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 Grey Templar wrote:
The main issue with the Zip is that it was overcomplicating the "answer" to the question it was allegedly a response to. IE: Cheap mostly plastic gun. You could do that so easily without making it an unreliable pos. .22 rimfire is already so fickle, why make the action so weird? It really is hard to not think they were trying to make the worst gun imaginable.

Just copy a Ruger 10/22 action, put it a plastic toy pistol housing, make the barrel a steel sleeve inside a plastic tube, and call it good.

The ergonomics on it look terrible. Even if it ran perfectly, that's a big problem.

I'm a pretty big fan of "carry what works" rather than "carry the heaviest caliber you can," but I draw the line at .22 LR. It's just too fickle a cartridge. Anything in centerfire is an improvement. Yes, those are more expensive, but this is supposed to be a lifesaving device.

Yeah, its terrible. You're basically holding a brick.

Using an extended mag kinda helps because it gives something for your pinky and ring fingers to hold instead of empty air, but its still a square object that is a little too big for your hand to properly hold. And then you're probably wiggling the mag if you do that so it'll jam even more.

Doesn't help that one of the more(I use that term loosely) comfortable ways to hold it puts your hand covering up the ejection port.

Making the darn thing manually cycled might have helped its reliability.

A while back we had a discussion about firearms technology and the difference between black powder and smokeless powder.

Kentucky Ballistics has put these questions to the test, loading modern cartridges with black powder and attempting to fire them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SY3ocirx60c

TL;DR: 9mm casings could not hold enough black powder to even get the bullet through the barrel. Total fail. .45 ACP did better, and managed to achieve a muzzle velocity of 450 ft/sec. It also jammed up after 5-6 rounds and needed repeated flushing with water to clear.

Same for the AK and the AR - they could get maybe five rounds going and then total lockup. The rounds were clocked at around 1,000 fps.

Put simply, they don't work. There is a reason why the early repeaters relied on manual cycling (turn bolt, lever action, revolver) because black powder did not possess enough energy to push the bullet out and cycle the action, and the fouling was incredible.

Anyhow, fun to watch, and something to keep in mind in your post-apocalyptic RPG campaigns.

Do you reckon it would be possible, using modern materials, to make an automatic or semi-automatic that could work with blackpowder?

I’m guessing the spring has a minimum strength requirement for the cycling action to complete, as it’s moving the slide (?) and letting the spent casing eject, in enough time that it’s in a position for the next round to enter the firing chamber. So I can see that whilst a weedier, less resistant spring might compensate for black powder’s lack of oomph, the timing of the entire action just may not work?

Total guesswork of course from me.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Do you reckon it would be possible, using modern materials, to make an automatic or semi-automatic that could work with blackpowder?

No. Black powder was limited in the amount of pressure it could create. If you look at the various cartridges produced using it, they topped out because the powder simply could only burn so fast.

The combination of slow burning powder and fowling put an inherent limit on what black powder weapons could do.

The 1911 could have been boosted by making it .455 and using larger cartridge casings, but the fouling would still have been a problem. It's interesting that the British were content with using the same pressures in smokeless accepting the lesser fouling as a bonus.

Smokeless powder not only provided higher velocities in smaller packages, it also permitted moderate increases in existing cartridges with less cleaning.

I think you could probably make a gun that could theoretically cycle properly using black powder pressures. It would have to be a specially made cartridge and firearm for that purpose. But this gun would inevitably run into the issue that black powder is horribly dirty and would foul the gun within a few shots.

Such a gun would probably be a very large cartridge combined with a lightweight bolt and spring. Possibly direct blowback. I'm imagining a .45-70 scale cartridge that is direct blowback.

Other than the intellectual exercise this would be it is a totally useless idea. Smokeless powder is superior in every way, and is pretty easy to manufacture too. In some ways its actually easier than black powder. Even in the event of an apocalypse we will likely not lose smokeless powder in the process.

Could you make a combination of non-stick surface and fluid flushing system to sufficiently clean the action and barrel after each round?

You would end up with like a water jacketed MG, but the water is there for cleaning rather than cooling

The system could run off a secondary blank cartridge that fires only to provide energy to run the cleaning system, or some other external power pack.

 Flinty wrote:
Could you make a combination of non-stick surface and fluid flushing system to sufficiently clean the action and barrel after each round?

You would end up with like a water jacketed MG, but the water is there for cleaning rather than cooling

The system could run off a secondary blank cartridge that fires only to provide energy to run the cleaning system, or some other external power pack.

I suppose it is possible, but you would have a weapon that fires five shots and then needs to be flushed for 30 seconds or more. Not really efficient.

Better off with a lever action or bolt action, which is what people used.

Gatling Guns I believe predated smokeless powder, and the multiple barrels probably spread out the fouling.

Yes. Gatling guns spread the fouling out quite a bit. And IIRC while they were rifled they weren't as aggressively rifled as most rifles of the time were, they were closer to modern rifling.

Ye-old blackpowder rifles had fairly aggressive grooves for the rifling and you would force the lead ball down the length of the barrel. This would cut the rifling into the ball and give it a nice snug seal for the gas expansion. But you could only get 5-10 shots before you had to clean it because you simply could not force a ball down the barrel anymore as the residue in the rifling was too much.

And of course breech loading guns like the gatling gun didn't need to worry about that so that was the biggest contributor to multi-shot capability.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Do you reckon it would be possible, using modern materials, to make an automatic or semi-automatic that could work with blackpowder?

No. Black powder was limited in the amount of pressure it could create. If you look at the various cartridges produced using it, they topped out because the powder simply could only burn so fast.

The combination of slow burning powder and fowling put an inherent limit on what black powder weapons could do.

Maxim's original machine gun prototypes were demonstrated with black powder ammunition. Several of his patents relate to self-cleaning mechanisms. Gas operation is right out but recoil operation is surprisingly resilient to fouling.

Obviously smokeless makes it a lot easier, and was instrumental in self-loading firearms becoming successful, but it's not the hard no you make it out to be.

Another question!

Going back to comments about the Zip 22, without dwelling on that gun in particular. But online sources it was at least noted for its accuracy.

But what does that mean in the wider context? As in, imagine you’ve two pistols. Same calibre, same barrel length. Near as dammit identical designs. But one of the designs is noted as being more accurate.

Is that a reflection of manufacturing tolerances? Like the company takes pains to ensure the barrels are properly straight and with perfect rifling, whereas the other one has barrels slightly off True, with such tiny differences being more impacted the further the bullet goes?

Accuracy 'out of the box' won't have much to do with slightly off barrels and such on most modern firearms. I suspect mostly it will have to do with quality of trigger (especially for handguns) and how barrel is mounted/mates with chamber which is likely to be an engineering difference vs a quality control difference. But I'll let the much smarter than me crew jump in. (admittedly this is NOT my area of expertise).

I suspect that anecdotes on the Zip22s accuracy are because most of its shots are first shots not follow-ups. The first shot is always the most on target. Zip22 ensures you don't get a follow-up shot

I think its this as opposed to anything special about it's trigger or set-up that is inherently accurate.

Usually it is the trigger as CptJake says. A clean trigger break important so the effort to shoot it doesn't cause your aim to come off target.

 catbarf wrote:
Obviously smokeless makes it a lot easier, and was instrumental in self-loading firearms becoming successful, but it's not the hard no you make it out to be.

It has been proven to be a "hard no" on gas guns.

Maybe pure blowback would work, but I doubt you could fit enough black powder in a .32 ACP casing to push the bullet out of the barrel. If 9mm couldn't do it, a lot of other calibers would fail.

Could one re-engineer modern firearms to function in a black powder environment? Of course. But the best solutions were the ones historically arrived at - use a mechanism rather than the round's energy to cycle the action.

Now as to Zip 22, I'm just going to suggest that most reviewers will struggle to find something good to say about a terrible product. It's human nature.

"Well, the one round I fired was on target, so at least there's that," seems pretty faint praise, and I doubt anyone actually took Zip 22 and put it up against a Ruger Standard.

 CptJake wrote:
Accuracy 'out of the box' won't have much to do with slightly off barrels and such on most modern firearms. I suspect mostly it will have to do with quality of trigger (especially for handguns) and how barrel is mounted/mates with chamber which is likely to be an engineering difference vs a quality control difference. But I'll let the much smarter than me crew jump in. (admittedly this is NOT my area of expertise).

Was it eric on iraqveteran 8888 who alsao said that it was the meeting point of what the gun can do and what YOU can do?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Another question!

Going back to comments about the Zip 22, without dwelling on that gun in particular. But online sources it was at least noted for its accuracy.

But what does that mean in the wider context? As in, imagine you’ve two pistols. Same calibre, same barrel length. Near as dammit identical designs. But one of the designs is noted as being more accurate.

Is that a reflection of manufacturing tolerances? Like the company takes pains to ensure the barrels are properly straight and with perfect rifling, whereas the other one has barrels slightly off True, with such tiny differences being more impacted the further the bullet goes?

Accuracy is primarily a function of repeatability - how often the exact same thing comes together. There are certainly other components, and the human being is almost always the weakest one, but that's the benchmark for "accuracy" if you clamped it in a bench rest.

So, manufacturing tolerances play a role - the tighter the tolerance, the more precisely the same the action locks together each time. Then you get into details - 'generally', with rotating bolt designs, the more lugs, the more accurate the weapon. Rotating bolts are more accurate than something like a tilting barrel (which is a pistol only thing, really - but with modern QC, the tilting barrel is universally accepted because it's still good enough for basically any shooter).

Then there's ergonomic stuff - open bolt guns are more inaccurate than closed bolt ones, technically, not for any reason except that the inertia of the working parts slamming forward will move your point of aim.

Lots of things go into it.

It's a good question and I agree with most of the above. We have to consider that differences in accuracy can be divided into two categories. Practical accuracy is how accurate "you" are when shooting it, and inherent accuracy is how mechanically accurate the gun is when shot from a vise or rest.

I agree the trigger is probably the most important factor in practical accuracy. Your revolver is much more accurate when cocked and fired in single action then when using the double action trigger pull. Glocks with the heavier law enforcement trigger have less accuracy than the base model and much less accuracy than those with custom triggers. The harder/longer the trigger pull, the more the gun moves.

Better sights, ergonomics, grips, compensators, etc all fall under that category too. And with enough practice, you can mitigate at least some of the difference in practical accuracy between the same type of guns.

For inherent accuracy yes, the craftsmanship, fit, and quality of the parts makes a big difference. Ammunition can make a big difference, too. The more consistent the velocity of the ammo, the more reliably accurate.

Consider these two accuracy tests between two budget/mid Palmetto State and Aero AR-15s shooting high quality ammo, vs a top quality LaRue AR-15 shooting better but still not top of the line ammo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPhc1LNRbvw

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/1PAVbzFid9I

The various "budget" AR-15's use a lot of the same parts from the same places and are mostly still "combat" or accurate or better, and good enough for most use cases. Many of the ones from Bear Creek Arsenal were put together by completely unskilled workers picked up outside of Home Depot and are decidedly inferior in quality.

For some of the other recent commentary, if you believe the reports, Sgt Green killed over 500 enemy soldiers at San Juan Hill with one Gatling Gun! And I'm a little surprised no one mentioned the new semi auto "Dumpster Defender" Mossberg Aftershock as a gimmick gun.