Q&A #14: Recoil, Nerf, and Forced Air Cooling

hey guys thanks for tuning in to another Q&A video on Forgotten weapons calm I'm he in the column and today I am on the road so I don't have my normal gun background behind me because I'm in a hotel room tonight recording this month's Q&A so we do this with the help of a nice glass of wine or else a plastic cup of decent wine and I have a whole bunch of questions from you guys my fantastic patreon supporters if you would like to get one of your questions in on these videos well sign up to support on patreon.com there's a link in the description text below and every month when I'm setting up to do one of these two and a s I will post a request to there for questions so I'm going to pour myself some of this and we will start with a question from Eric who says in a number of your videos shooting full auto firearms you reference the effect of quote the world going gray and fuzzy can you identify some of the factors that might cause this effect to be more pronounced in some guns more than others ie the g3 and the foul and some steps gun designers may have taken to mitigate it yes actually I think I can describe some of those so I think the two major issues that contribute to a firearm really being quite difficult to fire in full auto are going to be the physical recoil impulse that actually hits the shooter which is not the same as the recoil impulse that's generated by the gun and the concussion so guns that have shorter barrels especially short barrels with muzzle brakes the g3 is a good example generate quite a lot of concussion when they fire more so than a longer barrel and that definitely contributes to some disorientation for the shooter the other major effect is recoil hitting the shooters body and it distracted here and if you watch firearms especially machine guns in slow motion and I have a bunch of slow-motion video where you can see this what you'll see is when the gun fires when the the cartridge fires the gun doesn't actually move you'll see flashes flash and smoke at the muzzle and the action starts to cycle and the gun doesn't actually move relative to the shooter until the action has cycled all the way and typically what will happen is the boat will get to the rear of the receiver and they'll still have energy it'll still be moving and it will come to a dead stop against the back end of the receiver when that happens the energy that was still in the bolt is transferred to the shooters shoulder and at that point you'll see the gun kick back and the shooter kick back with him the best thing I think that you can do with a machine gun to make it more controllable and pleasant in offensive in full auto fire is to design the recoil such that the bolt fully decelerates to a stop without actually physically contacting the back end of the receiver one of the most famous guns to do this was the Ultimax light machine gun designed by Jim Sullivan and he specifically incorporated what he called a constant recoil system a large part of which was the bolt having enough space and the right spring balance behind it so that it never actually hit the back of the receiver as such it never transfers a jolt for each shot to the shooter you get just the much more pleasant and unobtrusive recoil that is the little bit that is put into the shooters body while the bolt is actually moving so if you combine that something like a not necessarily a constant recoil system but a fully decelerated bolt along with typically a barrel that is long enough to pretty much fully burn the powder in the cartridge before the bullet exits the barrel something that Olympia's as much as possible the concussion and the blast from firing those two things together I think will give you the most pleasant firing machine guns that is why in many ways well I was trying to think of some of the guns that are more pleasant to shoot the PKM is one which I think does both of those things the g3 is a kind of a harsh gun to fire and I think that's largely I think that's actually both factors again I think it's the bolt impacting on the back of the or at least in that one the spring fully compressing and so the bolt kind of impacts on the fully compressed spring which is going to transfer momentum transferring energy the same way that hitting the back of the receiver would as well as the the g3 having a relatively short barrel especially compared to something like the foul so I think that pretty well covers that let's move on to Kyle's question do you ever plan to revisit firearms already looked at in your very old videos yes definitely there are a couple of the brand gun and the Lewis gun in particular I would like to revisit I have a much better camera now I think I could do a much better video on them it's just a matter of having access to those guns and a good opportunity to redo the videos I will point out there have been a number of my very very early videos that I have had a chance to redo the CH 29 shooting for one and what was it the zk4 20s I had an opportunity to redo and in both of those cases I think I did a much better video the second time that I did the first so yeah some of the old ones definitely plan to reduce now I keep getting distracted here I am actually going to have a nice glass of wine while I'm doing this all right yeah it's not bad all right moving on Andrew asks is the mp5 still relevant as a platform yes I'm not sure why it wouldn't be the mp5 is still a quite capable submachine gun I think if there's anything that is approaching irrelevance see in the mp5 it would be the very concept of a submachine gun in many circles the look the light caliber carbine basically the short barrel m16 or a K he has ten kind of does everything that a submachine gun does and a little bit more there are some very specialized roles for a submachine gun but I think it's not so much the mp5 becoming obsolete as the submachine gun there's a whole concept becoming obsolete not that it is but some people would consider it to be next up Luke says are you just as excited to learn about different firearms as we the viewers often yes in fact this I occasionally find this happening to me at auction houses where I'll be looking through and I'll you know I need to find a whole bunch of different guns I'm to do video on and there are some guns that I do video on that I would be interested in owning some that they don't just because they're not in my particular you know not in the area that I would really like to collect myself sometimes the ones I really want to buy I thank you video on so that I don't publicize them a bit more at anyway I know I've done a particularly good video when I start with a gun where my attitude is yeah you know that's a cool gun I'd like to cover that one on the channel but it's not something I need to buy so perfect one for a video and I you know I get the gun and I take it apart and I handle it and I figure out what's going on and what's the good story to tell about this gun and by the time I'm done filming I'm really you know kicking myself for doing a video because now wow I kind of really want to own this one maybe yeah maybe I shouldn't have done the video and maybe I should try and bid on it myself when that happens and that happens a fair amount actually then yeah I definitely know I've I've done well on the video so yes I wouldn't be doing this if I wasn't Jen excited about the various new and different things that I get to take a look at Paul says is there a significant difference in the machining and production methods of firearms versus other high performance metal tools or is just the applied knowledge of what's a bad idea in a firearm or just the applied knowledge of what's a bad idea in a firearm that goes into manufacturing how much has tooling changed over the years naturally there was a big introduction of stampings and pressings in world war ii and after and the metallers you know firearm on circa 1900 tooling to modern standards well so two questions first off is there a substantial difference between making firearms and making other precision metal stuff and the answer is no not really in fact a lot of the manufacturers that started making guns in the last ten or fifteen or twenty years were predominantly aerospace manufacturing firms they've been making all manner of small parts on contract for aerospace companies and when they saw the gun market really taking off that looked like a great place to invest some of their extra open machine time and so the it is in fact substantially more difficult to be an aerospace manufacturing firm than a firearms parts manufacturing firm in general I would say as someone it from the perspective of someone looking to get into the industry if you have a general machining background as not necess as a mechanical engineer on the design end or as just a standard machine parts operator I think you'll find the skills very interchangeable between firearm parts and aircraft parts or automotive parts or pretty much anything firearms parts require a pretty good degree of precision but not as much as some other industries and certainly not the firearm parts are not substantially more difficult than really any other real machining area of expertise now as for machining firearms on early production tooling I would say the big difference has been obvious the introduction of CNC machining but what CNC has allowed is on the one hand it's easier to make high-precision parts but it's not trivial you still have to put a lot of work into it you have to understand how your fixturing parts so that they don't move or vibrate you have to understand what's involved in your tool life span you can take a super accurate precise machine and if you run cutting tools in it too long they will become dull and you will not be able to cut very precise parts anymore no matter how good the machine is if the tooling is not you know as worn out or is not adequately precise itself to begin with but then the other thing that CNC really allows is multiple operations in one well operation multiple cuts in one operation let's put it that way where you can clamp a part in a CNC and do a bunch of different things to it simultaneously not everything I think a lot of people consider a thinking about CNC machining who don't have any actual experience in it think about it is that this kind of magic do everything machine and you know you put a part in the machine and then it can do all the cuts on that part in reality you have to firmly and accurately hold that component in the machine and so often you'll hold it in one position and you can do cuts on like this side of the part and then you have to come up with a new fixture to hold the part in another orientation so other other sides of the part are exposed and able to be worked on so you can't just like drop a piece of metal in a CNC machine and push a button and have it spit a finished component out you do have to usually have multiple operations multiple setups in that machine and the way this used to work was every individual cut basically had its own machine so a number of years ago I had an opportunity to visit FN in Belgium and one of the cool things that they had in their production area was they still had the original tooling for making browning hi-power barrels and this was like it's gotten a little fuzzy in the years since I was there but it seemed to me like it was 50/50 solid yards lines of shapers basically a machine tool with a horizontal cutting wheel and there were just there were literally a couple dozen of these machines in a row and you start with this blank part then you put it in the first machine and the first machine would do one contour cut of something you know and then you put that into the second machine and the second machine have this very specific fixture and a very specifically ground cutting tool on it and you run the part through that machine and it would make a second cut you know we have one curve here and we have the second half of a curve in the next machine and this would just continue and some of these would drill holes some of them would cut flat surfaces some of them would run angled cuts or curved cuts but basically one operation on every single machine and by the time you got to the end the outcomes have finished part now this was a very labor-intensive thing you had an operator on every single machine but that's kind of how fabrication went before some of the automation that we have today and this is why you'll hear about a firearm taking a year or 18 months or long periods of time between when the design is finished and there's a set of blueprints in hand and when they can actually start mass producing guns and the reason for that is they have to build all of this tooling so that every one of those operations is correct and and in the proper sequence and make sure that all the tolerances stack correctly there's an immense amount of work you could almost say it's as much work to design the gun in the first place as it is to take a set of raw blueprints and then actually convert that into machine tooling to produce guns one of the interesting things about the m1 garand and US service is that John garand was almost equally involved in designing a gun in the first place and then also designing the machinery in the tooling to produce it which are two really equally important issues there are some guns the Colt all-american 2000 for example that as a prototype as a hand-built sample gun was really quite good and by the time it came out of this development yeah the the process of changing it or adapting it for mass production destroyed the guns that came out the end of the production line were not really very good they had lots of problems despite the fact that they started off as a pretty good prototype design and it was a failure in that case of coal to properly design the production process to spit out useable guns at the end of the line alright next up from Rouen okay Rouen says are you aware a lot of nerf gun enthusiasts watch this channel and actually incorporate concepts from real firearms into our nerf projects do you have much experience with nerf guns I don't think I have any experience with nerf guns in at least 15 years technical that people are taking unusual firearms concepts and working them into nerf guns though that's neat I would not have expected that interesting next off Jonathan says any chance where you might see some videos on Korriban prototype guns in the future that's this bakelite if I yeah it's the one I'm thinking of is this bakelite stocked oh pop a Kay magazine using Russian thing says I know there are a lot of folks who would like to see the insides of those yeah those crazy bakelite creations I would do I would love to take one of those part as far as I know the only ones in existence are in Russia I would very much like to get to Russia someday but at this point I don't really have any connections in Russia it will be a process for me to develop the right connections in the right museums and get permission and access and hopefully someday I will be able to take a look at not just the cobra ROVs but all sorts of other crazy weird aka Russian prototypes that they have over there andrew says I always see you and Carl in various military surplus items either while shooting or just in your other videos any particular military surplus piece or pieces of kit you would consider your favorite anything I should be looking for what other what country's gear is the coolest in your opinion well that's a an elaborate question I would say most of the military surplus that I deal with is not predict you'll particularly conducive to ease of use and ease of shooting with most of the mag pouches are really designed primarily to protect the stuff in them which makes sense they are carried a lot more than they are actually used however when I'm doing something like shooting a match it's really kind of obnoxious to use most of this correct military web gear because compared to anything else that we're used to seeing in competition it is glacially slow the one exception though or well the one exception that comes to mind and this isn't an all an uncommon or forgotten thing is the m1 garand cartridge belt also used for the springfield a 1917 Enfield rifles that net10 pocket cartridge belt that the US issued is an excellent piece of kit I don't know that there are many people who are using m1 garand in competition but if you are get one of those belts those things are awesome they are remarkably quick to use I'm really happy whenever I'm able to actually use one of those belts they're great most of the rest of the stuff you know it's it's interesting to use to see just how difficult it made life for the average soldier who had to use it to throw one other example I guess so another one of the particularly bad designs was the the u.s. World War one haversack I believe it was pattern of 1910 if I remember correctly kind of updated in 1928 and used substantially in world war ii and the updates really didn't help it very much it is not so it's literally not a pack at all it is a flat Kotov cross shaped piece of cloth with a bunch of straps and you kind of lay it out and you put your stuff on it and then you fold all the bits over and strap it and there is basically no way to get easy access there's basically no way to access anything in it without completely taking the thing off laying it down on the ground and opening it all up it's a really terrible piece of gear it's amazing that the US was issuing that that horrible pact and the same awesome cartridge belt at exactly the same time moving on James says worst officially adopted US service rifle and pistol and why well that's a loaded question that's gonna get me some hate no matter what I say you know there aren't that many US adopted service pistols and none of them were really particularly bad so I'm gonna bypass that and we will look at just the service rifle and I will say probably well how about yeah about this probably the worst adopted US service rifle would be the rod ban at trapdoor Springfield trapdoor Springfield wasn't a bad rifle maybe wasn't the best rifle that could have been adopted at the time it probably would have been probably have been better to adopt the remington rolling block but the government thought they could save some money and get a better deal by adapting muzzle loaders to the traveler springfield pattern that didn't really work out that way but that's why part of why they adopted it um the rod man that however in particular was a really bad idea theodore roosevelt saw that thing and his immediate reaction was that's a horrible piece of junk and when you get that kind of reaction from from a guy like Roosevelt Theodore Roosevelt that that should be a hint and as such it really wasn't in service very long the other gun that honestly and this will definitely get me some hate the other gun that would be on that list would be the m14 largely because of the production issues involved the government had a terrible time getting the m14 into production with adequate quality control it was actually a rifle that spent more time in development than it did actual field service it was just about the shortest service life of any US military formal rifle before being replaced by the m16 you know the Italians put the BM 59 together in something like two years and the Americans took 12 years to figure out how to do the same thing basically all they had to do was put a box magazine on the m1 garand that that rifle already existed in 1945 and yet they went back and ended up taking 12 years to to figure out the design and then never did really manage to put it into effective production next up Daniel says what was the most uncomfortable firearm you've ever shot well there are a couple contenders the worst recoiling one i've ever shot was definitely the four bore single rifle that thing is a behemoth I believe that rifle weighed 23 pounds but it was firing a literal quarter pound bullet and that recoil was really intense even with a 23 pound rifle leaning way into it and pulling it tight into the shoulder that thing was definitely an experience to shoot now there have been a couple others I recently shot a brycie 32 caliber carbine which had no recoil at all to speak of except that I kept putting my thumb over the back of this of the wrist of the stock and managed to smash my thumb twice with the bolt of that gun that was rather unpleasant beyond that you know what the pistol grip only Mossberg pump shotgun Carl and I did a video on the Mossberg shockwave and the i8 well the idea of pistol grip only pump shotguns as home defense guns or any sort of practical gun and through the course of that video we did a bunch of shooting with a stock shotgun and also a pistol grip only shotgun and that was that pgo shotgun was one of the very few guns that has actually physically hurt me to shoot that thing left my the web of my hands sore for almost a week I should have been wearing shooting love the whole time and I didn't think I needed to and by the end of that video I was really really happy to be done shooting thats a good thing next up from Christopher says I have collected most of the cheap surplus that has come out in the past ten years Mosin Nagant star monikers russian capture k98 Hugo mousers SKS's lee-enfield Spanish mousers many con block pistols among other common stuff what in your opinion would be a good gun to add that would bring a lot of gravitas to a collection I was thinking semi autos like FN 49 s Hakeem's or SVT's what I considered those respectable well respectable is kind of an interesting term definitely they are their cool guns they're interesting to have in a collection I wouldn't I would not advise someone to try and make a collection based on what they think a common perception of a collection ought to be if you're collecting guns you ought to be collecting them because they're of interest to you their guns that make you happy that you're interested in and there's no need for them to be super expensive guns if super expensive guns don't happen to be what makes you happy if you want to collect Chinese mystery pistols you know those things are not expensive but there's a huge variety of them I find them very interesting myself a lot of other people do as well and they're definitely not what a lot of you know snooty collectors would consider respectable guns none of them are in great shape they're all terribly poor well they're mostly terribly poorly made but that doesn't mean they're not suitable for collecting they're pretty cool there are for example a gazillion different varieties of those steyr mannlicher m95 there's absolutely nothing wrong with having a cool interesting and complete or very a very complete collection of those carbines so there are a couple things you can do if you want to have a a wide-ranging collection then serve a wide variety of the more excess of semi-auto rifles is a fine way to go the other thing you could do is take a look at what you have currently and consider which of them you're actually most interested in and then start looking at getting some of the more more specialized rarer more exclusive guns in that niche so if it's the lee-enfield that you really find that you're really interested in well okay so the issue portend fields are pretty easy and accessible to get SML es are pretty easy at number four in fields pretty easy but then you can start looking at some of the the more rare ones like a number one mark five with its transitional rear mounted sights I think those are really cool they're harder to find they're more expensive than some of the more common guns but that would be I think equally appropriate to get as adding different available semi autos so in general figure out what it is that really interests you and use that as the focus of your collection daniel says what firearm was the most frustrating to disassemble and reassemble in general in general the guns that are actually stressful or frustrating are the ones where I'm worried about damaging something so usually this comes down to two different types of guns it could be guns that are not in perfect mechanical shape if if the guns really worn inside that's when you can often get parts that don't really want to come apart or things that are difficult to get back together especially if you have some part that's fragile and maybe starting partly partly broken and you don't want to like snap the thing off entirely but you don't discover that it's broken until you get the gun apart then it can be really difficult frustrating and painful to try and reassemble it very carefully without doing further damage to something that may already be damaged this would also apply to guns that are in really really nice minty condition if there's not a single tiny scratch on that gun anywhere it can be pretty stressful to disassemble and reassemble it without any little slip of a screwdriver for example or bump of a stock on the ground when you have guns that are reasonably worn you know war surplus type guns it's something where you don't really need to worry obviously you're going to do your best not to damage the gun but you know if a screwdriver slips a little bit well there's already 12 scratches on that screw to begin with and it doesn't really make a difference to have one more so yeah guns where you don't trust that something won't necessarily break and guns that are so beautiful minty condition that you're really paranoid about doing the least bit of visible damage to them those are the ones that are a problem Christian says would a fluted chamber have made the use of lubricated ammunition unnecessary for guns such as the type 92 heavy machine gun and the pettersen rifle I would think in theory yes probably it would have I have not done any like serious engineering analysis of the effect of lubricated cartridges versus fluted chambers but the general principle says that yeah that should have probably mitigated that issue in guns that required lubricated ammunition but the designers never never thought of it didn't realize it or it's important to consider the possibility that they looked at it and decided figuring out how to effectively flute a chamber on a mass production gun was more difficult than providing it with a cartridge lubrication system so they may have considered an option like that and decided against it consciously next up from Robert having just seen the new Blade Runner sequel which by the way I just saw as well and I think it is fantastic I would highly recommend it in which there is a twin barrel pistol in your recent video on the Arsenal double 1911 I wonder what are your thoughts on the concept of a handgun with two barrels the Arsenal has plenty of novelty factor that's one way to put it I lost my place here but do you think it could be a legit concept in the future no I don't think double-barrel pistols will ever become any substantial real thing beyond the novelty and the reason is well I should I should say that's double-barreled repeating pistols if you have a single basically the difference between a single-shot pistol in a double-barrel pistol that makes sense things like derringers double barrel shotguns for example if there's no mechanical system going on to feed and eject cartridges then adding another barrel to have another shot makes definite sense up to a certain point you know a certain point if you start adding too many barrels the thing gets really heavy and clumsy and awkward but with a repeating pistol be it manual or semi-automatic having a second barrel is just way more mechanical complexity and too many things waiting to go wrong without all that much benefit you know the benefit of a Arsenal double-barrel 1911 over a standard 1911 as a practical matter is basically none the difference between firing two shots simultaneously and firing two shots in sequence is pretty minimal especially given the added weight and complexity that you have to have in order to be able to fire that second shot at exactly the same moment instead of slightly afterwards and for that reason I think just basically the principles of mechanical efficiency tell us that double-barrel repeating pistols will never be a thing which is by the way why they really haven't ever been anything except a novelty until now Nikolas says I am curious about when you shoot guns at Julia is everyone negotiated specifically with the consignor where does the ammo come from in cases like the Solothurn or the like just in general behind the scenes so yes every gun that you see me shoot at an auction house in fact actually every gun you ever see me shoot is specifically - by the owner of that gun if it's done at an auction house then yes someone representing the auction house contacts the consignor of the gun and basically explains to them hey we have an opportunity to shoot this we're gonna do a promotional video on it we would like to shoot your gun and for these various reasons we don't think there's any substantial risk to the gun there are you know I buy video a lot of guns at Julia they have way more than I actually do videos on and I only shoot a small number of them some of that is time constraints it basically takes me as much time to to do a shooting video as it does to do a regular standalone video so if I'm gonna do a video on the gun that includes a shooting segment I'm basically sacrificing the time it would take to do another existing another video on a separate gun in order to have shooting footage in one of the other videos hopefully that made sense in addition we always look at what is there a potential risk to shooting this gun so some guns are extremely rare prototypes and we're not you know maybe they're kind of fragile some guns use really weird ammo that we're not gonna going to be able to get those are obviously out some guns are in really mint condition and shooting them would have a detrimental effect on their or potentially have a detrimental effect on their condition so those kind of things would rule had gone out but for example considering the guns that we shot in the last video series at Julia we did the Colt monitor that was a gun where the previous owner now deceased had shot the living bejesus out of that gun that was one of the guns that he really loved tissue and so we knew going in that putting another couple of magazines through it wasn't any risk at all to that gun because it already had thousands of rounds through it we shot the Madsen light machine gun that is a quite reliable gun we know where spare parts are available if anything should happen to go wrong with it ammo is easy to get we shot the zb-26 very similar very highly regarded gun they're reliable they're durable nothing's going to go wrong with a zb-26 ammo is available the mag is are available and we shot the Solothurn and the ammo for the sullivan is definitely not readily available and for something like that or like the Lottie that I shot there previously or in fact the four more that I shot at Juliet previously the ammunition for those in fact all three of those came from ammunition that the consignor was selling with the gun so with the anti-tank rifles I don't remember the exact numbers but the consignor provided 10 or 15 or 20 rounds of ammunition with the gun and so when we contacted them we said basically you know we are going to reduce the value of the consignment by four rounds or five rounds or whatever it is total that we're going to shoot but we think it's probably worth it to you to have video of this for the auction and in all of those cases the consignor agree and that's where we get the ammunition for the guns where it's really weird it's typically stuff that is has been included by the consignor in fact with the form or rifle this was particularly important because virtually all forwards are kind of custom-made use custom ammo the bore diameter is not necessarily exactly standardized the chamber dimensions are not necessarily exactly standardized something like eight millimeter Mauser has a very clear international standard and you can just go buy a box of it for wars are not standardized they're all unique and individual to the guns so we would not have been able to shoot that form or had the consignor not provided it with ammunition cartridges and projectiles that we were able to use for that video moving on jeff says what is the difference between a closed bolt and an open bolt why would one be more desirable than the other that's that's actually a fairly si question so the difference is a closed bolt when it is in the ready to fire condition there is a cartridge in the chamber the bolt is closed and locked and then it's ready to fire and this covers virtually everything semi-automatic and submachine guns as well an open bolt gun when it is in the ready to fire position like you know if you pull the trigger and it goes bang the position that is it is in is with the bolt lock to the rear open and the magazine inserted with a cartridge ready to feed the advantage of an open bolt is that is primarily that it doesn't keep a cartridge in the chamber when you're not actually firing so in a machine gun you might a military machine gun in particular you might shoot a whole lot of ammunition and get the barrel exceedingly hot hot enough that if you left a cartridge in it the heat could transmit through heat up the brass and then actually heat the powder to the point of combustion without having to hit the primer with a firing pin that's called a cook-off and it is a very real potential danger in military machine guns if you have an open bolt design there's never a cartridge left sitting in the chamber where it could overheat and cook off like that so that's the primary benefit of an open bolt gun the secondary benefit is you get somewhat improved cooling of the barrel if you leave it open at all times so that air can circulate through the barrel in a way that's not possible if it's if the bolts closed and sealing off the back end of the chamber so typically you will find open bolts pretty much only on machine guns there are a very small number of semi-auto open bolt guns and even most of those are conversions of machine guns the downside to an open bolt is that when you pull the trigger before it actually fires you have the whole mass of the bolt going forward and then locking if it's a locked action and that that mass and movement tends to be makes it very easy for your aim to shift between when you pull the trigger and when the gun actually fires that's called lock time the the period from when you pull the trigger to when the cartridge actually detonates open both guns have a very long lock time and so in a machine gun that's not that much of a detriment because presumably you're gonna be firing a burst of ammunition recoil is going to be adjusting your aim anyway and you'll typically be firing from a tripod or a bipod that makes it easier to keep the gun on target on a shoulder-fired rifle an open bolt gun becomes much more of an accuracy problem so that's pretty much the pros and cons of open and closed bolt angus says the currently levered delay blowback system seems like a jolly neat idea so much so the Soviets had an ache a type rifle designed with it that outclassed the AKM keeping in mind the steel case good for delayed blowback and the medium chamber pressure of 760 by 39 do you think the Carelli system could be designed into a modern incredible rifle yes in fact I know it could because it was the French FAMAS is aid Kiraly levered delayed blowback rifle and has served the French really quite well for what 40 years now give or take there aren't a whole lot of levered delayed guns the FAMAS is kind of about the only infantry rifle style one that really took off but it does definitely prove that the system is totally suitable capable for that style of system and it actually makes for a very simple gun there's no gas system on a famas it's kind of right up there with the roller delayed blowback that HK did next up Ross says I am doing research on weapons used in the Spanish Civil War and I'm a bit overwhelmed by the amount of foreign production arms being shipped into Spain yeah there was kind of a little bit of absolutely everything shipped into Spain for the Spanish Civil War I'm quite interested in the conflict but I want to focus my surplus collection on actual Spanish firearms what would you consider the quintessential Spanish produced arms at the war that's an easy one there would be two one would be the Spanish Mauser bolt-action rifles in seven millimeter the other would be the Astra 400 pistol secondary to that maybe the star series of basically 1911 copies but the Astra 400 the Mauser rifles that were in the Spanish Civil War were pretty much all produced before the war they were in government Arsenal's and when the war broke out the Arsenal's were kind of looted whenever they could be and the arms distributed to a bunch of different factions the Astra for hundreds the same thing was true but there were there was a lot of actual production of Astra 400s during the war the Republican forces had a number of different factory making copies of the Astra 400 and I would say without a doubt that is the quintessential Spanish produced firearm that was actually being made during the war the good news also is those are all relatively inexpensive guns because not a whole lot of people are interested in them next up from Carl says does the Vickers gun Vickers guns recoil booster have similar detriments to a muzzle break namely redirected concussion and kicking up dirt you even though you have a Vickers and live in the desert I figured you'd know well the answer is not really the thing that the Vickers muzzle break first off the muzzle booster on a Vickers gun is not designed to reduce recoil it's specifically designed actually to increase recoil it is there to push the barrel assembly backwards in the gun with a little more force than just the recoil of the bullet would give it so it does that by having this cup shaped surface on the front of the barrel that takes the impact of some of the recoil gases and uses them to push the barrel assembly backwards to help the gun cycle when you have muzzle brakes which definitely do increase concussion and kick up dirt they're designed to reduce recoil by redirecting those gases not backwards but typically out to the sides and going out to the side is what makes it possible for that concussion to impact the shooter if it comes out to the bottom it's going to kick up dirt with the Vickers you're really taking gases that are going this way and you're kind of if anything redirecting them to be a little more tightly focused going forward as a result no you don't really get any increase in concussion or dirt signature I suppose you could call it from fad says the FG 42 seemed to be an incredible development but far from but far more limited than its design would have suggested by all accounts it's a terrific weapon and it's rather surprising that it didn't see much development by the Germans it does seem logical the next course of its development would have been to be a much more manageable cartridge was there any consideration of updating the FG 42 to perhaps an intermediate round like 8 by 33 if I remember correctly there was I think one prototype fg42 made experimentally in eight millimeter Kurtz however that development was done just not by the Germans after the war the Swiss at the Bern factory of Bern personal did a bunch of development with the FG 42 mechanism and they they built versions that were both in 75 Swiss full-size rifle cartridges and they actually did a bunch of experimentation with those guns in basically 75 Kurt's not 8 millimeter Kurds but kind of their own proprietary 7.5 millimeters short cartridge those developments never really went anywhere the Swiss went with other guns instead but it was what that the development did happen now the reason that Germans didn't do it was because of the intended purpose of the FG 42 it wasn't meant to be a standard infantry rifle really the way the Sturm aver was the Sturm Guevara was very specifically designed to to sacrifice range in exchange for firepower the FG 42 was designed to replace both the mauser k98 and the mg 34 or 42 like machine guns and in order to work as a pseudo light machine gun he really had to have the full power cartridge and so had they developed it in 8 millimetre Kurtz they would have been there was really no reason to have an FG 42 in curves rather than just use an MP 44 or Amer 44 and what the paratroops needed was not well what the paratroops thought they needed what they were what was being designed for them was not just an infantry rifle it had also double as a light machine gun hence a Filipino Mauser that is also by the way why the the German army didn't ever use the FG 42 is they didn't need to combine the rifle and the machine gun into a compromise package that wasn't really as good at either role as the respective original guns if they wanted a machine gun they didn't have a weight requirement for jumping out of airplanes they could just have a really good mg34 or mg42 instead of an fg42 that sort of could kind of approximate that role next up will says how effective is forced air cooling can it replace quick change barrels for sustained fire I can only think of a few guns that use it the Lewis and the KP or pkp those are in fact the only two that I can think of this well they use it there may be some some really obscure experimental ones as well the short answer is no forced air cooling is not nearly as effective as well it's not nearly as effective as water cooling you can't really have a forced air cool barrel that is also quick change because the forced air cooling requires having this radiator sort of assembly around the barrel forced air cooling tends to make the guns pretty bulky and really you're better off reducing the weight of the gun itself by getting rid of that forced error hardware carrying a spare barrel and just swapping the barrels if they get really so I don't suspect we will see a forced air barrel in the future I would be really curious to know more about exactly how effective the pkp is I'm aware of it but I've never handled one and I haven't really seen much in the way of reports on their actual combat capability that'd be cool to find out next up from Edward says it seems that manual safeties on handguns are falling out of favour with the buying public and I've heard all sorts of justifications as to why such safeties are actually unsafe I was wondering if the world militaries feel the same way the problem with trying to answer a question like that is military adoption is always determined by a committee or a particular person in that military and there are always a wide variety of opinions and other priorities involved in a military procurement and you can't really interview can't really extrapolate what is objectively good or bad from a variety of military adoptions because there are just too many factors involved from a training perspective well even from a training perspective it goes both ways having a gun like a Glock that just has an integral safety in the trigger the trick that makes training very easy because you don't have to worry about training people to use three or four different levers on the gun with the Glock the manual of arms is simply draw a gun hold trigger and when you're done shooting you take your finger off the trigger and you holster the gun there's nothing special you have to do unless you want to train troops to actually remove the mag and unload the chamber and not carry it loaded with safeties well I should let me back up a moment however you are left with a situation of anytime that trigger gets pull it's done a fire around and so if troops aren't careful with them you will end up with the potential for negligent or accidental discharges if you have guns that have a bunch of manual safety mechanisms you have the opportunity to train very strict safety procedures into all of the troops you know you will always carry the gun with this safety engage and there's a magazine safety so if the magazines out when they're cleaning the gun they can't accidentally shoot themselves with the round that they forgot about in the chamber that sort of thing however you now have a much more complex training policy and you've got more stuff that you have to drill into troops who you are probably also having to train on their rifles and radios and ten thousand pieces of high-tech gear that didn't exist in World War one when you know small arms constituted the majority of the actual training that was being done so there are a lot of factors involved and I don't think you can't adequately extrapolate so I can't really answer the question I guess from Adam says hypothetical question if the US had decided to adopt either 1876 or eighty-six Winchester rifle or something equivalent do you think they would have even bothered looking at Spitzer cartridges or bolt-action rifles yes I think they definitely would have those Winchester lever-action rifles had this brief time period where they could have been very effective in fact far more effective combat rifles than the single-shot and early action guns that were adopted instead however this period basically ended with the adoption of smokeless powder because with smokeless powder you now have the potential for high-velocity cartridges that can really benefit from being pointed spitzer bullets and the machine guns that would have been adopted would have absolutely used spitzer cartridges and in order to at the the very worst case even if they didn't care about having that long-range efficiency in a shoulder rifle they would have wanted to use the same ammunition in the machine gun and the individual infantry rifle just for logistical sake which means they would have wanted a spitzer cartridge in the infantry rifle and the tube magazine in the lever action is not not effective not safe for use with pointed cartridges in some circumstances they can be but there are at least a couple military tests i'm aware of where there were detonations in two magazines this absolutely can happen and it would have ended the use of tube fed rifles with spitzer cartridges and if you're going from a tube mag to a box mag you're probably going to end up with a bolt-action rifle at that point so yes i think it would have been pretty cool if the US had adopted a bolt-action in the late latter half of the 1800s but i do not think it would have prevented the adoption of a bolt-action rifle i think the potential there was the craig Jorgensen and the trapdoor springfield could have been replaced with an 1876 or eighty-six Winchester however the 1903 Springfield still would have been adopted pretty much at the same time that it was in real history Adam says you've stated that the PKM is the best GPMG tear to elaborate and what you based your opinion well what I base that opinion on is the overall balance of characteristics of the gun every firearm design is ultimately a compromise between a bunch of mutually exclusive characteristics you can have a gun that is very light and very easy to carry or you can have a gun that is very durable and will never break but the durability requires more material the material is my definition weight that makes them heavier what I really like about the PKM is that it is a gun that is relatively lightweight while also being relatively actually quite controllable comfortable in full auto chambered for a full-power cartridge it is relatively comfortable to fire from a tripod from a bipod or it's something you can even sort of fire from the shoulder if you need to it is quite reliable I may not be absolutely the most reliable machine gun out there but it's one where it has achieved 98% of the possible reliability while still maintaining a light weight and a very simple mechanical function you put it all together I know there are people who think that it would argue that the the m240 the FN FN mag machine gun is a better gun and it maybe in some ways the problem is the FN mag is also a much heavier dot if you're gonna mount the thing on a vehicle an FN mag is probably a better choice than a PKM but for an all-around general-purpose Universal machine gun I think it's well I haven't found anything that I would consider a better execution of that concept than the PKM Matt who says his pronounce his name is pronounced Baz says why hasn't water cooling with firearms or specifically artillery pieces been developed further the answer is because it is no longer survivable in today's war fighting world to stay in one position long enough to fire enough rounds for water cooling to really be necessary or effective we have enough basically electronic intelligence sensor capability on the battlefield today that if you sit in one place like in World War one you're going to get hit by a missile or a mortar shell or some sort of unpleasantness and it just isn't necessary we don't find firearms delivering the volume of fire that would require water cooling they don't shoot that much you can get away with a quick-change barrel instead and avoid a whole lot of logistical hassle and mechanical hassle and people forget that those water-cooled guns actually have to have watertight packing material it was literally asbestos treated greased string or rope wrapped around the barrel in a couple of different places to make that water jacket watertight while the barrel was actually reciprocating in the water jacket that was a fairly complex and let's be fair a fairly unreliable system if you didn't pack that thing just right well the whole time you're shooting water is dripping out of the gun and it's making a mess and if you don't need that don't have it now water cooling was I would say obsolescent in World War two and obsolete as soon as World War Two was over the Germans showed that you could you could maintain a totally effective rate of fire with a gun like the mg42 by having changeable barrels instead of trying to deal with the weight and complexity of water cooling and I can only imagine those problems scaled up to artillery if it had been feasible water cooling on artillery probably would have lasted a bit longer but today I just don't see our Tillery unit staying in place that long without getting blown into little tiny pieces by enemy counterbattery fire next up Jonathan says I wanted to know what is your opinion on restoring relics for example you find an old bayonet that's rusted a bit do you think it destroys some of the character of the piece if you want to restore it to a functional standard with this raise or lower the value it's a complicated question when it comes to found two firearms I kind of hold the opinion that there has to be a really a pretty high bar to pass for it to be actually worth restoring a firearm and that's often it's it's very often not going to be cost-effective it's gonna you're going to spend more in parts to restore a gun then you will then then you will get from the value once it is restored and there are a couple different versions of restoration one is for example restoring a spotter eyes done to its original military configuration and that's that's the type that's easiest to do but still if you're doing that you're probably going to have a relatively difficult time finding all of the original bits raus rifles for example an intact mark 3a 1912 1910 Ross is probably a thousand dollar gun maybe more in its original military configuration whereas the sport horizon ones are far more common and there may be a third that value however it's extremely difficult to find intact full-length military stocks and then the barrel bands and the nose cap to go with them and you'll probably spend as much trying to get those you know what you'll end up doing is buying a really beat-up bad condition complete Ross in order to pull the stock off to put on to a better condition sporter and this often just does not make financial sense now if you have a completely intact gun that's in poor condition I think it rarely makes much sense to try and restore it I think a lot of the value is in the character that is the current found condition of the gun and trying to rebloom it the chances are you're going to rebloom wrong it will be clear that the gun has been refinished and that will I that will seriously impact the value of the gun so it's gotta be really really far gone in my opinion before that's worthwhile to do Dom says is there any sensible reason why in the 30s Britain and Japan did not develop or try to develop semi-automatic rifle while all the other major powers did the answer is well the Japanese especially it tried to develop a semi-automatic rifle in fact I have I believe videos on all four of the different experimental versions that Japan was experimenting with was testing and while I don't have examples off the top of my head I'm pretty sure the British did the same thing pretty much everybody was experimenting with self-loading rifles the question was were they able to get one far enough along and into production in time for World War two the answer was really the Americans and the Russians had one pretty much ready before the war the Germans managed to put them into production during the war which was quite the feat and then the Belgians and the French and the British ended up finishing guns after the war and adopting them after well in the 40s and 50s oh I should add the reason for this was often where where countries were concentrating their funds the 1930s was the period of the Great Depression a lot of military budgets were not particularly large Germany for example in its rearmament program was focusing on things like aircraft more than small arms for small arms they developed a good machine gun and then they just made a whole lot of bolt-action rifles the French for example focused first on a light machine gun and they developed a very good light machine gun the semi-automatic rifle was a little bit lower priority and it just the development process and the funding for it and the timeframes involved kind of conspired together to mean that the rifle wasn't quite ready by the time war broke out you know if everybody had known that there would be another world war in 1939 I'm sure a lot of these countries would have had semi-automatic rifles ready but that you know people didn't know the future they didn't know that there was a specific deadline far enough in advance to adequately design a rifle for the next war next up Matt says can you tell us about the old punt guns guys would use to shoot Ducks on the water they were a massive shotgun very cool and effective have you ever come across one yeah I have actually seen a couple I have yet to do a video on one because frankly they're too big to generally fit on a table in front of the camera these things are huge they're usually six to eight feet long and the other thing is mechanically they're really not interesting at all they're generally giant single-shot shotguns with usually either a break a simple break action system or a very simple bolt-action system you know it's just a couple of locking lugs you open the bolt pull it back put it in a giant shotgun shell close the bolt and fire the gun they were generally mounted to equal recoil absorbing trunnions in a boat because they're far too large and heavy and recoiling not the fire from the shoulder they maybe have stocks for aiming they maybe don't the purpose of these guns was industrial level waterfowl hunting and that's fallen out of favor and legality in favor of farm-raised guns there just aren't the huge flocks of birds that you can send some some industrial hunters into and harvest hundreds or thousands of birds at a time we do that with farm raised birds instead now so at some point I will do a video on a punt gun when I'm able to find one that's in a position where I can actually get it effectively on camera but I'll warn you in advance while they are the the effect is is interesting the guns themselves are really quite simple and really kind of uninspiring let's see Simon Says in World War two which country implemented its small arms best on the battlefield I would say the answer to that overall is probably Germany they had a really good Universal machine gun going into the war which served them very well they had a decent submachine gun I think the mp40 is a little bit overrated I really don't like the stalks on them although otherwise they're very good guns and what really does it I think what really puts them in the first place would be the development and adoption and tactical usage of the sturm cover the MP 44 and P 43 and stg44 rifles those really would be the absolute model and standard for all firearms development for decades after world war ii and they weren't able to produce them in substantial enough numbers to really have any impact on the the end result of the war in fact honestly I think it's debatable if they've gone into World War 2 all armed with streaming bears that probably wouldn't have changed the outcome of the war either because it really isn't small arms that make that difference it's much larger factors but if you just want to know what country did the best during the war I would say Germany they started with a bolt-action rifle they ended with a modern V modern assault rifle alright and I think we have one more here we will go with gwendal who says what service firearm gets the most undeserving bad reputation and why I'm thinking about the show show of the stand and even the m1 carbine especially post-world War two what's your view well I think those three firearms kind of deserve their reputation at least they got their reputation for the right reasons the show shot is a very difficult machine gun to use effectively the Sten is a very uncomfortable gun you know the British replaced the Sten at absolutely the first possible opportunity after world war ii and for good reason the the one that I think has a bad reputation that doesn't necessarily deserve it would probably I would say be the Carcano I think the Carcano got a lot of its reputation first off from the general stereotype of the Italians as not very good fighters it definitely didn't get any help from the Kennedy assassination a lot of the guns that were available in the surplus market after world war ii were not great the ammunition availability was not good the ammunition that the Carcano uses a different sized bullet than a standard six five and so some at least of the ammunition that was available after World War two when these guns were super cheap and readily on a novel on the market the ammunition was made the guns particularly inaccurate because the bullets were too small to properly engage rifling these things together conspired to give the Carcano a really poor reputation was it the best bolt-action rifle thwart no absolutely not but I think it was a perfectly suitable gun that really doesn't deserve the negative view that it has today so I mean my answer the Carcano I appreciate very much all the questions I got from you guys I got well over a hundred questions and there's no way I can spend enough time to do all of them in one go so I apologize if I didn't cover your question there were a number of very good ones that I just didn't have time to get to today so if you're annoyed by that and if you think you had a good question please do submit it again next month I do try to keep an eye out for repeat questions and make sure to work them in as soon as I am able to if you are not a patreon supporter and you'd like to get a question and will definitely check the link in the description text below that will take you to the Forgotten weapons patreon page it is the folks there that make this whole channel possible and you have my everlasting thanks and support hopefully you enjoyed the video and will be back tomorrow with a cool forgotten weapon for you thanks for watching

Channel: Forgotten Weapons

Views: 313,332

Keywords: Forgotten Weapons, q&a, question, answer, patreon, machine guns, Double barreled pistols, Nerf guns, Fluted chamber vs, Military surplus gear, bolt action adoption, basic gun collection, Spanish Civil War, difficult guns, Japanese semi autos, Army lever action, modern water cooling, Punt guns, collectible guns, tooling, cnc, manual machining, service rifle, forced air, lewis gun, pkp, history, development, kasarda, mccollum, inrangetv, inrange, best gun, worst gun

Id: PTItsWxgD48

Length: 66min 57sec (4017 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 01 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

I think sipping alcohol (and I approve) works better when you have someone else to fill the empty airspace. When you are by yourself, maybe you could prerecord the questions and sip while they play. Not sure if that would be a lot of trouble.