist capabilities of his day, so he could work around them to devise machines that worked (much as his progenitors had for steam engines). Stoner had a good feel for the cutting edge techniques of his day, though probably not to the same extent in a professional sense, and didn't really need to know quite so much about the physics side of things since design practices for gas actions had already been perfected.
I also need to mention to all the folks going on about how 'brilliant' the modularity of the AR is, that many guns just as modular have been around since the early '30's. The MG15 is probably the quintessential old-school modular gun; quick change barrel, tiny little tubular receiver, rotating bolt lockup into a barrel extension (threaded, not lugged), screw on stock, grip/fcg unit, swappable barrel jacket/shroud, removable bipod, and they even developed high, and very high capacity drum mags for it. IIRC, you could even set it up to feed from its mags at various clock-face positions by rotating the grip parts. Basically, it was an effective aircraft turret gun until WWII, at which point it was quickly modified into a ground-LMG role with water cooling (making it extremely well suited for volume fire from a single gunner)
Despite such highly-modular weapons, it was determined --then as now-- that while the feature was 'nice,' it was hardly the most important aspect of operation (not that we'd ever learn, of course)
TCB
