Manufacturing using late WWII tech

[Art Eatman]

My uncle bought a South Bend lathe from the military surplus sales at San Antonio, back around 1946-ish. It was already somewhere near "tired" when he got it.

He did a bunch of gunsmith work with it, building some half-MOA rifles. I was awed by his making four 6x48 screws to mount a scope.

It was close to "wore out" when I inherited it. Even at my level of ignorance, I could hold tolerances to just under a thousandth.

 

[MachIVshooter]

It's not so much an issue of the manufacturing technology, but materials. As others have mentioned, polymers would be a problem. Plastics of the day were just not up to the task of being weapon receivers. As well, there have been tremendous advancements in metallurgy. That doesn't apply so much to the rifles, but modern lightweight alloy handguns. Would not have been possible to build a 12 ounce .357 magnum 70 years ago. Well, not one that could fire 5 shots and be used again, anyway.


Remember, though, the AR emerged only slightly more than a decade after WWII ended. The only real advancements in firearm tech since WWII have been better materials and faster manufacturing processes. The basic designs had pretty well reached their pinnacle by that point. Remove the technology of the digital age, and I don't think the weapons we use today would have been that much more effective in the battlefields of 1940's Europe and Asia than were the M1 Garand and carbine, the Thompson, M3, etc.

 

[Brian Williams]

We can hardly build an Atomic bomb today, most if not all those involved in the 60s and 70s are either dead of retired, no one in the US has built an A-Bomb in the last 25 years. But we have machinists out the wazoo who could easily train many to build any of today's rifles with 40s tech.

 

[Al LaVodka]

+1

The current alloy may have been an unknown back then but the rifle could still be made with other known aluminium alloys. Heck that's how they made Garand receivers; only difference is they are steel. Matter of fact, the aluminium forgings should be easier to machine.

They knew how to chrome line steel parts. Bakelite would be used, like the orginals, in place of plastic. Mags would probably be stamped steel instead of aluminium. The guns would probably require a little more fitting than today but I can't see it being any different than a Garand.

ETA: The only real downside I can see is in ammunition. .308/7.62 NATO wasn't doable until some time after WWII due to powder technology of the time; .30-06 needed it's case capacity to hit it's preformance numbers then. Same with .223/5.56 NATO, they probably couldn't drive the bullets fast enough to be effective. Don't even think about 6.8 or other new rounds. 7.62x39 would probably be good to go as it was just being developed but not sure about 5.45x39. It might suffer from the same issues as 5.56/7.62.

I'm sure I'm speaking to people who have no idea what a shrink rule is...

For you, let me just say, I'm not saying it absolutely could not be done, but you don't understand that excellent aluminum alloys are very difficult to make, especially well, particularly then, and machining it is not as easy as you seem to want it to be either just to support what is your opinion and not really a defensable argument. Mass produced -- no. Sorry.

Some of the same reasons we haven't been making titanium guns since well after aluminum ones... You have to remember that Aluminum is a fairly "modern" material. The Washington monument was capped with 100 ounces of it, the largest casting to date and almost as expensive as gold, in 1884. And It wasn't until the turn of the last 19th C. that it was even affordable to refine it affordably and was becoming a commercial success.

Al

 

[nairb35]

You guys need to find a copy of the machinist handbook from the 1940's.Those guys knew metallurgy the books on it where written by that generation.The casting industry be it cast,steel or aluminum have boomed because of the work that,that generation (without the aid of computers) did. The only thing CNC machines have done is make
super mass production possible with repeatability.I know and so does any machinist from today that the m-16 or any "modern" firearm could have been produced for the war.The knowledge and skill was there.My 2 cents rant over.

 

[nairb35]

I'm sure I'm speaking to people who have no idea what a shrink rule is...

Would that be 1/4" for AL or 1/8" for grey or 1/16" for DI? Hey some of us do.

 

[CZguy]

I'm sure I'm speaking to people who have no idea what a shrink rule is...

Wasn't that covered in the episode of Seinfeld about "shrinkage".