Firearms of note and ridicule

[rmgill]

1 hour ago, Bob B said:

If your Enfield's metal parts have been painted, acetone may remove the painted finish.  I would try something milder like odorless mineral spirits or even Ballistol.  Good luck with the project.

 

I thought that stoving was pretty well on there short of rust or blasting...?

[GregShaw]

Good thought about acetone, although suncorite seems impervious to nearly anything. I was thinking acetone on wood, followed by linseed oil. Start with Mineral Spirits then Ed's Red on metal, may have to go with Naval Jelly on muzzle end, I think it had corrosive ammo then the muzzle not wiped down well. My Mosin had rust flour in same area even after proper bore cleaning. 

[Cutaway]

Spasov M1944 Trigun:

 

 

[shep854]

12 hours ago, Cutaway said:

Spasov M1944 Trigun:

 

 

Paging Mr McCollum; Paging Ian McCollum...

[bojan]

3-barreled version of Hristo Spasov M1944 SMG, which looked like weird Thompson/Beretta crossover. . He also developed M1942 SMG, based on ZK383, a LMG (on the pic), which was a Madsen-Maxim hybrid, aircraft MG based on Vickers and compact SMG based on Luger pistol.

Edited October 12, 2020 by bojan

[Argus]

On 10/11/2020 at 5:47 PM, GregShaw said:

Good thought about acetone, although suncorite seems impervious to nearly anything. I was thinking acetone on wood, followed by linseed oil. Start with Mineral Spirits then Ed's Red on metal, may have to go with Naval Jelly on muzzle end, I think it had corrosive ammo then the muzzle not wiped down well. My Mosin had rust flour in same area even after proper bore cleaning. 

I've found the best stuff is natural turpentine as in found in Art supply shops - not mineral turpentine, but natural or real turpentine. It's mother natures universal solvent, cleaned 2 Nepali Martinis with it and zero sweat while people were going nuts with break cleaner and all sorts of stripping agents while getting nowhere. It's good for the wood, its good for the metal, and it just eats any sort of petrochemical grease, while being not too harsh on your hands and smelling.... not unpleasant? Only downside is the cost, it is pricy but a litre goes a long way if you remember its reusable. 

[Adam Peter]

 

[bojan]

Whole channel is a goldmine.

[Rick]

On 10/9/2020 at 7:18 PM, Bob B said:

If your Enfield's metal parts have been painted, acetone may remove the painted finish.  I would try something milder like odorless mineral spirits or even Ballistol.  Good luck with the project.

 

Very glad that your back!

[Rick]

16 hours ago, bojan said:

Whole channel is a goldmine.

Your opinion on "the best possible" rifle  round available in the 1930's time frame?

[bojan]

All of them and none of them.

7.9x57, 30-06, .303, 7.5mm French, 7.62x54R were all broadly comparable and needlessly overpowered for rifle use.

6.5mm Carcano, 6.5mm Arisaka and 6.5mm Swedish were better for rifle use, but were not that that good for a MGs, and all users introduced more powerful round for MGs (8mm Breda, 8x63mm, 7.7mm).

7x57mm Mauser was best compromise, still too powerful for a practical rifle use, but better than 1st group in rifles and 2nd group in MGs.

No good intermediate round was available, and even if it was it is questionable if it would have been adopted. There was a work on those, but it took a WW2 to finally push those to a frontline, and even after war there was a firm opposition to it (in US in particular, but not limited to just US).

Best round would have been something like 7.62x39mm, achievable by the period tech levels. 7.35mm Carcano came close to that (8g@760m/s), but in the very shitty format (51mm long case ).

[BansheeOne]

There was an obscure Danish 7 x 44 mm for the Weibel M/1932 LMG (!), but like many technically promising attempts at early intermediate cartridges (8 mm Ribeyrolles etc.) it never saw introduction.

[Simon Tan]

7mm Mauser is fine for LMG. Less ideal for Co and Bn MG.

[bojan]

I have excluded experimental ones, other than German experiments there was a Greek 7.9x36mm Pyrkal, Soviet experiments ets, and there were also cartridges semi-suitable for the intermediate role (.25 and .30 Remington, through they also did not have optimal case geometry...), but there was no realistic reason for any army to introduce them due the metric shitload of "full power" rifle ammo remaining in system.

SMGs = good is a wartime fact, before war they were seen as a specialist weapons or light LMG replacement or substitute and issued at best 1/squad. W/o SMG=good there is no German attempt to outgun Soviets resulting ultimately in MKb-42(H) and MP-43/44/StG-44, and no mass introduction of such cartridge after WW2.

Best time to introduce new intermediate round was before WW1, in the guise of the secondary weapon for artillery/cavalry/airman, hope for those to prove themself in WW1 and establish them as a "good thing" in the rest of the army. But there was no really suitable rifles available.

Post WW1 everyone was too deep in the debts with large reserves of old weapons and ammo to introduce new cartridge. Especially since everyone moved to a short rifles, so you no longer have separate artillery/cavalry weapons. Best you could hope for was a mass production of the semi-automatic using existing cartridge.

Edited October 18, 2020 by bojan

[bojan]

3 minutes ago, Simon Tan said:

7mm Mauser is fine for LMG. Less ideal for Co and Bn MG.

They are pretty good for those also, round has better ballistic coefficient than the WW1 era 7.9x57mm ammo (post WW1 sS is a whole different thing), but problem comes in specialist aircraft ammo use and with tracers. As noted it was probably the best compromise since WW2 will also prove that very long range fire with MGs is not needed, since mortars took that role, but that again requires a large amount of foresight.

[Simon Tan]

Most users were running different ammo for aircraft MG anyway.

[bojan]

Hence why I consider it best of the compromise, even if it was also too powerful for what was actually needed in rifles.

[Simon Tan]

The move to 8mm Mauser was entirely due to war booty.

[bojan]

Yes and no. There was simply no point continuing pre-ww1 ammo for Serbia and Romania, since a vast majority was lost during war, and 7.9x57mm was most available good round. Even in the abortative Czech/Yugoslav attempt to acquire Lee-Enfields* rechambering to 7.9x57mm was supposed to be included since neither country wanted to bother with a rimmed ammo, as it was understood that automatics were a future.

 

Those were supposed to be cheap reserve rifles, main rifle was to be Маuser-Jelen:

http://www.vhu.cz/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/1-mauser-jelen.jpg

 

 

 

[Rick]

m1 carbine round?

[Simon Tan]

How is that a major improvement over a 98AZ?

[CaptLuke]

2 hours ago, Rick said:

m1 carbine round?

 .30 Carbine (7.62×33mm) was a wartime round, so no more capable of inter-war adoption than the 7.92×33mm.  The closest thing to an intermediate power round adopted interwar was, to Bojan's point, the 7.35x51mm, which had almost identical performance to the postwar Czech 7.62×45mm, and was, in any case, brought into service just before WWII.

There is an interesting scenario if the 7.62x33mm had been used as a SMG round, in a replacement for the M1 and M3 SMG; it wouldn't have been a "true" assault rifle round (lower power and bad ballistics) but it would have extended SMG ranges out into the 200-300m range.  It was do-able with WWII SMG tech, as the interwar MKMS and the post-war Cristobal Carbine showed.

If the Italians had gone forward with their 7.35x32mm round, developed by Terni in the 20s for use in the SMG role, they might have been in a similar position and changed the way the Americans thought about the .30 carbine round, as well as possibly the loadings available for the 9x25 Mauser.  There are at least some reports of a high powered 9x25mm load associated with the Swiss MKMO SMG, which, like the Kiraly 39M that served as the basis for the Cristobal Carbine, was a delayed blowback gun.

The 7.35x32 would have had similar power to the 7.62x33mm but with better ballistics (higher sectional density and a pointed bullet).

[Markus Becker]

9 hours ago, bojan said:

All of them and none of them.

The rounds in military service. The commercial ones were ahead of the curve. 25. Remington, 22. Hornet, .250 Savage. 

[bojan]

.22 Hornet is ill suited for a larger magazines since it had way too long neck and was rimmed. IIRC also brass was pretty fragile. .250 savage was the 6.5x55 Swedish level so no real intermediate. .25 and .30 Remington were probably best of the bunch, but those also suffered from too long cartridge (they were early 20th century cartridges...). Europe before WW1 also had few comparable ones, 8.2x45mm Krnka for example, but due the WW1 those have remained obscurities.

[shep854]