Boberg XR9 (SHOT 2008)

[StrikeFire83]

ABBOBERG, I will congratulate you sir on your innovative spirit, you clearly have balls, and that is commendable.

For everyone beating the "solution without a problem" drum, let me say that the added power (ie velocity) combined with its size is the gun's selling point. If the gun proves reliable AND sturdy, then you really are getting something for nothing. For everyone who wants a larger sight picture, then you can purchase a 5 inch tactical weapon. Move on. Some of these complaints are ridiculous, akin to bitching that "a Toyota Prius cannot seat 8 people" or a "Chevy Suburban doesn't get 50 mpg".

That being said, ABBOBERG, I think you have three issues to address.

1) Can you make the pistol reliable AND strong? (I'm talking Glock, steal Kahr, HK, Sig reliable and able to last 10,000-15,000 rounds)

2) Can you make the pistol reasonably affordable? (A $1200 pocket pistol is going to have an extremely small market. Ask Rohrbaugh, their 1k pocket pistol will forever be the niche product. Can you hit that magic 700-800 dollar price point)

3) If the the design proves viable, will you be able to produce it in large enough numbers so that interested parties will actually be able to buy one?

I wish you the best of luck and please continue to keep THR informed of your progress. I consider myself an optimistic skeptic, and I think you'll have a lot of takers if you can pull this off as outlined.

 

[Gtscotty]

I for one sort of think this is a unique opportunity for the designer. It seems to me he has, through this forum, a direct link to a decent cross section of his potential market. All the criticism... well the constructive criticism anyway, can be used as a sort of pre-consumer feedback, to mold his design before any brand name or reputation is on the line. As for things not being designed to fail, several professors have lectured us on how the best machines were designed to fail all at the same time (static failure wise anyway), something about the leading edge of an airplane wing not doing you much good without the rest of the wing. I'm glad this thread popped up here, after seeing this little pistol on coverage of the shot show, I was pretty curious as to the details. I would like to humbly back up strikefire83 in his suggestion of a 700-800 dollar range if feasible. My bet is you could sell enough pistols at your target price, but by god, "enough" is just not the American way. With a market so flooded with look-a-likes (and perform-a-likes), if you could construct a direct competitor at a similar price point, well I don't think you would have to settle for "enough". Good luck with your design, I think it will be something to keep an eye on.

p.s.~ It sounds like what you really need is a mechanical engineering Intern for this summer to help with all that work.....

 

[ABBOBERG]

I enrolled in this forum several years ago with intention of understanding what other gun nuts like me liked, and what we felt was lacking in the market today. I have found THR indispensible for my market research as I have been developing this weapon. The thousands of varied posts that I have read has helped shape this gun to what it is today. Now that I have gone public, I have really been appreciating the feedback I have received (both good and bad) - it has sharpened my understanding of who my customer is and what he expects from my gun. I have already planned some changes based on the input I have received.

As I have been working on my production plan, I am finding, that as a small entity, the most difficult hurdle is to keeping the manufacturing cost low while producing a gun that is both aesthetically pleasing and reliable. I will be working very hard over the next several weeks to develop a business model that is sustainable while being able to offer this gun to as many customers as possible. Initial pricing may be too high for many, but it may be required in order to successfully launch this start-up.

p.s.~ It sounds like what you really need is a mechanical engineering Intern for this summer to help with all that work.....

Are you looking for a job in MN?

 

[Bezoar]

Without looking at every drawing and note on the handgun, we can only give so many ideas. Just from what can be seen on the internals at the website, your team has done an excellent job. Thats why major companies havent come up with this idea, to much time and cost in design compared to shrinking down an existing Browning style mechanism.

pulling slide backwards extracts spent cartridge while allowing the tong to grab a cartridge and forward movement of the slide strips cartridge from tong and into chamber.
I may be wrong but its basically a pump shotgun as others have stated.

Technically the slide stop wouldonly serve as a warning for the user that the magazine was unloaded and for properly clearing it before handing it over to another person to ensure proper safety procedures.

ideas in mind run from complicated to rather easy. Cheapest to do a 1911 slde stop.
If you wanted to keep the streamlined nature as much as possible, you could do a combination between a pump shotgun action bar release mechanism and the 10-22 "hold bolt open" latch.

 

[Monkeybear]

I like it. It seems that whenever someone dose something new everyone cries "soultion in search of a problem!". Remember guys, innovation is good.

I want a single stack 9mm pocket gun, thats my market.

It would be pretty neat if you can get this to work and sell enough that I can afford one.

 

[Gtscotty]

Are you looking for a job in MN?

Sadly, I'm probably realistically looking for an internship in GA, minimizing moving time, ect. Otherwise I would jump at working on a project such as that, it sounds far and away more interesting than working on hvac and whatnot. Out of curiosity, does your company have any videos of this pistol being fired that we could see?

 

[jlbraun]

ABBOBERG, remember this, and remember it well.

There are over 55,000 members on this board. Regarding any new design from any manufacturer, 95% will wonder what's so new or innovative about it, 75% will say it won't work, 50% say they would buy one and 15% actually do, 25% will say they absolutely suck (whether or not they actually know what the thread's about), and 10% will give the praise it truly deserves.

You forgot people in my section, the 50% that say "We don't have enough information about it to make a determination."

Kudos to ABBOBERG as you have actually put your money and reputation on this. I wish you the best of luck. Understand that people here are indeed enthused about this, and want you to be successful, so we are giving feedback.

Mine is "My primary qualification in any firearm is dead-nuts reliable. I think that you have the potential for a very reliable system, but you need to test it to make sure it is, then emphasize that in your marketing."

 

[Michael Zeleny]

I am finding, that as a small entity, the most difficult hurdle is to keeping the manufacturing cost low while producing a gun that is both aesthetically pleasing and reliable.

You can't bootstrap a gun company by competing on price. Price-conscious defensive gun market is owned by S&W J-frames. A niche manufacturer is much better off focusing on quality. As witness Freedom Arms and a bevy of benchmade M1911 makers, there is a lot of demand for a $2,000 handgun. So far, no one has made an upmarket compact gun. Consider being the first.

 

[Mike OTDP]

He's got a point. Consider the ASP.

 

[Michael Zeleny]

Consider the ASP.

The real kicker is that tilting barrel, locked breech actions are ill-suited to scaling down. A locked breech action with a fixed barrel axis affords a natural advantage for concealment. If it can be made as reliable as a full-sized M1911, it would take considerable talent and effort to miss a sales target of 2,000 units a year at $2,000 a pop. Over a million dollars in profit is enough to develop the next product. And so on.

 

[Jim Watson]

"The real kicker is that tilting barrel, locked breech actions are ill-suited to scaling down. A locked breech action with a fixed barrel axis affords a natural advantage for concealment."

Years ago there was an interesting gunzine article interviewing Philip Lichtman, whose passion was small guns. He talked about how he had to rethink conventional designs to get guns as small as he wanted per caliber to have reasonable reliability and durability. It was not just a scale down, that yields flimsy products.

 

[-v-]

or a million in profit per year is enough to bump the price down so that the average Joe could afford one!

ABBOBERG, kudos, I think the design is ingenious. One of my questions would be would you be looking to offering a interchangeable backstrap similar to the recent polymer pistols?

I also will say that the 3-3.3" model is by far the most shocking and exciting idea I've seen. A firearm with a 3" barrel that's barley longer then the trigger guard is nothing to scoff at! I mean damn, makes my kel-tec PF9 look huge by comparison!

To some of the prior complaints of a high bore-axis, I think the main reason that it seems like that is because the gun is so short. Its a visual trick of your mind, with no real height difference between the two. Kudos again!

Just a slight mechanical question, but is a two-sided tong absolutely necessary or does a single sided tong with a flat plate on the side work as well (Basically the leaf-spring ejection mechanism of a regular pistol working backwards)?

Also if it is no trade secret, how exactly does the barrel-lockup work in your firearm, I am looking at the video and the pictures, and for the life of me, I can't seem to grasp it. (Sorry, I'm a biologist by trade, mechanical engineering is not my forte)

I will say that the approach of attacking the luxury-goods market of firearms does make sens, as you are more likely to turn a better profit there, as people are more likely to agree to pay a higher price for a product then they would for something that is seen as "plain-jane" or standard-good.

 

[Michael Zeleny]

"The real kicker is that tilting barrel, locked breech actions are ill-suited to scaling down. A locked breech action with a fixed barrel axis affords a natural advantage for concealment."

Years ago there was an interesting gunzine article interviewing Philip Lichtman, whose passion was small guns. He talked about how he had to rethink conventional designs to get guns as small as he wanted per caliber to have reasonable reliability and durability. It was not just a scale down, that yields flimsy products.

Considering that Lichtman's solution to this problem was Semmerling LM4, I'd say he didn't get us any closer to the perfect locked breech hideout autopistol.

 

[Jim Watson]

I agree that it is a shame he got distracted by the .45 and had to make it manually operated to get it as small as he wanted. I'd rather he had finished the LM3, a small 9mm P long before the Kahrs and Rohrbaughs.

 

[ABBOBERG]

Out of curiosity, does your company have any videos of this pistol being fired that we could see?

I currently have 3 outdoor videos shot just before winter rolled in. I have not posted them on the site because they are lengthy and grainy (just the opposite of what you want). I know I sent at least one to Max Popenkar - I don't know if he has chopped any down and posted at his site yet.

I will be at the range, shooting in the snow, next weekend and hope my camera works in the cold.

 

[ABBOBERG]

I agree that it is a shame he got distracted by the .45 and had to make it manually operated to get it as small as he wanted. I'd rather he had finished the LM3, a small 9mm P long before the Kahrs and Rohrbaughs.

My opinion on this is that the Semmerling LM3 is not "finishable" in order to make an autopistol out of it. I have studied several patents on "blow-forward" pistols during and after the turn of the 20th century. Each patent was an improvement of the last, each attempting to better retain the cartridges as the barrel supposedly moved forward. While I have never fired one of these old guns, I have heard that even if they had resolved the cartridge retention issue, they would have never solved the "move barrel forward" issue. Having run a few experiments on igniting cartridges in barrels floating in the air, I have concluded that the only force moving the barrel forward is the firing pin strike, which is very weak and not reliably able to get the barrel to move the distance it needs to go. This concept is basically a dead-end, unless someone is willing to use battery power or some other energy source to move the barrel forward.

 

[ABBOBERG]

Just a slight mechanical question, but is a two-sided tong absolutely necessary or does a single sided tong with a flat plate on the side work as well (Basically the leaf-spring ejection mechanism of a regular pistol working backwards)?

In earlier shop-made magazines, once in a while, only one tong would grip the cartridge. The one-sided force would cause the cartridge to only feed part way since the one tong had let go. Two tongs work together as a pair, gripping harder the harder they pull.

Browning used a one-sided tong (or "Claw") in his 1919 machine gun, but the cartridge is pushed down in a T-slot. There is no space in pocket pistols for a Browning claw configuration.

Also if it is no trade secret, how exactly does the barrel-lockup work in your firearm, I am looking at the video and the pictures, and for the life of me, I can't seem to grasp it.

I apologize for the vagueness in the lockup area. The lockup is very similar to what is done on the Sig/Mauser pistol (from 2001). It is also very similar to the Beretta Cougar and the PX4 series. Basically, the barrel travels 1/8" back in a straight line, at the end of this travel, the bullet has already left the barrel and a barrel lug encounters a helical section in the unlock block, causing the barrel to axially rotate to dis-engage the locking lugs on the top and side.

 

[ABBOBERG]

Live Fire Videos

Live fire videos are now available at the site: http://www.bobergengineering.com

 

[wmeSha]

Slide stop

To chime in on your poll, I vote for "gun shoots to click." Having the slide lock back with a round in the gun is a complete change of user interface. It would be akin to changing the color of a stop light. Someone will get hurt.

Imagine a high-stress self-defense situation. Two things can go wrong here. You need that last round, and the slide locks back. Or you don't need that last round, and you're shaken up after things are over; then drop that slide and have a live round in your 'empty' gun.

I know that 'guns are always loaded' but I'm pretty sure that if you lock back with a round in the gun, you are going to find yourself sued to oblivion down the road by a smart attorney.

 

[Jim Watson]

LM3 is not "finishable" in order to make an autopistol out of it. I have studied several patents on "blow-forward"

As best I recall the little bit published, the LM 3 was not a blow forward action, but was recoil operated.

 

[Josh Aston]

Suggestion for the slide stop. Rather than have it lock the slide back when the magazine is empty, remove the magazine from the equation entirely. Have the slide lock any time it starts to move forward without a cartridge on the breechface.

 

[mgregg85]

looks like a high dollar item

 

[HammerBite]

Suggestion for the slide stop. Rather than have it lock the slide back when the magazine is empty, remove the magazine from the equation entirely. Have the slide lock any time it starts to move forward without a cartridge on the breechface.

I think something like that could work. When there is no cartridge in the tongs the lifter could rise higher than usual and initiate slide lock.

 

[DMK]

glitch - deleted

 

[DMK]

I like the design. I like the 4" barrel and the controlled "pump shotgun" feed. I could see buying a small $1000 CCW, but only if it was 100% reliable.

I for one do think velocity is an issue with small CCWs. I am not a fan of 3" barrels at all.

One thing that would be really cool (down the road of course) would be a 4.5" or 5" barreled version for IWB carry (sort of like the Kahr K9 vs the MK9).

I also agree with the cautions on the bolt hold open feature. Don't let a good design turn into a Corvair. The slide locking back with a round ready to be chambered would be a dangerous design IMO. Lots of successful guns don't have a BHO feature.

Best of luck with your venture! I hope you do well.