Comments by "" (@neutronalchemist3241) on "Forgotten Weapons"
channel.
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
This is a visit to the Pietta factory. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdnbNJKJ9ZE
As you can see, they use the same tooling to make their repro revolvers and their modern line of semiauto rifles and shotguns. They work in batches. "today revolvers, tomorrow semiauto rifles".
It's obvious that those machines can make anything in between. A Fyodorov Avtomat like a M1 Carbine. They only need the right imput. They can make them BETTER actually. With more consistent tolerances than the originals EVER had.
So why they don't do it?
Because, while manufacturing is not really a problem, designing is. Manual repeaters (revolvers, lever actions...) solve a lot of problems, because timing is decided and force is applied by the shooter. In a semiauto/auto weapon there are a lot of bits that have to work togheter for the weapon to work.
Much of those old designs required handfitting, because the admitted tolerances were so that, in a batch of supposedly identical parts, the right ones had to be chosen and coupled for the weapon to work. Worse, there was the "cascade matching" problem. When you took, IE, three parts that matched toghether, because they were all at one end of the tolerance scale, and then there was no fourth part that matched with them, because it should have been beyond the scale. It was a so common issue that, for the Winchester .224 prototype (the competitor of the AR15 in the CONARC competition) Winchester explicitly stated that they designed their rifle so that it couldn't happen. And we were in the late '50s. It was still a severe problem for the M60 MG.
Modern CNC machines can't work like that. so the modern designer has to come out with his own completely different, set of admitted tolerances.
Not to say that steel of the original composition is often unobtanium.
The REAL problem is that most of those designs were not that great to begin with. Even the most successful ones, (IE, the M1 Carbine, to say one) were good FOR THEIR TIME.
But the eventual purchaser of a modern repro would expect form it MODERN reliability and durability, otherwise "This is shit! The manufcturer scammed me!".
For the designer of the repro, it's like a nightmare. To him is like designing a completely new weapon, with the adjunctive constraint that he can't choose the solutions he KNOWS will work flawlessly. He has to keep it consistent with original solutions that he know work "so-so".
That's why modern repros, even when existing, mostly dont' have part interchangeability with the originals.
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
It's actually quite surprising none noticed, during the development of the weapon, that the Blish lock was completely useless, and so, to leave it, would have added unnecessary complexity to the gun. However, that was not the last time. It had been only during WWII that someone bothered to see if the .30 Carbine round could be conveniently fired in a blowback sytem, and discovered that a 570 grams bolt was enough even for proofloads. All the M1 carbine manufactured, with their gas systems and rotating bolts, could have been replaced by much cheaper to produce, simpler to service, and even more reliable, blowback weapons.
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
The weapon was developed for the ground role. IT HAD NEVER BEEN INTENDED TO BE AN AIRCRAFT GUN. Less than four-hundred samples of more than 14.000 built saw limited use on aircrafts (at that time the Air Corp was a branch of the Army) waiting for the model to be in full scale production first than distributing it to the troops. It was supposed to be used with a shield, and with it it was plenty stable. https://modernfirearms.net/userfiles/images/smg/smg127/villar-perosa_1915_3.jpg That hole sight was literally the only hole in the shield.
The weapon was designed to be a point weapon. Like a long range shotgun. Put it to surveil obligatory passages (alpine trails, openings in the barbed wire) and, when an enemy shows up, throw a short burst in his direction. With half a dozen 9mm Glisenti bullets in his body, he’ll think better.
The MG-42 for example, with its 1200rpm ROF was designed with this job in mind. Not fire continuosly, but fire when you actually see the enemy.
Given the charateristics of the two warfares, it was more suited the Villar Perosa to WWI (when you almost always had some obligatory passage to surveil) than the MG-42 to WWII.
The weapon had been higly successful in the attack role too. So much that the Austrians copied it, double barrel, bipod and all. At the end of the conflict a total of 14.564 MGs had been produced (so, more than 29000 barrels, VS only about 5000 MP18), and 836 millions of 9mm Glisenti rounds for them.
Mind this. THERE WAS NOTHING BETTER AROUND.
When the guy with the Villar Perosa, after having thrown a couple of offensive grenades into the enemy trench to stun the enemies, came over the edge with the SMG in his hands to clear it, he didn’t find the guy with the MP18 waiting for him. Because there was not any MP18, or anything similar, there were only bolt action rifles and showels. What he had in his hands was incredibly better for that role than anything the enemy had.
After having adopted the Villar Perosa, the Italians took almos three years to field the MAB18 (that were nothing more than a single Villar Perosa barrel mounted on a Moschetto TS stock) not because the Villar Perosa was unsatisfactory, but because it was so satisfactory that none felt the urge to modify it.
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
The rifle is actually very simple. Except for the burst mechanism, that's an added part not integral to the design, it's made of very few parts.
In this rifle. 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 and without tools, that was not a given at that time.
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.
An M1 Garand for example is made with a completely different philosophy. The rifle is easily disassemblable, but not really field strippable. To have access to the firinng pin, you have to completely take the rifle apart (and have a lot of small parts flying arounf you).
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.
1
-
1
-
1
-
You asked for the worst LMG. M1918 BAR simply wasn't there for WWI, that's where it should have been, so it doesn't count if it had issues or not. It makes it a FAR worse gun than both the Breda 30 and the Chauchat.
M1918A2 had a lot of issues (complicate to field strip and clean correctly, subject to jammings if not cleaned correctly, the pencil barrel overheating fast and without the possibility to replace it, unfit for firing in prone position...), so much that, had not the war ended, US would have replaced it with the WAR (Winchester Automatic Rifle) despite the logistical nightmare it would have been.
If it was better or worse than the Chauchat or the Breda 30 is matter of debate. It depends mainly in the role you want to use it. The BAR was a better ambush weapon than the Breda (even if this advantage had been exploited much more in Korea than in WWII) but, in an automatic support fire role, it could provide only a fraction of the volume of fire of a Breda 30 (a Breda 30 barrel needed to be replaced after 200 rounds of continuous fire. At the start of the war, Breda 30s were issued with two spare barrels. Soon it was recognised ti was not enough, and that had been increased to 4 spares. Do the math). Obviously the US could cope with any inherent shortcoming of the weapon by manufacturing a shitload of them.
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
@ A big company, with all the tooling needed for all the parts, and expert people that can solve problems at any stage of the work, can pass from drawings to production in 9 months. There are precedents.
A group of friends, that have to outsource parts, and so receive them, test them, give out new, corrected, drawings receive the corrected parts... It's VERY hard, at ANY price.
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
The bolt carrier is the part where the recoil spring acts, the proper bolt, or bolt head, is the part in contact with the cartridge and that has the extractor, and so pushes the cartridge in the chamber and extract the spent case.
The MG42 is a short recoil weapon, but its not a simple short recoil weapon, like a semiauto pistol, where there is a single piece bolt that recoils at the same speed of the barrel until the barrel stops and the bolt continues snatching the case out of the chamber. The MG 42 instead have a system whose purpose is to slow down the bolt head in respect to the bolt carrier, when the bolt separates from the barrel, to prevent extraction problems, cause pure short recoil systems (like those used in handguns) and long bottleneck cartridges doesn't match well. The rollers on the MG42, like the inclined surfaces on the MG34, or the accelerators on the M1919 and Breda SAFAT, are not bells and whistles added cause they were nice. All those systems are complications added to prevent the extraction problems that a simpler short recoil system /like that of a semiauto pistol) would have had.
As for the Breda 30, its not like the Breda technicians really didn't know what they were doing, and didn't think to enhance the locking time, is that that wasn't the problem. The "simpler" solution would have been to not make the locking ring rotate at all (it should have acted like a simple barrel extension), and adopt a two piece bolt, with a rotating bolt head (to unlock it from the barrel) and a not rotating bolt carrier/striker that is pushed back at double the speed of the bolt head due to inclined surfaces, like in a SIA1918 - or in a MG34.
1
-
Nor this, nor the directly derived Hakim/Rasheed, nor the MAS49/56 are "direct impingment" actions.
Direct impingment doesn't exist. No rifle action ever was actuated simply by the "kick" of the gasses.
In Elklund's patent (mind that the guy's main job was to design hydraulic pumps, he knew a thing or two about pressure) this is clearly described as a PISTON action. The "open tube" is actually a piston, and it has the diameter of a piston, because a piston works thanks to pressure X surface area. That's why the external diameters of the "open tubes" of the Ljugman and MAS49/56 are so much larger than the gas key of an AR15 (despite the internal gas pipe being practically the same). Because they need surface area to work.
The only difference between this, or that of the MAS49/56, action, and that of the Mini14, IE, is the location of the piston and cylinder.
"direct impingement" is how Stoner described Elklund's action in his own patent, to artifically differentiate it from it's "internal piston" action.
In reality, the ONLY thing that's patented in Stoner's patent is that, in his design, the gasses are in direct contact with the bolt (while, in Elklund's patent, they are in contact with the bolt carrier, not the bolt).
1