The PPSH-41: How It REALLY Works

ah the ppsh-41 also known as the Popish ah also known as one of the sexiest submachine guns ever created it operates pretty similarly to any other open bolt submachine gun direct blowback out there but it is distinctly Russian in its look making it the darling child for movies TV shows video games and LARPers it's chambered in the Boomer five-seven I mean 7.62 by 25 Tokarev and it has a ridiculously high cyclic rate of a thousand rounds per minute oh yeah what is up you sexy YouTube mother lovers my name is Brandon Herrera and today we're gonna be doing a deep dive into the ppsh-41 on the good old-fashioned white board of knowledge now to actually understand how the ppsh-41 works we have to understand its operating system it's an open bolt direct blowback mechanism what does that mean get out of the way our pk this isn't about you so to tackle this we're gonna have to go back to elementary school no we're not going to an elementary school with the ppsh-41 can we stir it again so we're gonna tackle this with some elementary school physics so for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction so if you're sending this 7.62 by 25 millimeter bullet through the barrel at 1500 feet per second you're also sending that equal amount of force backward toward the bolt until like a bolt-action rifle that force backwards is absorbed by the locking lugs you know when you you you put the the bolt into into battery and you slam it home it's locking and so those lugs take the brunt of the recoil and that backward energy is then transferred into a felt recoil from the shooter not the case on a direct blowback so why doesn't the bolt on a direct blowback become a bullet of its own so the answer is back to physics so while this bullet may be screaming out of the barrel at 1500 feet per second this bolt probably weighs around 75 times as much as that bullet does so the energy takes the path of least resistance when that explosion goes off that gunpowder burns it's a hell of a lot easier to push that tiny bullet through the barrel than it is to push this massive weight backward toward the shooter at 1,500 feet per second as well so much to the pleasure of the shooter I'm sure that way that the cartridge and the bolt don't immediately just eat themselves backward toward the shooter and end up ending him in a graphic Tarantino s fashion as for how that operates in the weapon itself when the bolt moves forward it slam fires around here and it pushes this bolt right here backwards again not at that same 1,500 feet per second but still moving relatively quickly but it is slowed and stopped by a recoil spring that is tethered to the back it's basically a pipes why they call these pipe submachine guns so this is just a tube that contains that bolt and traps it so that it's traveling straight rearward where it's slowed down and pushed back forward by a recoil spring so while that may be slightly oversimplified that is the basic principle of direct blowback alright so this is my head rushed artist's rendering of a ppsh-41 I know it's beautiful be sure to leave your comments about how great of a whiteboard artist I am I'm I'm sure you will just like last time so chamber roughly is about here this is where the barrel is barrel protrudes of course through the you see it through the little vent holes there just a basic 7.62 by 25 or nine millimeter barrel if you're you know a sadist like I am I just like shooting cheap ammo through machine guns but you know barrel goes to right here you don't have to leave room for locking lugs because obviously there aren't any so this is where your barrel ends your chamber is right about here and the bolt travels through this space here this is where your bolt really kind of does its operation so way this starts is that the bolt hangs up roughly about here and it moves forward and as it's moving forward it picks up another round so this is where this is the magazine again my excellent rendering of the profile of a drum magazine looks just like a rectangle because that's what cylinders look like from the side this is terrible anyway your round is sitting roughly at the top of this drum right up like this ready to be picked up bow goes forward and it basically slam fires this thing as soon as it gets into the chamber so it loads it loads up and into the chamber bolt comes in behind it the firing pin on the ppsh-41 is fixed so as soon as it chambers that thing and gets the extractor up over it it fires immediately the the primer is contacted by the firing pin and sends this flying back of course the bullet goes speeding out the front and into your generic enemy of choice as the bolt then from this position moves backward and as it goes backward the extractor which is just a little metal clip that hangs over on the rim of the cartridge the the little rim if you've ever seen I guess breaking it really down you actually find a bullet real quick the ppsh am over here I legitimately forgot I have like ten thousand rounds of 762 by twenty-five Tokarev sitting over there in the corner small flex so this part here at the end of the casing is where the extractor clips on over it and pulls this casing out of the chamber after it was fired so glad I ripped into an ammo box for that so that extractor catches the case pulls it out of the chamber it follows the bolt as its traveling rearward except there's an ejector which is a little piece of steel that's sitting there waiting for that casing and what it does is it catches that casing from the bottom there's a little groove in the bottom of the bolt it catches that casing it kicks it out the side so that the bolt is fresh and ready for a new round to be picked up that recoil spring here because all the way to the rear slows the bolt as it's moving rearward it hits the back and it pushes it back forward as long as the trigger is depressed pushes the bolt back forward where it can pick up another round load it into the chamber fire that round and rinse and repeat until you are either out of ammo or you have officially eliminated all the Nazis in your area and you can safely return back home to bhavish good now if you thought that was simple so far congratulations you're paying attention but the trigger is really the beautiful part this is where things get unbelievably simple for that I'm going to introduce you guys to Katya which is part of my parts kit for a ppsh-41 this is going to be a beautiful beautiful piece she is going to eat her Wheaties and grow up to be one of the new shop machine guns so I am very much looking forward to that as soon as I can find time to do that I've had this kit for a very long time but yes this is actually an original ppsh-41 parts kit and it has the original trigger in it so one of the reasons why you don't see a lot of semi-auto ppsh-41 floating around is because the trigger system is meant for an open bolt and an open bolt even if it's semi-auto according to the ATF that's machine gun whatever but the trigger system is so unbelievably simple and it only works this way in full auto so check this out the trigger of course when you pull it allows the bolt to move forward all it is if you look on the inside here as it is just a little lever that when you pull the trigger it gets out of the way that's all it does when you're pulling the trigger you're just moving that piece of steel out of the way of stopping the bolt no crazy intricate trigger systems no strikers no no nothing it's a fixed firing pin and it'll go until you let your finger off the trigger and then you pull it it just goes back and forth until you either run out of ammo or you take your finger off the trigger it's that simple so in reality if you think about it the trigger mechanism on the PPSh much like a lot of the other pipe guns submachine guns that are direct blowback is basically the opposite of a trigger it stops the gun from working realistically all you're doing by pulling the trigger is getting it the look out of the way so in theory if this thing had no trigger on it and that was not there if you loaded up a drum magazine pull this thing back and just let her go you would just sit there and ride the lightning until that sucker was out of ammo or jammed which means you would ride the lightning until that sucker was out of ammo and that right there is why the pipe style submachine guns are so unbelievably simple all this is realistically if you take out the flare and you know some of the stampings and kind of crazy geometry that they do sometimes forgot who knows why all this is is a you'll pipe with another steel pipe as a barrel attached to it with a piece of round stock a spring a fixed firing pin which literally could just be a welded little tit on the front of that steel round stock and a little extractor with a tiny spring on it and a magazine that's it these things are so simple there's a reason we developed these earlier than we developed the assault rifle though the pipe style submachine guns the stands the mp18 the mp-28 all that stuff came around very very early because this stuff is very very simple for firearm designs especially the blowback actions ah there's a lot of cool history behind the stuff it's really neat but it just shows how simple a lot of the stuff is to make it's not rocket science so I guess after this video politicians are gonna have to go out and immediately ban Home Depot Lowe's Harbor Freight all that stuff ASAP plumbing supplies screws pipes lathes Mills steel band steel that's a good damn 3d printers okay we'll come back to that one but back to the PPSh so now let me address some some some dumb because of some of my more eccentric a.k builds a k-50 a K 2 to 4 or a bunch of others just stuff like that that we've been working on I get a lot of billed suggestions and I think it's really cool I think it's cool that you guys get an engaging you have an interest in seeing new stuff be made and especially us making new stuff I think it's really awesome however I get a lot of suggestions that kind of show to me that you guys don't exactly know how this stuff works which is fine I mean we've there's I've been there trust me like there's varying levels of understanding complexities of firm design but I get suggestions like PPSh 50 when like 50 BMG ppsh or ppsh in seven 60 by 39 that takes a k' mags no so pretty much any rifle round any rifle round needs to lock it needs lock up you cannot do direct blowback like this with a high-pressure round like a 50 BMG it's really not a good idea guys and of course the internet rushes to go find a million exemptions crazy one-off designs so pretty much with any sort of rifle round like the 760 to buy thirty nine eight millimeter Mauser 556 50 BMG 30.6 at the on and on and on you need some sort of lockup they have far higher pressures far higher pressures and an volume of pressure than pistol calibers like 9-millimeter 762 by 25 even though that's kind of a hot one 45 ACP 40 Cal 10 millimeter all that stuff the straight well pistol cartridges just very low pressure compared to things like a 30.6 or a 50 BMG you need some sort of lockup like the a K has a rotating bolt design which is why it has the gas piston phenomenal designs why it works so incredibly well is a long stroke gas piston that moves the bolt carrier back so that the bolt unlocks after the pressure is is largely relieved but the lockup contains most of that look up pictures of people using casts trunnions on cast front trunnions on aks and watch what happens when those lugs crack or break it's a catastrophic failure it's very dangerous to the shooter now just imagine if there were no lugs there at all and it was just a direct blowback it's not a great day especially not for the guy holding it there's so many ways that you can do lockup on rifle rounds you have the the tilting tilting bolt you've got the rotating bolt gas-operated design like the a K and the the ar-15 you've got just a long recoil you've got all sorts of crazy stuff that works for rifle runs but you need some sort of lock-up hell HK on there a roller delayed blowback even put a lock-up system more or less on there mp5 which is a 9-millimeter yeah I know they're German but still and before i hear you say in the comments no you just can't put a bigger recoil spring on it that's just it's not really how this stuff works but for rifle rounds just kind of cement that up here you need lockup but the direct low back system does work exceptionally well for pistol calibers and it has worked really well for about a century now at this point so now we kind of got that tangent out of the way some more features on the ppsh-41 has the magazine release folds down and so you can release the magazine you put another magazine in and fold it back up that's kind of interesting iron sights on the ppsh are present and of course you have those lovely lovely iconic barrel vents that are stamped into the front shroud that makes up the very iconic p psh 41 look that contrasts exceptionally well with this nice Woodstock here on the rear just a very industrialist to meets traditional classic look and I love it this is one of the few guns out there that just makes me feel I don't know why so all in all it is a sweet little piece of history and one of my all-time favorite guns for a little other reason than it is just cool as hell so that was another whiteboard of knowledge video for you guys hopefully you guys enjoyed it I like doing them and thanks a lot to a fan who actually hooked us up with some white board markers for this I guess he was tired of seeing me fight with the white board markers in the last couple videos and I was frankly starting to lose what little was left of my sanity so thank you very much for that it was a surprise to be sure but but a welcome one so thank you but I think that's just about all I have for this video today thank you guys very much for watching and keep your eyes peeled because I've got a video coming out or maybe a week we can have from now that is going to be very very very very cool I've been hinting at it just a little bit and it's some serious stuff it's gonna make some serious waves so keep an eye out for it not even kidding you guys is gonna be some lord of work so I'm excited to show you guys that I've been working on it for a little while and as always I will see you sex at YouTube mother lovers in the next video bye bye alright we're good to go [Applause]

Channel: Brandon Herrera

Views: 715,824

Rating: 4.9537535 out of 5

Keywords: Brandon Herrera, The AK Guy, ak-47, guns, gun, Ppsh-41, Ppsh, Russian, WW2, World war 2, Subgun, Fpsrussia, FPS Russia, Call of duty, World at war, SMG, Tokarev, 7.62x25, How it’s made, How it works, 9mm, Forgotten weapons

Id: CFvCpDZBZZg

Length: 14min 43sec (883 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 16 2019