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That may be the most ergonomically compromised low carry position I've ever seen in my life.

I mean, I don't think its terrible. At least for what it is.

 Grey Templar wrote:
I mean, I don't think its terrible. At least for what it is.

Right, and that highlights the problem of a dedicated grenade launcher vs an add-on system. If paired with adequate support, it's slick and you get a lot of bangs downrange, but the tradeoff is personal defense. If you find yourself alone, using a 20mm grenade may not be the best solution to a close target. That's why rifle grenades and underslung launchers have their place.

On the other hand, I've only ever used the M203 and my primary accomplishment with it was to avoid turning myself into an orange smurf, so my expertise is admittedly limited.

Right, after using the tightest nut I could find, strapping it to this monster of a mount to reach far enough, and using my drill to full force, the screw finally gave up and started to loosen. On closer inspection it did keep part of its edges sharp so it worked.

I filed the screw back to a better shape.

I've also received the handguard, it'll need minor adjustments to fit in perfectly and I'll have to make screws to hold the mechanism to it, but I now mostly have got everything I need to actually rebuilt that gun.

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
I've also received the handguard, it'll need minor adjustments to fit in perfectly and I'll have to make screws to hold the mechanism to it, but I now mostly have got everything I need to actually rebuilt that gun.

Well done!

I've found that the interchangeability of firearms parts is greatly overstated. One of the reason why matching serial numbers are so important to collectors is that even high-volume production weapons involved a measure of hand-fitting at the end. It may just be a single pass of a file, but it is necessary for proper fit and function.

And that's assuming you have access to original parts. Things like screws and various minor pieces can be devilish to get right. Keep it up!

Right, handguard correctly fitted, I tested with 2 rounds that everything works as intended, making sure I don't shoot myself accidentally, and so far all good. Just need to find the screws, but the cleaning of the mechanism, and adjusting of the handguard actually took me like 3 hours, filing my way cautiously.

Making progresses.


Plus I've assembled a PVC tube my grand father found in his mess that'll serve to drip the barrels in vinegar to degrease prior to bluing.

Update: ordered the screws I need, 40 euros for the pair, hope it'll fit but it should as all Falcor models shared those anyway.

I also shuffle through a fair few stores to find wood oils I need. Well, not really oil, as I already have got some, but some cleaner and a bottle of turpentine to dilute the oil, and eventually managed to sieze the last bottle of a local store. With my reserve call being.possibly cancelled this week end, I might try to give it a go and start working.on the woods. Wish me luck.

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
Update: ordered the screws I need, 40 euros for the pair, hope it'll fit but it should as all Falcor models shared those anyway.

I also shuffle through a fair few stores to find wood oils I need. Well, not really oil, as I already have got some, but some cleaner and a bottle of turpentine to dilute the oil, and eventually managed to sieze the last bottle of a local store. With my reserve call being.possibly cancelled this week end, I might try to give it a go and start working.on the woods. Wish me luck.

Good luck!

Over the weekend I had an opportunity to put some rounds through a "shaved" Webley Mk VI. Not only that, but I had two types of ammo to play with: Fiocchi .455 LRN and some downloaded .45 ACP from Steinel.

Both required some sort of adapter or full-moon clip.

I tried the .455 first, mostly to re-familiarize myself with it. I've shot it before, and it was exactly as I remembered - quite mild, almost shoving the bullet out of the barrel. The .45 ACP was much crisper, both in recoil and the sound of firing, more of a pop than the deeper near-black-powder boom of .455. But it was discernably weaker than full-powered .45 ACP. At some point, I'd love to have a 1911 platform and a Webley on hand at the same time - maybe even trying that downloaded .45 in the 1911. We can only hope.

There was no difference in accuracy - the pattern was consistent with both varieties and tended to pull to the left, about an inch off at 10 yards.

For fun, I decided to hit a couple of gallon water jugs, and the results were disappointing - just a large hole through each one. It's interesting to contrast this with a .32 magnum snubbie, which not only split the jug, it threw it back a foot. To be fair, the .32 was jacketed hollow point vs jacketed ball or lead round nose. On the other hand, the bullet weight of those monsters was 2.5 times that of the .32 magnum.

Clearly, more study is needed.

General history question, posed as a daft Time Travel scenario.

Let’s say that, for whatever reason, you have a working Time Machine and want to go back and fiddle with history. Specifically by taking something like a Lee Enfield rifle, and the gubbins and plans to make the gubbins, to make that pattern of rifle.

In terms of necessary metallurgy and quality of materials? How far back do you think you could go with just those gubbins, and have the locals be able to successfully reproduce said rifles.

As in no introducing advanced smelting or steel making. No providing the recipe(?) for modern alloys. Just the machinery as an example, and information on how to make those machines, casts, dies, drills and wotnots.

The furthest you could take any kind of modern-ish firearm schematics back would be 1884. At least to have it be useful.

Why? that is when Smokeless powder was invented which is pretty much required for any modern firearm to function. Primarily because the alternative, black powder, is far too dirty to properly allow a modern gun to work.

Sure, you could replicate a Lee Enfield or indeed most modern firearms with the technology further back, but unless you can make smokeless powder for the cartridges it isn't much use. The black powder will gunk up any self-loading action you try to recreate and even manually operated actions will still have issues with the rifling in the barrels getting gummed up too fast to take advantage of the rate of fire increase. Being able to fire dozens of rounds a minute isn't as much use as it could be if you have to clean the gun every 2 minutes of sustained fire.

That isn't to say bringing a bolt action back would be totally useless, but it wouldn't be as game changing as you might think. The actual mechanics of firearm design were always being held back by black powder being absolutely filthy and not the actual gun itself. This is why repeating guns do show up as far back as the 1400s on occasion, but they are always impractical one-offs done more for the lulz than any practical use.

Bringing smokeless powder back would be far far more impactful than bringing any specific gun design. Its actually easy to make if you know how, requires components which are far easier to find than for black powder, the issue is waiting for the RNG to grace your chemists with the inspiration.

Honestly, who knows how far you could move firearms technology forward if you sent smokeless powder back. 1-200 years potentially.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Sure, you could replicate a Lee Enfield or indeed most modern firearms with the technology further back, but unless you can make smokeless powder for the cartridges it isn't much use.

I'd add to this that while I'd bet any metalsmith even as far back as the bronze age might be able to replicate all the parts of a gun and cartridge, it's highly unlikely you could produce enough bullets, or bullets that wouldn't jam, absent the advent of machining. Working entirely by hand is not very precise, and you can't really get interchangeable parts sufficiently without machine tooling, which would be very difficult to get running absent steam engines or electricity.

I could see being able to at least kinda mass produce metallic cartridges in the 1700s. You could use hand presses and hand drills to make crude cartridges out of cast blanks. At least enough to make a functional bolt action rifle because then you only need it to fit in the chamber.

For anything self-loading you would need to be in the 1800s so you could get the casings consistent enough with the machining at the time. Sure it would all be made by hand, but at least the efficiency would be better than the norm.

Honestly, a precise lathe and some precision measuring tools would revolutionize everything, not just guns. Sure, you'd need to hand make new precision tools, but that alone would help everybody out a lot.

 LordofHats wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Sure, you could replicate a Lee Enfield or indeed most modern firearms with the technology further back, but unless you can make smokeless powder for the cartridges it isn't much use.

I'd add to this that while I'd bet any metalsmith even as far back as the bronze age might be able to replicate all the parts of a gun and cartridge, it's highly unlikely you could produce enough bullets, or bullets that wouldn't jam, absent the advent of machining. Working entirely by hand is not very precise, and you can't really get interchangeable parts sufficiently without machine tooling, which would be very difficult to get running absent steam engines or electricity.

Earliest machine tooling was water powered, water powered tools still being competitive up to about 1900. Much more constrained by geography though.

Anyway, probably you would just see something more akin to repeating shotguns to accommodate undersized shot. A shotgun is essentially a modern musket. Repeating rifles would be the preserve of rich hunters or the odd elite troops who can hand-cast all their own ammo to fit their own specific gun

Henry Big Boy .357 Magnum, Lever Action, my favorite. Varmits, target practice.
Colt 1911 .45 small frame. Personal Carry, target shooting.
M-4 Carbine with x3 power red dot. Just In case rifle.
20 Gauge Remington 870. Home Defense
I am trying to find a Coonan .357 Auto. Prices are little crazy on those right now.

Starting with the woods. The stock has been washed with hum. Soda lye? No idea how its called in English.

As for the handguard, it was sanded, warmed, and got a first generous layer of a mix of turpentine and linen oil that i also warmed a little. Now, I'm waiting for both the stock and this to dry correctly.

As I am not at all experienced with wood working, I'm trying to follow a tutorial I found, for once, on french speaking internet!

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
General history question, posed as a daft Time Travel scenario.

Let’s say that, for whatever reason, you have a working

When Harry Turtledove's "Guns of the South" came out, there was some discussion about whether AKs (or any other modern firearm) could turn the tide of a war.

I think an argument can be made that without the right tactics, communication, and the aforementioned logistics, it wouldn't do much. A more practical thing would be to carry back some antibiotics or germ theory since losses from disease were greater than those in battle for the vast majority of human history. Having your army stay healthy while the other one was wracked with fever would be huge.

Gott the screws, the head of one of them was larger however, so it needed some rapid handcrafted adjustment

Nonetheless, the screw itself is long enough and fits where it is supposed to. So far so good. Waiting for the handguard to dry after the second coat was applied to it, two coats have been applied to the stock as well, waiting for it to dry as well now.

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:


Gott the screws, the head of one of them was larger however, so it needed some rapid handcrafted adjustment

A few passes with a file are often necessary to get even factory-spec parts to fit in a particular situation. That whole business of collectors wanting all-matching serial numbers isn't affectation - the all-match ones run better.

 Grey Templar wrote:
The furthest you could take any kind of modern-ish firearm schematics back would be 1884. At least to have it be useful.

Why? that is when Smokeless powder was invented which is pretty much required for any modern firearm to function.

A black powder Lee Enfield would more or less be a Lee Metford.

As others have said though, there's myriad reasons why guns developed when and where they did. You'd have to take back more than just the physical gun, some ammo and possibly the TDP.

As fun as individual weapons are you'd probably be better off taking back bronze cannon tech. It still requires industrial machines to bore them out but they work with black powders, they can be used on enemy formations, until the enemy get them they will be game changers.

Bronze cannons are typically cast, no boring out the barrel. Iron cannons were made out of bands of iron, much in the same way you would make a wooden barrel. This is also why gun barrels are called barrels. That is why there was basically no ability to standardize shot weights till precision tooling would allow for you to bore out a barrel to the same size each time.

Bronze cannons have also been around basically as long as blackpowder has. They were of course very very expensive, which is why they weren't always used. Iron cannons were far cheaper to make, but more prone to rapid deconstruction.


Again, if you brought back tools which could enable you to make precision measurements(and recreate those tools) then you could do so much more. You could actually have standardized gun calibers if you could bore the same barrel dimensions reliably instead of casting or forge welding strips together.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Bronze cannons are typically cast, no boring out the barrel.

I thought the cast void would then be bored smoother?

Yeah I know they've been around forever, for exactly those reasons. I was thinking taking the knowledge off gunpowder and cannons back further. Working bronze went back 5000 years...

But as you say, it wasn't cheap.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
General history question, posed as a daft Time Travel scenario.

Let’s say that, for whatever reason, you have a working Time Machine and want to go back and fiddle with history. Specifically by taking something like a Lee Enfield rifle, and the gubbins and plans to make the gubbins, to make that pattern of rifle.

In terms of necessary metallurgy and quality of materials? How far back do you think you could go with just those gubbins, and have the locals be able to successfully reproduce said rifles.

As in no introducing advanced smelting or steel making. No providing the recipe(?) for modern alloys. Just the machinery as an example, and information on how to make those machines, casts, dies, drills and wotnots.

There's references to the 1903 Springfield being improperly heat treated (they used the colour of the metal, and whether it was cloudy or sunny impacted the colour), and exploding when fired because of it, so even only a hundred-ish years ago, with quite modern tools and tolerances, it wasn't fool proof.

Which makes me think not that long ago? If you bring the smokeless powder formula with you, you now have a gun liable to explode, and if you use black powder, you can't really get a repeating weapon anyways.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:


Gott the screws, the head of one of them was larger however, so it needed some rapid handcrafted adjustment

A few passes with a file are often necessary to get even factory-spec parts to fit in a particular situation. That whole business of collectors wanting all-matching serial numbers isn't affectation - the all-match ones run better.

True that! Actually, while dimensions are correct on both screws, there patterns are somewhat different. I've yet to find out if this was another gun's screw, another piece's screw, that by luck fits, or if there exists several versions of those. But I'd err on the former.

Problem with the neopup, despite being a heretical Bullpup, it's firing a round waaaay too powerful for it's purpose. IT has a "sight" that can be replaced with an Optic, which is basically rendered useless after the 2nd shot, because it's been knocked way off alignment. And if you think that's a dubious claim, the M1A sniper/DMR variant, says it's sight needs to be re-adjusted/re-confirmed after 50-100 rounds. And that's a .308 Win. This is a 20mm, about a metric Fethton more booty on that round.

We all know its for firing point blank at enemy mecha anyway...

Look, we all know to take down Decepticons, you need something more akin to Willie Pete rounds out of a grenade launcher, hopefully a Mk. 19 or in a pinch, the M203. Pour on some of Satan's Chilli Powder and watch them turn into slag.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Problem with the neopup, despite being a heretical Bullpup, it's firing a round waaaay too powerful for it's purpose. IT has a "sight" that can be replaced with an Optic, which is basically rendered useless after the 2nd shot, because it's been knocked way off alignment. And if you think that's a dubious claim, the M1A sniper/DMR variant, says it's sight needs to be re-adjusted/re-confirmed after 50-100 rounds. And that's a .308 Win. This is a 20mm, about a metric Fethton more booty on that round.

The M1A has problems holding zero because it's a crap platform for a DMR that was never intended to be accurized. It's also, in that role, expected to maintain sufficient accuracy to engage point targets at 500+yds, as opposed to an area-effect system like a grenade launcher. Apples and oranges. Still, if you're having to re-zero every 50-100 rounds, there is something wrong with your gun.

Given that comparable loads were extensively tested in the CDTE system as derived from the XM29 program and subsequent XM307 ACSW- and that the recoil impulse on something as humble as a manually-operated 12ga shotgun is much sharper than any high/low grenade design- I'd be curious to see any evidence of the PAW-20 losing zero beyond 'trust me bro'.

 catbarf wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Problem with the neopup, despite being a heretical Bullpup, it's firing a round waaaay too powerful for it's purpose. IT has a "sight" that can be replaced with an Optic, which is basically rendered useless after the 2nd shot, because it's been knocked way off alignment. And if you think that's a dubious claim, the M1A sniper/DMR variant, says it's sight needs to be re-adjusted/re-confirmed after 50-100 rounds. And that's a .308 Win. This is a 20mm, about a metric Fethton more booty on that round.

The M1A has problems holding zero because it's a crap platform for a DMR that was never intended to be accurized. It's also, in that role, expected to maintain sufficient accuracy to engage point targets at 500+yds, as opposed to an area-effect system like a grenade launcher. Apples and oranges. Still, if you're having to re-zero every 50-100 rounds, there is something wrong with your gun.

Given that comparable loads were extensively tested in the CDTE system as derived from the XM29 program and subsequent XM307 ACSW- and that the recoil impulse on something as humble as a manually-operated 12ga shotgun is much sharper than any high/low grenade design- I'd be curious to see any evidence of the PAW-20 losing zero beyond 'trust me bro'.

Ever meet an actual sniper certified soldier/marine/sailor? (Airforce doesn't have snipers) They re-adjust their weapons every 100 rounds anyway. Just to be on the safe side.

Yes, the M1A was a badly designed system to put an accurized sniper system on, but Eugene Stoner's blowback action was not a "crap system". It's just a large heavy chunk of metal slamming back into a larger chunk of metal, at a high rate of speed, is a bad shock absorber for a scope. Remember, the ghost ring sights dont drift, and those are good out to 400m.

The best sniper system ever employed in a DMR fashion was the SR-25. Or as a civilian would call it, a heavily chopped up AR-10 with two thousand bucks of glass on it, and a free floating match grade barrel. The SR25 holds it's zero, has none of the problems of it's predecessor, and can mount all sorts of Cans, without getting pissy about it.
SR-25 is the best SWS the US Military ever created, but I must admit, I've never seen the new SWS in 6.7 they're fielding now. Reports say it's basically the F22 Raptor, meeting the SR-25 as an F15. Both are great, but one is MUCH better.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
[Ever meet an actual sniper certified soldier/marine/sailor? (Airforce doesn't have snipers) They re-adjust their weapons every 100 rounds anyway. Just to be on the safe side.

Choosing to check one's zero is quite different from knowing it's not going to hold beyond a relatively low round count. I think the problems of relying on a such a weapon in an austere/contested environment are pretty self-evident.