Comments by "" (@neutronalchemist3241) on "Forgotten Weapons" channel.

  1. The Isard spring has 28 twists, the 1911 32, the Astra 27. The thickness of the wire is about the same. In all likelyhood they had about the same stiffness when new. The stiffness of the mainspring has practically no importance in keeping the action of a blowback handgun closed for enough time to safely eject the case. It's the mass of the slide that does all the work. The only real function of a stiffer mainspring is to mitigate the felt recoil and the force with which the slide slams into the receiver at the end of it's travel, so a stiffer spring prolongs the life of the frame/slide. However, the force that has to be absorbed is the same for blowback and short recoil pistols. Infact, IE, the Hi-Point mainspring has the same stiffnes of the Glock. More than pointing to the dimension of the spring, Ian should have measured the stiffness of the spring. A smaller spring can have the same stiffness of a bigger one, it wears out quickier, and so has to be replaced more often, but the durability of the spring was probably not the main concern of the designers of this handgun.
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  2. When your soldiers throw it away to grab something that works, it's garbage.
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  3. The project is neat for being something made for fun, but, since he was at it, it's weird that he simply didn't rotate the M14 gas system 180° so to have the gas piston at hour 12. That way he could have mantained the entire AR15 lower as it was.
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  4. It's more like an affair between a Tokarev and an Astra 600.
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  5. That of the Hotchkiss was longer.
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  6. This MG has very few parts actually, even by modern standards. They are big. Like any industrial tool design of the time.
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  7.  @alessandrorona6205  Ian had problems activating the safety that I've never seen anyone else to have, for how much fast he could cycle the action. Simply testing one sample IS NOT A STATISTIC.
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  8.  @flip849  Because Spain had a state owned arsenal. The previous CETME rifle had not manufacturing problems, so there weren't apparent reasons to not have the AMELI manufactured in the same arsenal. Fact is that you can’t really stop and resume, at years distance, making firearms, and expect acceptable quality standards, or to iron-out all the industrialization problems. But it's not easy to recognize there IS this problem. As said, look at the SA80. Equally made at a state-owned arsenal, that had similar problems. Is Britain a Mediterranean country?
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  9. The Western Cartridge Company 6.5mm Oswald had are probably the best 6.5X52 Carcano ammos ever made. They have the correct dimensions and the correct construction (Carcano projectiles are not cylindrical, but slowly tapering toward the front and are opened at the bottom, that way the projectile can seat nicely in the deep rifling of the barrel without displacing too much material), but used post-WWII manufacturing and propellants, so they were more consistent than the Italian military ones
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  10. After WWI the old 6.5mm cartridge had always been on the verge of being replaced. First with the 7.35×32mm of the Terni 1921 (a true intermediate cartridge) and then the 7.35X51mm, so there was no point in doing a modification that would have forced to modify all the sights of the existing rifles.
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  11. The BAR was not a good LMG due to the pencil barrel without quick exchange and bottom placed magazine. Not the number of rounds.
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  12.  @derekakaderek  Professionals, in any field, tend to use the tools that, as Ernest Langdon said about his Savage .22LR rifle, "you can spend a ridicolous amount more, and not get any more gun". Amateurs are most likely to spend insane amounts of money on fancy stuff. As a matter of fact, the P018 was the most common pistol among security guards in Italy in the '80s. It went out of fashion only with the diffusion of plastic guns, due to obvious weight considerations.
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  13.  @davidgoodnow269  It's a shame a proper gun manufacturer didn't put his hands on the AMELI design, ironing out the industrialization problems. U.S. Ordnance did that for the quite disastrous M60, and the M60e6 ended up seemingly being a good MG. In an alternate world IE, instead of acquiring the licence to produce the Minimi, Beretta could have acquired that for the AMELI.
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  14.  @flip849  Not necessarily. Think of the British SA80 (in that case the rifle was also poorly designed). There are many bits, a lot of know-how, in manufacturing firearms, that you know only if you manufacture firearms. Problems (of thicknesses, materials, welding...) that are absolutely obvious, without any calculation needed, for who is in the business, and that pass completely over the head of those that haven't that experience.
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  15.  @44R0Ndin  Yes and no. Factories and workshops of the time were not clean places. WWI HMGs, like the Vickers, the MG08 and so on, were built with the same concept, and had been among the most reliable self loading firearms ever. Because, like the industrial tooling of their time they were massively overbuilt. It was like they couldn't be bothered by the simple energy of a cartridge firing. And, in their frame, there was a lot of void space, so the dirt had a lot of places to go before locking the mechanism. The Madsen LMG was kind of a smaller version of that. As that, it was a little more sensible to elements and dirt, but no more (and maybe less) than any LMG of the time (Hotchkiss Portative, Lewis Gun... not to talk about the Chauchat).
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  16. "unstoppable" is more appropriate. The italians produced 14.564 MGs and 836 millions of rounds for them, so more than 57.000 rounds for weapon, or almost 29.000 rounds for barrel. Obviously they had not all been fired during the war, but that gives you the figures.
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  17. Stoner had little to do with the AR15, that was made by Sullivan and Fremont (mostly scaling down the AR10). He designed the AR10, using the multi-lug bolt design of Johnson. Interestingly, while Stoner used a derivate of Johnson's bolt (that was also used in the AR18 and in all the derivates), Kalashnikov used a derivate of Garand's one. So, practically all the gas-actuated modern small arms use a system derived, or from Johnson (even if his weapons were short-recoil) or from Garand.
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  18. An Italian-made American gun designed by a Canadian-born issued in Denmark.
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  19.  @Gasmask11000  Not "more" (It would be impossible), simply modern 9mm bullets have "comparable" expansion and penetration, still slightly less than .40 S&W but exceeding FBI standards anyway, thus retaining the economical advantages of 9mm (ammos cost less, and pistols last more) and their operative advantages (more rounds in the magazine, faster double-tapping, and agents tend to train more with ammos that are cheaper and less punishing).
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  20. For the precision. Is very easy to have access/remove the parts that requires more servicing (gas ports and bolt assembly) or that have to be replaced more often (statistically, the recoil spring and the firing pin. You can replace them in seconds). To completely disassemble the rifle is more complicated, but it had not to be done that often. In almost all the bolt action and semiauto rifles made until then (and several made afther then, think of the Gewehr 41 and 43 for example) the receiver and the trigger group were not made to be removed from the stock that often, infact they were secured with bolts and screws. What can annoy of this design, is that the entire gas piston is not easily accessible, but in reality, all the "magic" happens under the muzzle cover, that contains the exhaust ports too, is exposed once the muzzle cover is off and can be fully cleaned. The rest of the piston is only a piece of steel to which very little could happen.
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  21. Actually the Perino worked really well by any account. The problem was that it was complex to make, Especially the machining of the bolt.
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  22. pretty disappointing that, after all the energy spent in designing, the Police did chose a copy of the Astra A-75 weighting 1 kg.
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  23. I always said that the .30 Remington would have been the ideal choice. Same energy than the 7.35 Carcano, but in a smaller package than both the 7.35 Carcano and .276 Pedersen (base diameter 10.7 mm vs. 11.4mm, OAL 64.1mm vs. 72.5mm), so shorter action, less weight for the rifle, more rounds in a M1 clip and more rounds carried by the grunts.
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  24. Even better, but not in competition because none used it, despite having been widely available for more than 30 years, the .30 Remington. Rimless, same energy than the 7.35 Carcano in a smaller package than both the Carcano and .276 Pedersen, (base diameter 10.7 mm vs. 11.4mm, OAL 64.1mm vs. 72.5mm), so shorter action, less weight for the rifle, more rounds in a M1 clip and more rounds carried by the grunts.
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  25.  @JinKee  The Western Cartridge Company ammos used by Oswald are probably the best cartridges for Carcano rifle ever made. They had both the correct diameter and the correct structure (the long round nose Carcano ammos had not a constant diameter, but were slightly tapering towards the tip, and were naked at the base, so for the projectile was easier to sit in the deep rifling of the Carcano), but with modern propellants and manufacturing techniques.
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  26. It's the SIG 540 that's similar to the Beretta AR70. Beretta and SIG parted ways because Beretta wanted a AK style action (long stroke gas action, three lugs rotating bolt) and SIG a roller delayed action. In the end SIG didn't manage to make a roller delayed action reliable enough to fire the 5.56 NATO cartridge and ended up making a roller locked gas action for the SG530. After the market failure of the SG530 SIG adopted a bolt nearly identical to that of the AR70 for the SG540.
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  27. +Troy Ortega UK replaced the FAL with the SA80 starting from 1985. Germany replaced the G3 with the G36 only in 1997.
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  28. According to Roy f. Dunlap (US Sgt. armorer in WWII, "ordnance went up front") none ever tought of using other SMGs if they could put their hands on a MAB38.
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  29. With this specific example. The Sites Spectre had not been a great commercial success, but had been selected by several security forces. It would had never been had it had such a problem.
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  30.  @razgriz1258  It has both. In the late '40s, having to develop their first locked-breech-pistol (the will be Beretta M1951), the guys at Beretta chosen the Walther locking block operation instead the Browning tilting barrel because that was more compatible with Beretta's iconic open slide.
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  31. They have yet to upload the clip on the Villar-Perosa despite Othais literally snatched the gun from Ian's hands more than a year ago, so I'm not holding my breath.
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  32.  @XShifty0311X  The ammos were in perfect spec, and infact they worked fine with every other weapon, bolt action or automatic, chambered for them. Simply the manufacturer of the rifle, knowing the real dimensions of the cartridges, said the rifle was fine that way. "Every man wielded an Mk III Ross rifle, with some unease. Overseas, the gun had jammed in close combat during the Second Battle of Ypres. It was claimed the rifle was too finely made to tolerate mud and rough handling. There is truth to this, but the fatal flaw was a specific and avoidable mistake. Before the war, the British re-designed the .303 cartridge, rechambering their Lee-Enfields to a slightly larger size than the Ross. Canadian experts said the chamber of the Ross was already large enough to take the new British ammunition in a pinch, and the tighter fit could only increase accuracy anyway. The chambers were not reamed out. It was all about the money. Besides, the experts said, the men would have Canadian ammunition of the right size, so it hardly mattered." https://www.smallarmsreview.com/display.article.cfm?idarticles=4114
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  33.  @henochparks  Ronald Simmons, Chief of the Infantry Weapons Evaluation Branch of the Ballistic Research laboratory of the Department of the Army, testified that Oswald's rifle was as accurate as a brand new M14. Go make your researches first to type.
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  34. 1) It depends on who the guys at the bar are. IE, the Ferrari Dino project started as a bar conversation between Enzo Ferrari, Dino Ferrari and Vittorio Jano on what would have been the best angle between the banks of a V6 engine.
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  35. The Isard spring has 28 twists, the 1911 32, the Astra 27. The thickness of the wire is about the same. In all likelyhood they had about the same stiffness when new. The stiffness of the mainspring has practically no importance in keeping the action of a blowback handgun closed for enough time to safely eject the case. It's the mass of the slide that does all the work. The only real function of a stiffer mainspring is to mitigate the felt recoil and the force with which the slide slams into the receiver at the end of it's travel, so a stiffer spring prolongs the life of the frame/slide. However, the force that has to be absorbed is the same for blowback and short recoil pistols. Infact, IE, the Hi-Point mainspring has the same stiffnes of the Glock. More than pointing to the dimension of the spring, Ian should have measured the stiffness of the spring. A smaller spring can have the same stiffness of a bigger one, it wears out quickier, and so has to be replaced more often, but the durability of the spring was probably not the main concern of the designers of this handgun.
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  36. The folding bayonet for the rifle removed the necessity for a bayonet frog and scabbard.
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  37.  @lince18  Santa Barbara had been acquired by General Dynamics by then. It was no more a state owned arsenal.
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  38. The Isard spring has 28 twists, the 1911 32, the Astra 27. The thickness of the wire is about the same. In all likelyhood they had about the same stiffness when new. The stiffness of the mainspring has practically no importance in keeping the action of a blowback handgun closed for enough time to safely eject the case. It's the mass of the slide that does all the work. The only real function of a stiffer mainspring is to mitigate the felt recoil and the force with which the slide slams into the receiver at the end of it's travel, so a stiffer spring prolongs the life of the frame/slide. However, the force that has to be absorbed is the same for blowback and short recoil pistols. Infact, IE, the Hi-Point mainspring has the same stiffnes of the Glock. More than pointing to the dimension of the spring, Ian should have measured the stiffness of the spring. A smaller spring can have the same stiffness of a bigger one, it wears out quickier, and so has to be replaced more often, but the durability of the spring was probably not the main concern of the designers of this handgun.
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  39. I want to see this FIRE! But thanks for uploading anyway. It's really interesting!
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  40. The difference between 7.65mm and 8mm (0.35mm) is largely semantic. It depends if you measure the bore between the lands or the grooves of the barrel, and both methods are used. IE the .32 ACP (also known as 7.65 mm Browning) has a real diameter of the bullet of 7.94mm.
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  41. Bicycle troops were common in the years prior of WWI. They obviously didn't replace cavalry, but mounted infantry. A man on a bicycle can travel longer distances in shorter time than one on a horse actually.
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  42. I usually hate pronunciation-nazis. But this time it changes the meaning of the word in quite a ridicolous way.
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  43. I said "regularly available", that means "abiding to the same rules". As strange as it may seem to a North American, there are markets where, having the choice between an AR15 and another design AT THE SAME CONDITIONS, the AR15 is not chosen nine times out of ten. AR15s are mainly a north american thing.
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  44.  @treyriver5676  Infact even then the 6.5 Carcano cartridges for precision shooting were spitzers and didn't give any problem. The only "problem" is that spitzers and round nose, for the same lenght, have different weight (spitzers are lighter) so different point of impact, so the sights of the old rifles should have been modified. After WWI the old 6.5mm cartridge had always been on the verge of being replaced. First with the 7.35×32mm of the Terni 1921 (a true intermediate cartridge) and then the 7.35X51mm, so there was no point in doing a modification that would have forced to modify all the sights of the existing rifles.
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  45.  @theguy9208  The Marines chose to replace it, none forced them, and they did it because a belt-fed MG manned by a single man proved to be impractical in a real-life scenario.
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  46. The "not fixed barrel" is a non-issue. The barrel rattles only as long as the round is not fired. When a round is fired, the expansion of the cartridge tightens the action that, at that point, works like a free floating barrel. The remark on the gun not having the sight on the barrel simply doesn't have any sense. Every MG with a quick exchange barrel had the same "problem" regardless were the sights are placed. It's not like, if one sight out of two is on the barrel, then the line of fire will follow it SINCE THE OTHER IS ON THE RECEIVER ANYWAY. Infact both the MG34 and the MG42-Rheinmetall MG3 had the front sights on the heat guard. It's rather surprising that none noticed this being a problem in 75 years of use of the weapon.
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  47.  @luisnunes3863  Drachinifel is simply wrong. Or better, Drachinifel does not read Italian, so he has to rely on what he finds in English. Second hand sources, wartime propaganda, etc... A common problem between self-made historians. The only source for the problem with Italian naval shells was Adm. Iachino, that had to justify his fiasco at Gaudo / Cape Matapan, and had been debunked by other sources, IE Adm. Emilio Brenta. Reality is that in the conditions of the clash at Gaudo, no WWII battleship would have hit anything. As a matter of fact, the Italian 152mm and 203mm are the only Cruiser naval guns that obtained some +20km hits during WWII (even twice in the same battle, so it was not a fluke). Tests conducted by the allies after the war simply concluded Italian shells were more reliable than German ones. Italian 381 had not been tested by the Allies for accuracy.
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  48. The Finns actually worsened the sights, asking for them to be zeroed at 100m instead of 200m before the rifles being delivered. That way they were practicaly useless past 150m, well into combat distance.
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  49.  @henochparks  And so, if he wasn't the first? "HAHAHA the experts were FBI and Marine snipers ... IT IS CLEAR YOU HAVE NO CLUE WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT." Ronald Simmons, Chief of the Infantry Weapons Evaluation Branch of the Ballistic Research laboratory of the Department of the Army, testified to the Warren Commission. You were wrong and dind't know what you was talking about. Go make your researches first to type.
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  50. As already said, the .30 Super Carry is more similar to the 8mm Roth-Steyr, both for dimensions and energy.
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