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Guns are hard! (Patreon)

Published:
2021-05-23 21:35:21
Edited:
2021-05-23 23:06:15
Imported:
2021-08

Content

Scheduled for May 27.

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Why Guns Take Years to Get Into Production

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons https://www.floatplane.com/channel/ForgottenWeapons/home Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! http://shop.forgottenweapons.com Today, let's take a few minutes to discuss why it's hard to actually put guns into production. Making a functional prototype is one thing, but the truly hard part is often translating that one prototype into a whole set of tooling and fixtures to mass-produce the design. Generally speaking, the whole development process is a 5-10 year endeavor, and even some of the guns we think of as the most reliable today were plagued with serious manufacturing problems early on. Contact: Forgotten Weapons 6281 N. Oracle 36270 Tucson, AZ 85740

Comments

Almeida

Awesome job explaining ian, but I will add thats just to simplified basic way of explaining the work that goes into manufacturing of parts. I am a machinist and everything I do make is because the parts cannot be bought or they are so massive its easier for us to contract and build for ourselves. Everything I do is is almost parts I have to figure out the tolerances on and oh my God is it the biggest pain. Even when I make parts, I end up doing again and needing to changes up. You explained tolerances, people seriously do not understand what that means and how it comes into play. I wished people who do know know what tolerances are just stayed out of the conversation cause its a waste of time trying to explain why it is so important. Tolerances are beyond dimensions, they are also straightness, angles, surface finish, stacked tolerances, roundness, squareness on and on and on. Also big huge factor is material hardness; looking at you PSA, you lack this knowledge

Almeida

Oh I hate how people think CNCs are magical devices that do all the work. I put a lot of time and energy into my cncs at work. People say they are so easy and cheating, yet when I am not there they beg me to come in on over time to keep the machines going cause I am the only one who can run. Work with 4 other machinist with 20years plus career experience and even after trying to shot them how to just do basics on cncs they cannot do it.

Anonymous

"P" ? (At the very beginning of the video)

ForgottenWeapons
>>60435841

Ack, sorry about that. Sometimes my editing software truncates the title cards, for some mysterious reason. I recompiled this video to fix it, but then uploaded the first version. Oops! I will get it fixed shortly.

Bob McCormick

As another commenter mentioned there is the issue of hardening. Not enough and parts wear and deform. Too much and parts crack. I imagine many gun owners don’t understand why brass is used in cartridge cases. It ability to expand under pressure to seal the breech, then quickly contact for extraction, is marvelous.

Anonymous

While it is true that the 1911 took about 10 years of evolution from his first successful semi auto pistol, it did not take Browning even 5 years for his first. I know that in this relationship with Winchester, he would often design a rifle in 6 months or less, and the rifles were in production in a year or so. Some would say that firearms were more simple then than now, but when you look at the Merwin Hulbert - it required very complicated machining and tight tolerances.

Martin Morehouse

The Remington R51 is another good example. The prototypes were good, but production versions failed until re-engineered to be effectively produced.

Andy1963

I wonder if there is any film footage (video) of an older firearms assembly line in action--for the M1 Garand, for instance. I have some idea of how CNC produced gun parts are made, but I'm completely ignorant about how it was done in the old days. I can't even begin to imagine how an 1873 Colt was made in a factory that used steam engines to power a series of machines connected to the main power source using buffalo-hide belts. It's mind boggling.

Anonymous

ian, for your future kickstarters will every previous headtstamp book be an option. (i have not bought any of them and intend too but don’t have the funds but will next kickstarter)

Hozi

Great vid

Clifton Ballad
>>60434709

As a welder who has worked directly with machinists on complex parts, I feel your pain. I've been expected to hold tolerances on "finished" machined parts, that I have to weld on... Like. Yeah I can position that various block on the ground plate to within a few thou, cant promise the plate its welded to will be flat after....

Clifton Ballad

Well said all around, couldn't agree more. About the only part you didn't touch on was metallurgy and the issues that it can cause. You can have a shiny 12 axis CNC machine with All of the tools and tricks to go from square block to finished part in half an hour, but if you feed it an ingot made from beer cans melted down with a weed burner the end result will still be dangerous garbage...

Clifton Ballad
>>60697518

Yes it exists on youtube some where, maybe not specifically for firearms, but videos of machine lines in general will give you the same idea... search for 1930's-1950's machining videos and you will get an idea of what it looked like. Im a metalworking nerd and that era always fascinated me because of the sheer speed that was pulled off back in the day. It was done by brute force. If you needed 20 profile cuts to make a part, you got 20 machines and set each one up to do 1 cut each... Want to double production? Buy 20 more machines....

Clifton Ballad
>>60693762

Cumulative experience. When you have figured out problem "W" on part "X", and had problem "W" with part "Y" and "Z", you save the effort and expense of having to reinvent the wheel.

Anonymous

Another beast that you need to feed in the development of military firearms is the "input" from 3rd party players such as senior military and political types. I think there is a place for high level influence in order to ensure things progress, however there are also examples of where finger poking by powerful individuals have led to long term issues. Examples that come to mind are Gen Boulangier's insistance on ridiculously short development times for the Lebel, leading to an insane tapered round that hampered French small arms development for decades. There is also a story that the 30-06 was retained long after its sell by date by Gen McArthur. There are certainly some aspects of the L85 that were the result of individual influence such as the cross bolt safety that could have been better thought out, although I suspect that the real issue here was that Enfield had not designed a working firearm in decades and had lost the skill set..!

Anonymous

Biggest problem is that gun design is treated as an art, not as an engineering exercise. No maker has ever started a design by figuring out the physics of what they are trying to build so that they can "run the numbers", calculating what the weight of the bolt should optimally be, how strong the recoil spring should be, what the weight of the buffer should be in order to have the most reliable design. They simply start making parts and hope it works, and when it doesn't they may or may not do some high speed photography to help figure out what's wrong, then do a SWAG on what should be changed, and what it should be changed to for the design to work better. This is a very iterative process, forcing the long development times. Any CAD effort is spent on determining the safety margins of a design, how strong it is, and not proving out the design.

Anonymous
>>60750618

Not all of us run completely seat-of-the-pants. Even if we don't have every bit of kinematics calculated, it's common to start with an idea of what the reciprocating masses should be.

Sean Tyson

Wow, another fantastic, incredibly informative video. The segment on the AK alone was worth the price of admission. By the way, do you seen any significant impact of additive manufacturing in reducing the development time? It seems like it could be just a newer, better CNC that doesn't actually expedite the process. Anyway, you really have a knack for explaining abstract issues (like firearm design and production) to laymen. Thanks, Ian!