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Made in us
Liche Priest Hierophant






Wait, so then wouldn't a punch gun just be a pistol, since it's designed to be fired with a single hand?

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Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut





Denison, Iowa

Anvildude wrote:
Wait, so then wouldn't a punch gun just be a pistol, since it's designed to be fired with a single hand?


I think it might be considered an Any Other Weapons because it can be considered "disguised" and not looking like a normal gun.
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut




Annandale, VA

cuda1179 wrote:Wait, HUH????? in NY it's not a pistol unless you have the ammunition needed to fire it, then it is a pistol?


Yes. You can buy a black powder revolver to hang on the mantle, but the second you possess black powder ammunition, it becomes considered a handgun and you need a pistol permit.

ATF doesn't care because it's not a firearm on a federal level. But the states have their own laws.

Anvildude wrote:Wait, so then wouldn't a punch gun just be a pistol, since it's designed to be fired with a single hand?


Most likely no, because while it's designed to be fired in one hand, there is precedent that being integrated into a glove makes it a concealed or disguised firearm and thus an AOW.

Not legal precedent, mind you- ATF only gives rulings on a case-by-case basis, so if you you want to know for certain, you have to mail it to ATF and they'll tell you. Seriously, that's how it works.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/05/06 03:47:33


   
Made in us
Dakka Veteran





Just to add to the state law soup.

In PA the firearms laws are uniform with the sole exception of Philadelphia. Since they are the only 'City of the First Class' some firearms laws are modified there. The big ones that come up are usually related to licenses to carry.

In PA, city of the first class simply means a population over 1M. No other city in the state even comes close to that.
   
Made in us
The Conquerer






Waiting for my shill money from Spiral Arm Studios

Got out to the range and put some lead through the DP12. The kick is quite manageable, even with some hot 00 buck. There is a noticeable difference in pattern placement between left and right barrel, so that is something you need to adjust for. Kinda rock left and right for each shot.

[Thumb - DP12 range.jpg]

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/05/07 04:47:45


Self-proclaimed evil Cat-person. Dues Ex Felines

Cato Sicarius, after force feeding Captain Ventris a copy of the Codex Astartes for having the audacity to play Deathwatch, chokes to death on his own D-baggery after finding Calgar assembling his new Eldar army.

MURICA!!! IN SPESS!!! 
   
Made in us
Lord of the Fleet





Seneca Nation of Indians

Veldrain wrote:
Just to add to the state law soup.

In PA the firearms laws are uniform with the sole exception of Philadelphia. Since they are the only 'City of the First Class' some firearms laws are modified there. The big ones that come up are usually related to licenses to carry.

In PA, city of the first class simply means a population over 1M. No other city in the state even comes close to that.


Pittsburgh, if you're looking at the whole urban area rather than just the 'city' would be one, at 1.7m (2.3 for the entire metro area) Philly kind of cheats since the entire county is also the 'city'.


Fate is in heaven, armor is on the chest, accomplishment is in the feet. - Nagao Kagetora
 
   
Made in us
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 BaronIveagh wrote:
Veldrain wrote:
Just to add to the state law soup.

In PA the firearms laws are uniform with the sole exception of Philadelphia. Since they are the only 'City of the First Class' some firearms laws are modified there. The big ones that come up are usually related to licenses to carry.

In PA, city of the first class simply means a population over 1M. No other city in the state even comes close to that.


Pittsburgh, if you're looking at the whole urban area rather than just the 'city' would be one, at 1.7m (2.3 for the entire metro area) Philly kind of cheats since the entire county is also the 'city'.


Considering no one in Pittsburgh or Allegheny County can agree on anything, I don't see them following Philly's example at all. Erie tried the same move a few years a ago and the smaller boroughs laughed in their face.
   
Made in gb
Ridin' on a Snotling Pump Wagon






A potentially interesting video on the most basic firearms versus the best armour of the same age.




I can recommend the entire channel as they’re more into accuracy over drama, without being dry as a Nun’s chuff over it.

   
Made in us
Liche Priest Hierophant






Ooh... This could be a great resource for all the D&D "I want to balance my homebrew firearms correctly!" crowd.

GENERATION 8: The first time you see this, copy and paste it into your sig and add 1 to the number after generation. Consider it a social experiment.

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Made in us
The Conquerer






Waiting for my shill money from Spiral Arm Studios

There are a few problems with that test though. Mainly because getting "authentic" medieval armor suitable for testing is difficult. Real medieval armor would have varied in quality greatly depending on the smith who forged it and what materials he had access to, all the crappy medieval armor wasn't kept around as heirlooms for museums to later find and preserve. So our samples of medieval armor is heavily biased towards the higher end stuff.

Plus the AC system that DnD uses is far too simplistic to really do plate armor justice.

Self-proclaimed evil Cat-person. Dues Ex Felines

Cato Sicarius, after force feeding Captain Ventris a copy of the Codex Astartes for having the audacity to play Deathwatch, chokes to death on his own D-baggery after finding Calgar assembling his new Eldar army.

MURICA!!! IN SPESS!!! 
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut




Annandale, VA

 Grey Templar wrote:
There are a few problems with that test though. Mainly because getting "authentic" medieval armor suitable for testing is difficult. Real medieval armor would have varied in quality greatly depending on the smith who forged it and what materials he had access to, all the crappy medieval armor wasn't kept around as heirlooms for museums to later find and preserve. So our samples of medieval armor is heavily biased towards the higher end stuff.


You're not wrong, but it's worth noting that the third gun in the lineup- a matchlock arquebus- was one of the main reasons why armor fell out of common use in the mid-1500s.

Steel plate isn't particularly 'medieval' to begin with, either, only starting to reach common use in the mid 1400s, shortly before the development of the matchlock. The zenith of plate armor in the early 1500s coincided with the refinement of the haakbus (the second gun) into early arquebuses, which would have struggled against plate armor at a distance, but could easily penetrate at close range, and in Italian and Spanish use were supported by muskets with much greater penetrative power and effective range. At Cerignola in 1503, French heavy cavalry were slaughtered by Spanish arquebusiers and cannons, marking the start of a century of Spanish battlefield supremacy based on infantry-borne small arms. By the mid-1500s, matchlock arquebuses like the one in the video could defeat any practical plate armor at typical combat ranges, and muskets became unnecessary. By then the main purpose of plate was to defend against shot fired from several hundred yards, pistol fire (lower caliber and lower velocity) at closer range or in melee, and hand to hand weapons.

Knights encased head to toe with plate didn't coexist with man-portable firearms for very long, and were never proof against long arms. So... If you want guns in D&D, you either have to downplay their penetrative capabilities substantially, limit them to only the most primitive handgonnes (the first gun in the video), or accept that your fighter in shining plate armor is highly vulnerable to gunfire in a system that doesn't handle armor penetration or injury modeling very well to begin with.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/05/11 20:32:26


   
Made in gb
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They’ve got a video on Siege Crossbows (1,000lb draw weight!), which explained because they were slow to fire, it’s likely they would’ve held off until the Knights drew closer, ensuring greater accuracy and of course efficiency.

I can see much the same being true of these guns. After all, the Knights had to come to you, because that’s what they did.

If it’s mounted Knights, there’s all sorts to hit. And you don’t really need to penetrate the armour, just hit with sufficient force to unhorse the rider. With enough hits, whether or not they’re kill shots, the charge might be disrupted (especially if the Knights behind have to charge over the Knights to the front as they fall.

I’d be interested to look into what effect early firearms had on the horses. Any horse needs strict training to turn it into a warhorse. Add in big old bangs, whinnies of pain from stablemates and the smoke of early black powder? That’s possibly just as dangerous as the shot.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Grey Templar wrote:
There are a few problems with that test though. Mainly because getting "authentic" medieval armor suitable for testing is difficult. Real medieval armor would have varied in quality greatly depending on the smith who forged it and what materials he had access to, all the crappy medieval armor wasn't kept around as heirlooms for museums to later find and preserve. So our samples of medieval armor is heavily biased towards the higher end stuff.

Plus the AC system that DnD uses is far too simplistic to really do plate armor justice.


I kind of like that they use the same breastplate, because at least it offers some kind of benchmark and consistency.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/05/11 21:11:44


   
Made in us
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Annandale, VA

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
They’ve got a video on Siege Crossbows (1,000lb draw weight!), which explained because they were slow to fire, it’s likely they would’ve held off until the Knights drew closer, ensuring greater accuracy and of course efficiency.

I can see much the same being true of these guns. After all, the Knights had to come to you, because that’s what they did.

If it’s mounted Knights, there’s all sorts to hit. And you don’t really need to penetrate the armour, just hit with sufficient force to unhorse the rider. With enough hits, whether or not they’re kill shots, the charge might be disrupted (especially if the Knights behind have to charge over the Knights to the front as they fall.

I’d be interested to look into what effect early firearms had on the horses. Any horse needs strict training to turn it into a warhorse. Add in big old bangs, whinnies of pain from stablemates and the smoke of early black powder? That’s possibly just as dangerous as the shot.


The problem with holding fire until the enemy draws close is discipline, which was the main problem for infantry of all types during the era of conscripted levies, and particularly an issue with early firearms. There are a lot of discrete actions needed to load and fire a black powder firearm, and standing in dense formation with lit matches, loose powder, and poor training is a recipe for disaster. Handgunners/arquebusiers had to be trained well enough not to blow themselves up while reloading, to stay in formation and trust in their pikemen as the enemy bore down on them, to hold fire until the enemy reached close range, and (later) to retire by rank or retire by file to enable volley fire. Pikes, as well, were weapons that required extensive training and discipline to use effectively.

The Swiss were the first to develop professional mercenary armies and saw great success with pike formations, but it was the addition of firearms under the German (landsknecht) and Italian (condottieri) mercenary systems, subsequently followed by the Spanish adoption of a standing professional army rather than mercenaries, that allowed infantry to finally displace heavy cavalry as primary combatants. The Spanish tercio was the quintessential early modern infantry formation, combining well-disciplined pike and shot formations to counter enemy infantry and cavalry.

However, heavy cavalry didn't go away- they updated accordingly. Lances were gradually replaced with wheellock pistols, and often employed in a caracole formation pioneered by the Spanish. Rather than charge the enemy, the cavalry would advance to around a hundred paces from the enemy, fire pistols (usually two, sometimes more), and then retire to reload and attack again. Once the infantry were sufficiently disrupted, then the cavalry charged. This saved them from having to charge into formed pike or eating volley fire from massed arquebusiers.

But these weren't knights anymore, as the feudal system was long gone; they were usually mercenaries, just like the infantry they fought.

Also, to answer your question- horses are terrified of gunfire, and desensitizing them was a basic part of training a warhorse. In addition to getting them accustomed to being surrounded and teaching them to trample, it was common to subject them to explosions, or even deliberately deafen them, so as to reduce their hearing sensitivity and aversion to the noise of firearms.

Edit: Oh yeah, and the inaccuracy of early firearms is often drastically exaggerated or overstated, to the point of being more of a meme than fact. 16th century arquebuses could engage massed formations at ranges up to 200-300yds, while muskets (bigger, heavier weapons that had to be mounted on forked rests to fire) could engage at as far as 500yds. Their operators- again, professional mercenaries- practiced marksmanship just as they practiced drill. It is absolutely not true, despite popular depictions, that they could not hit the broad side of a barn and had to wait until the enemy were at point blank before they had any hope of hitting, nor is it true at all that guns (or crossbows) were successful because they were easy to build or because just anybody could use one. Low effective ranges on firearms are most commonly attributed to 18th and 19th century conflicts and were primarily the result of smaller infantry formations (harder targets), irregular warfare (particularly in North America), and nonexistent training among conscript armies. So yeah, arquebusiers and musketeers were able to engage cavalry with effectiveness out to surprising distances, and this was one of the factors that pushed cavalry towards maintaining distance until the infantry were broken. I've got a whole rant about the nonsense pop history takes on bows vs early guns but I won't get into that unless anyone actually wants to hear it.

Also, you can't unhorse a rider with a bullet, unless they just fall off because they're stunned by the impact. Impact on the target is less than recoil on the shooter. People getting blown over by gunshots is pure Hollywood.

This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2021/05/12 03:28:19


   
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The Conquerer






Waiting for my shill money from Spiral Arm Studios

The "myth" of early firearms being inaccurate partially comes from a misunderstanding of the purpose of ranged weapons in massed combat. You're not actually shooting at a single specific target, that notion is a thoroughly modern idea. Prior to WW1 ranged weapons were used to bombard an area with projectiles. You only aimed at specific targets within very close range or if you had a specialized weapon capable of long range accurate shooting.

Yes, an arqubus isn't as accurate over long range as a crossbow if you are trying to hit a specific man-sized target. But it is just as good at hitting a general area with a volley of shots from a large unit of arqubusiers as a unit of crossbowmen will be.

 catbarf wrote:


You're not wrong, but it's worth noting that the third gun in the lineup- a matchlock arquebus- was one of the main reasons why armor fell out of common use in the mid-1500s.


Not really. It was more that armor was just too expensive. As armies became professional organizations paid for by the state as opposed to noble retinues and mercenaries armor was just dropped as an unnecessary expense. but still saw use for pikemen and heavy cavalry up until those units were abandoned entirely. Guns were not the sole driving force behind armor being abandoned, and indeed didn't become strong enough to make it totally useless till well after armor had been abandoned. It was more down to societal and strategic pressures disfavoring heavily armored cavalry and infantry. Large armies are easier to equip and train when you're just issuing your soldiers pikes and crossbows/arqubus and aren't needing to bother with making armor. the metal from that armor can go towards making more pikes and guns.

Lots of people forget that guns took a long time to become the dominant weapons. There was a good 200 years where guns were used alongside crossbows, longbows, and pikes in a combined arms period where there was constant push and pull between different experiments in what was most effective. Guns weren't so obviously the best choice until the 1800s.

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Annandale, VA

 Grey Templar wrote:
Yes, an arqubus isn't as accurate over long range as a crossbow if you are trying to hit a specific man-sized target.


That's what I'm saying is a myth.

In the 80s, the staff of the Styrian Armory in Austria conducted a live fire test on the early modern firearms in their collection. Accuracy with 1500s-era muskets amounted to about 50% hits at 100yds, but 100% hits at 30yds. That doesn't seem like a lot, but Italian crossbowmen of the era engaged even massed targets at no more than 100yds, and firing on point targets beyond 50yds was unheard of. Arquebuses and muskets were- if the soldier was up to the task- capable of engaging with greater accuracy at greater range.

I mean, these guns were significantly more expensive to produce than crossbows, required a greater logistical train, and required significantly more training. They displaced crossbows through raw effectiveness- they weren't just as good at hitting a general area, they were better, along with greater lethality and armor penetration. The same goes for the vaunted English longbow, which for all the mystique attached to it was outclassed and relegated to a militia weapon even in English use by the early 1600s.

 Grey Templar wrote:
but still saw use for pikemen and heavy cavalry up until those units were abandoned entirely.


Not as full plate, though. The archetypical knight in shining full plate was a battlefield element for all of half a century before the amount of armor started to scale back. By the late 1500s pikemen and heavy cavalry were typically wearing no more than a cuirass and sometimes a helmet. Into the 1600s it was common for infantry and some heavy cavalry- like the German Reiters, who used wheellock pistols as their primary weapons- to have no armor at all. It wasn't worth the cost and inconvenience (especially on march) once it could no longer stand up to common weapons of the period.

The abandonment of armor did not directly coincide with the rise of state armies. If you look at contemporary depictions of Landsknecht you can track a gradual reduction in armor over the course of the 1500s, long before the mercenary companies were dissolved.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Lots of people forget that guns took a long time to become the dominant weapons. There was a good 200 years where guns were used alongside crossbows, longbows, and pikes in a combined arms period where there was constant push and pull between different experiments in what was most effective. Guns weren't so obviously the best choice until the 1800s.


That's way too late. Of the continental armies, the Italians held onto crossbows the longest but retired them in favor of firearms during the early 1500s. As far as infantry composition, the Spanish and Swedes were using a 1:1 ratio of shot to pike by the mid-1500s, climbing to 3:1, 5:1, and in some cases as high as 10:1 during the Thirty Years War. By the time Gustavus Adolphus was killed in action at Lützen in 1632, the firearm was the dominant battlefield weapon and pikes retained solely to protect against cavalry. A contemporary depiction of the battle shows this well (see below).

When plug bayonets became widely adopted at the end of the 1600s, melee-armed infantry disappeared entirely.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/05/12 15:07:27


   
Made in gb
Ridin' on a Snotling Pump Wagon






May have been woefully under informed, but at least I’ve kicked off some very cool discussion

   
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Liche Priest Hierophant






I'll say that if you want a completely a-historic example of this time period and sort of combat, check out the "Ring of Fire" novel series by Eric Flint et. al.

It's about a West Virginia coal-mining town that gets flung back to 1632 Germany. (1632 is, by the way, the name of the first novel in the series- almost all the titles are dates, which makes finding them annoying as heck.)

That's where I first really even was made aware of that period of combined-arms warfare.

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Monarchy of TBD

I can speak to the replacement of the longbow by firearms as well. The thing is, it is really not very difficult to acquire basic proficiency with a firearm. Put a peasant through 2 months of training, and they can be about as deadly as a longbowman.

In contrast, a good longbowman takes a lifetime. They can identify longbow users from just their bones- using one over time adapts the arms in very predictable ways. It's literally a lifetime weapon to get one to perform with the stats we see quoted.


https://kriii.com/english-bowmen/

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Liche Priest Hierophant






Also why Crossbows were so controversial- They're easier than firearms in terms of training, and similar in deadliness.

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Seneca Nation of Indians

Anvildude wrote:
Also why Crossbows were so controversial- They're easier than firearms in terms of training, and similar in deadliness.


That and a kevlar vest might not stop it.


Fate is in heaven, armor is on the chest, accomplishment is in the feet. - Nagao Kagetora
 
   
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Annandale, VA

 Gitzbitah wrote:
I can speak to the replacement of the longbow by firearms as well. The thing is, it is really not very difficult to acquire basic proficiency with a firearm. Put a peasant through 2 months of training, and they can be about as deadly as a longbowman.

In contrast, a good longbowman takes a lifetime. They can identify longbow users from just their bones- using one over time adapts the arms in very predictable ways. It's literally a lifetime weapon to get one to perform with the stats we see quoted.

https://kriii.com/english-bowmen/


That too; the English longbow design required such a lifelong commitment that English law outright required longbow practice for the peasantry. But I would caveat that most arquebusiers in European service were typically well trained and experienced, as the drills to march in formation, fire by rank and retire, and simply to reload a weapon with 20+ individual steps (while holding a match lit at both ends, handling loose powder, and packed shoulder to shoulder) took time. On top of that, equipment was self-bought rather than issued, so a non-negligible amount of capital was needed to outfit an arquebusier. Commanders in the 1500s/1600s hated trying to levy peasants- in addition to being difficult to make into effective combatants, they had no impetus to fight and would seek any opportunity to desert and return to their farms. They overwhelmingly preferred to raise their own mercenary companies for the military season (spring to fall), and recruit veterans when possible.

Anyways, to now execute the rant I threatened earlier: There are a bunch of things that annoy me about pop history comparisons between bows vs crossbows. One of the big ones is that the English longbow is a historical oddity, rather than archetypical for what a bow could do. The shortbows in overwhelmingly more common use in European conflicts (let alone those used in the Middle East or Asia from horseback) were significantly weaker, shorter-ranged, and less powerful.

Then you've got types of crossbow. You'll often see comparisons of rate of fire suggesting that longbows could loose something like ten shots per minute, while crossbows could do one. Well, practically speaking, that means you're talking about a crossbow with a windlass or other sort of pulley mechanism, and those crossbows had ridiculous power. If you look at the kind of crossbow that actually does get beaten by a longbow for range, like one with a simple stirrup or gaffe lever, those have comparable practical rate of fire to a bow. And you are not getting ten shots off in one minute with a 150lb warbow.

Third, there's a lot of apples-to-oranges comparisons in effective range. While bolts generally don't have the same range as arrows for a given power output (due to their shorter, thicker design), a lot of times the range advantages attributed to bows are comparing plunging fire against massed targets (ie shooting upwards at a 45 degree angle) versus direct fire from a crossbow. Crossbows are less efficient about converting draw weight to energy, but once you start looking at 600+lb crossbows (military designs got up as high as 1300lbs during the Renaissance), they have more energy in the projectile than a 150lb English longbow and can reach as far or farther, while being much easier to aim, especially against point targets. More importantly, once a crossbow is spanned it has a reliable energy output, while archers lose their strength in a hurry if performing rapid fire during a battle. And one of the most popularly referenced examples of longbows outranging crossbows- Crecy, 1346- notably featured the Genoese crossbowmen crippled by their bowstrings being saturated in the rain.

Plus, ranges given for English longbows often assume the use of hunting or practice arrows; heavyweight war arrows (broadhead or bodkin point) had lesser range. In the mid-1500s Henry VIII mandated that flight (practice) arrows be used at > 220yds, while military arrows practiced at below this range. Ralph Payne-Gallwey, a 19th century author who tested surviving military crossbows from the 1400s, found an effective range of 300-400yds, with the longbows struggling to reach 300yds with military arrows in typical use. Modern tests bear out these claims.

Lastly: The idea that crossbows (or firearms) displaced bows because they required little training and any old jackass could use one has little basis in actual history. Crossbowmen, like the arquebusiers who followed them, were well-trained and highly-paid specialists operating expensive and mechanically complex pieces of equipment. They became popular not as peasant's weapons (peasants were accustomed to using bows for hunting; that's why they continued so long in English use), but as the forefront of the rising movement of professional mercenaries. And no, Pope Innocent II didn't ban crossbows; he tried to ban all forms of bows, jousting, tournaments, and fighting from Thursday to Sunday, with the results going as well as you could expect. In the 12th-14th centuries, the English paid longbowmen about the same as ordinary infantrymen, but crossbowmen (particularly Italian crossbowmen) commanded up to 50% higher pay.

As for why pop history says that longbows were superior weapons but crossbows or guns were cheap and easy to use: Because the Victorians loved narratives about the old traditions being superior to mass-produced technology, and the lifelong commitment and national uniqueness of the English longbow made it a perfect symbol. Much of the modern understanding of the Middle Ages (not just in terms of warfare) comes from Victorian scholars and is colored by their biases.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/05/14 15:35:21


   
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Bravo!

I mean, I also just like crossbows in general, but BRAVO!

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More things wot I never knew. Ammo can be crap. Ammo can be good.



   
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The Conquerer






Waiting for my shill money from Spiral Arm Studios

Ammo definitely can have an expiration date. See the Kentucky Ballistics SLAP rounds exploding 50cal. Most likely caused by old ammunition where the powder degraded in a dangerous fashion.




Particularly older types of powder can degrade as they age. Sometimes the powder becomes weaker. Sometimes it becomes more powerful. Depends on the chemical composition. Usually caused by the degradation of the oxidizing agent in the powder. It might make the powder burn faster(and thus be much hotter) or it might make it burn slower relative to when it was first manufactured.

If you're dealing with some old 7.62x39 ammo, even if the powder degrades to become hotter it is unlikely to cause such a catastrophic failure(though it is still possible). .50BMG is just such a big round that that much powder degrading to become hotter was a bigger problem than normal.

A good warning that if you're shooting some really old .50BMG you might want to consider pulling the bullets and reloading them just so you can be sure the powder hasn't become dangerous.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/05/17 04:38:35


Self-proclaimed evil Cat-person. Dues Ex Felines

Cato Sicarius, after force feeding Captain Ventris a copy of the Codex Astartes for having the audacity to play Deathwatch, chokes to death on his own D-baggery after finding Calgar assembling his new Eldar army.

MURICA!!! IN SPESS!!! 
   
Made in gb
Ridin' on a Snotling Pump Wagon






With the pulling the bullets, I’m guessing that taking the projectile out of the jacket/casing.

Is it then empty and refill the jacket/casing and pop the projectile back in, or do you just reuse the projectile?

   
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That looks like it hurt XD

EDIT: Dear god it gets worse XD You watch more and move of the video and then you get to the part where he pulls his shirt down and its like "gak this dude almost died." That's some insane stuff. I wouldn't have though a bullet, even a big one like that, could blow off with that kind of force. Blasting the gun apart is one thing in my head, actually shearing pieces off and producing shrapnel is some holy feth stuff XD

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/05/17 12:42:08


   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut




Annandale, VA

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
With the pulling the bullets, I’m guessing that taking the projectile out of the jacket/casing.

Is it then empty and refill the jacket/casing and pop the projectile back in, or do you just reuse the projectile?


Casings corrode and develop weak points, powder breaks down and/or is infiltrated by moisture, primers can lose their sensitivity but aren't worth the hassle to extract from cases.

So if you have old ammo that looks fine (no visible corrosion), you can dump the powder, reload it with new powder, and reinsert the bullet. Then the only thing you need to worry about is the primers, but that's more of a functional annoyance (they might not trigger, or they might pop out of the case and cause jams) than a safety issue.

With really bad ammo, like the Turkish surplus Ian showcased in that video, the best you can do is save the bullets and dump the rest.

Also yeah that Kentucky Ballistics guy very nearly died as a result of old ammo. There's a tremendous amount of energy involved and kabooms can be catastrophic. I regularly shoot sealed surplus ammo but nothing with visible corrosion or damage, and I certainly wouldn't roll the dice on anything as spicy as .50BMG.

   
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So how long does it take for ammo to go dodgy?

In the video I shared, WW2 sounds pretty obvious for being dodgy. But are we talking a few years, a decade?

   
Made in ch
The Dread Evil Lord Varlak





 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
So how long does it take for ammo to go dodgy?

In the video I shared, WW2 sounds pretty obvious for being dodgy. But are we talking a few years, a decade?


Depends on the ammo.

Military history visualized had a good video on how ammunition type by material impacted the Wehrmacht's accuracy. (The wehrmacht had brass shortages which forced them to manufacture steel ammo which is worse for many reasons, including performance due to variability in material e.g. Pressure and of course rust, i am unsure in which video that was.... probably something about logistics.... or was it on his second channel.. )

Steel ammo probably will go dodgy far earlier simply because steel corrodes. Never mind it allready has for guns not designed for primary use for steel ammo worse operational capability.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/05/17 15:00:59


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Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut




Annandale, VA

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
So how long does it take for ammo to go dodgy?

In the video I shared, WW2 sounds pretty obvious for being dodgy. But are we talking a few years, a decade?


Depends on the exact ammo and storage conditions, so you basically have to do research. I shoot 50s and 60s era Soviet surplus all the time (stored in sealed tins) and it's totally fine; while the .50 BMG SLAP round that exploded was 80s/90s production.

Generally speaking, powder/primer degradation is on the order of decades, but it can occur in different ways so the effects depend on exactly what it was loaded with in the first place. Could just result in lower velocity, could result in hang-fires (where the gun goes click, there's a pause, and then bang), could result in your gun exploding and putting you in the hospital. It's astronomically more likely to just not work well than it is to blow up, and I should point out that the SLAP round that kaboomed is an atypical cartridge design.

Case degradation are usually more related to storage conditions. Ammo left exposed to atmosphere near the ocean will corrode in a hurry and could become unusable after as little as a few years, while sealed tins of milsurp will last forever. Note that if you have ammo exposed to air it's also common for moisture to infiltrate the cartridge over time and render the powder and primer less sensitive or potentially inert.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Not Online!!! wrote:
Steel ammo probably will go dodgy far earlier simply because steel corrodes.


Brass corrodes too, and steel ammunition is normally lacquered both to protect against corrosion and to facilitate extraction.

Soviet ammo was almost all steel-cased and was intended to last indefinitely in arsenal storage. Most of it still works fine today.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/05/17 15:11:18


   
 
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