PercyShelley
Member
- Joined
- Feb 15, 2007
- Messages
- 1,075
There was a post, the author and date of which I have long forgotten, to the effect that any firearms chambered in a smokeless rifle cartridge in working order cannot truly be considered obsolete. There is a lot of wisdom in this, I think; who here would feel unimpressed with the lethality of a beat-up argentine mauser?
Since the days of John Moses Browning, the majority of firearms developments have simply been shuffling around existing design concepts; tweaking and recombining them, looking for the best way to meet specific design criteria whilst incorporating the latest advances in metallurgy, propellant chemistry and manufacturing techniques; all of which have been incremental, not revolutionary in nature.
There is nothing new under the sun, or at least there hasn't been since WWII. It's a fun bit of historical digging around to see what objectionable features vilified in assault weapons legislation are well and truly new. Plastic construction? Used on German and Russian weapons at least back to 1938. Fore-grips? Take a look at a Thompson. Muzzle devices? Maxim machinegun of the 1880's. All self-loading systems existed in mass produced, refined forms by the 1920s, and red-dot sights are basically the same idea as WWII reflector gunsights.
Which has prompted more than a few curmudgeons, tired perhaps of shiny pamphlets and impossible hyperbole, to ask why anyone even bothers developing new firearms. To that, I reply that there are a few good sounding combinations that I don't think have been tried yet. Here are mine, but do add your own and comment:
1) Delayed blowback slug shotgun. Shotguns operate a lower pressures than rifles. Delayed blowback systems are much happier at lower pressures. It's a match made in heaven, but for the fact that shotgun loads vary massively in how stiff they are, and making a delayed blowback action that can handle all of them reliably seems unlikely. Slug loads would be much more uniform, however, and a single delay geometry could reasonably be expected to handle most of them. The primary advantage of such a gun would be low cost, and less maintenance compared to a gas-operated gun.
2) Return of direct gas impingement (sort of)! It seems silly to me to have a reciprocating piston next to the barrel in gas operated guns. It's another piece, and there is some body of evidence to suggest that such contrivances degrade accuracy. It is far better, from a parts count standpoint, to have no pieces in addition to the bolt carrier. It is also desirable, from a cleaning, and possibly a reliability standpoint not to have the gas from the gas system vomit itself all over the bolt carrier.
The easiest solution, as I see it, is to attach the piston to the bolt carrier, and to have the piston be extremely short; just a few mm or so longer than the cartridge overall length. This, rigidly affixed to the bolt carrier, shall reciprocate within the confines of a gas tube, which being just a metal tube, can be somewhat lighter and simpler than traditional piston systems.
And if you want a really slick gas tube that will reduce fouling, attach a Bang-style gas trap to the business end of the gun, use a fluted barrel, and drill the gas tube through the ridges, so it's the same piece of metal as the barrel, and not an easily damaged, thin, separate part that needs protection by handguards.
Since the days of John Moses Browning, the majority of firearms developments have simply been shuffling around existing design concepts; tweaking and recombining them, looking for the best way to meet specific design criteria whilst incorporating the latest advances in metallurgy, propellant chemistry and manufacturing techniques; all of which have been incremental, not revolutionary in nature.
There is nothing new under the sun, or at least there hasn't been since WWII. It's a fun bit of historical digging around to see what objectionable features vilified in assault weapons legislation are well and truly new. Plastic construction? Used on German and Russian weapons at least back to 1938. Fore-grips? Take a look at a Thompson. Muzzle devices? Maxim machinegun of the 1880's. All self-loading systems existed in mass produced, refined forms by the 1920s, and red-dot sights are basically the same idea as WWII reflector gunsights.
Which has prompted more than a few curmudgeons, tired perhaps of shiny pamphlets and impossible hyperbole, to ask why anyone even bothers developing new firearms. To that, I reply that there are a few good sounding combinations that I don't think have been tried yet. Here are mine, but do add your own and comment:
1) Delayed blowback slug shotgun. Shotguns operate a lower pressures than rifles. Delayed blowback systems are much happier at lower pressures. It's a match made in heaven, but for the fact that shotgun loads vary massively in how stiff they are, and making a delayed blowback action that can handle all of them reliably seems unlikely. Slug loads would be much more uniform, however, and a single delay geometry could reasonably be expected to handle most of them. The primary advantage of such a gun would be low cost, and less maintenance compared to a gas-operated gun.
2) Return of direct gas impingement (sort of)! It seems silly to me to have a reciprocating piston next to the barrel in gas operated guns. It's another piece, and there is some body of evidence to suggest that such contrivances degrade accuracy. It is far better, from a parts count standpoint, to have no pieces in addition to the bolt carrier. It is also desirable, from a cleaning, and possibly a reliability standpoint not to have the gas from the gas system vomit itself all over the bolt carrier.
The easiest solution, as I see it, is to attach the piston to the bolt carrier, and to have the piston be extremely short; just a few mm or so longer than the cartridge overall length. This, rigidly affixed to the bolt carrier, shall reciprocate within the confines of a gas tube, which being just a metal tube, can be somewhat lighter and simpler than traditional piston systems.
And if you want a really slick gas tube that will reduce fouling, attach a Bang-style gas trap to the business end of the gun, use a fluted barrel, and drill the gas tube through the ridges, so it's the same piece of metal as the barrel, and not an easily damaged, thin, separate part that needs protection by handguards.
