How a Handgun Works: 1911 .45
animagraffs.com
animagraffs.com
Better animation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6SmlOEzNBs
Watch the barrel. In the OP the entire barrel floats up and down slightly. That's incorrect. The breech end of the barrel moves up and down, the other end not so much. This is important because the angle between the barrel and the next round doesn't change in the former. Check the vid at about 3:24, after the assembly, to see what I'm talking about.
Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKRMcTlbWTs
And the recoil animation is wrong. The gun in the OP is recoiling while the bullet is still in the barrel. That's logical, but in reality recoil only gets going after the bullet is away. Once it's out of the way the remaining propellants really accelerate, causing the bulk of the recoil. That's why recoil doesn't impact accuracy. Flinching in anticipation of recoil is another matter.
Watch this gun at 00:10 and note it doesn't move until the bullet is long gone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um9Eos9bJDk
Proper 1911 recoil animation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H3IFJXxyEs&list=PL1469B47BB...
If this is typical of animagraffs, it might be a really weak starting point.
Someone went to all the trouble of making drawings, animations, and written copy without even explaining the difference between blowback and locked breach operation. Someone taking in all that text and looking at the drawings might have some serious delusions of understanding. In the case of a pistol it's especially weird: it really is simple enough that it seems like you could explain how it works using these methods.
This kind of problem deserves its own word. I suggest we call it pseudodetail.
Blowback is appropriate for lower power rounds. As power increases, the mass of slide and stiffness of spring must increase, and at some point may become impractical. So for locked breech actions, some other mechanism is used to lock the breech closed until after the bullet as left the barrel.
In the case of the 1911, is the combination of the locking lugs and and the pivoting link. The locking lugs lock the barrel into the slide, so that when fired the barrel and slide initially travel together rearwards. The pivoting link (that thing behind the recoil spring) allows the entire barrel to drop down as it travels backwards. As it drops, the lugs disengage with the slide, allowing the slide the continue to the rear and open the breech. All of this is calculated so that the pressure is safe when this occurs.
There are a variety of ways to do locked breech. The 1911's action (tilting barrel) is particularly influential.
OTOH, if you were trying to recreate firearms in a "world has ended" situation, an open bolt SMG like the Sten would probably be your first choice.
Firearms, especially pistols, would be pretty far down on the list of technologies I'd want to recreate -- irrigation, communication, and direct production technologies seem a lot more important.
For a 1911 design for example, the actual patent and patent drawings would not quite be enough give you the dimensions nor location of the swinging link. It would take either quite a bit of tinkering, or sitting around and mathing (or both) to figure it out. Certainly not impossible, but I think the effort required goes a bit beyond your intention when you said 'basic level of machine shop skill'.
If you were stuck in your position, an optimist in human nature would pick something like a break-open shotgun. Not useless for self defense, but really useful for hunting - which you presumably would have to do for a bit while bootstrapping civilization again. If you weren't so optimistic... oh ya, totally an open bolt SMG.
I've never thought of lever action rifles as having a complexity worth the gains, I prefer going down to the bolt action or up to a semi-auto. Which, for that matter, can be fairly simple for lighter rounds, in fact, you have to add complexity to keep many (all??) of the designs from being full auto.
Parts count of a bolt action is a bit smaller, but that's potentially deceptive. I'm pretty sure the tolerances are actually much tighter with a bolt action. If that isn't a problem, yeah, it's down to whatever gun can be cheaply produced in volume. (I'm sympathetic to the idea that a stamped-receiver semiauto might be a good idea as well)
My opinion here is influenced by the way lever-actions gained so much popularity in warfare and the old West even though bolt-actions were an older design.
> And a lot easier to make strong?
I imagine that's a function of metallurgy in either case. The grizzly-killing lever-action .45-70s in existence today are 140-year old designs scaled up with better materials.
Revolvers have hung onto their reputation for superior reliability with some people but there's so much that can go wrong, and so much that's pretty difficult to fix. In contrast you can build a semiauto that can be taken completely apart without any special tools or knowledge.
A book which is somewhat similar is "The Way Things Work" (the old German one, not the happy mammoth one): http://www.amazon.com/Way-Things-Work-Illustrated-Encycloped...
There's a pretty well known concept around writing "Restart Civilization" texts (They make an appearance in another niven/pournelle book, The Mote in Gods Eye) - I just think the animagraffs would be a useful addition to the tools in which to do so.
This is the primary reason why the army replaced the 1911 with the Baretta M9, a 9mm pistol with much less recoil and a larger magazine size. The M9 is much less prone to jamming for a number of reasons, but the bullet is much lighter and has significantly less stopping power. A .45 round will generally put someone on their ass even if it doesn't kill them from kinetic energy alone; the same can't be said for a 9mm.
After watching this site I noticed that jam is... mechanical issues, SPECIALLY with the slide, on this weapon, I believed this weapon had a special semi-auto mechanism, that is, that something ensured the slide would slide back, after seeing it slides back purely from recoil I concluded two things:
One, it is a hell of a recoil... (otherwise the slide would not slide back).
Two, it only works if you don't let the gun go backwards, if you shoot, and allow it to go back, the energy of the recoil will be spent by your body, not the slide, thus the slide won't slide, thus you will have to slide manually... Making it very non-semi-auto.
Also I noticed the ejector also rely on some small machined parts (like the one that hold the cartridge rim), and thus if not made properly will probably fail (the slide will go back but the cartridge won't go back with it, this probably would be the sort of jam that is an actual jam, you would need to push the cartridge out with another object).
And the amount of springs I am seeing around, mean cyclic fatigue failure of the metal probably causes a couple of issues, I think that a frequently fired gun probably more than cleaning also might require frequent change of springs.
There is a reason cartridges are made of brass: it's hard, but it's softer than the steel that the gun is made of. So wear and tear on the ejector mechanism is lessened. Same with the bullet, which is a softer metal than the barrel.
And yes, the .45 specifically has a hell of a recoil, though the weight of the slide has a lot to do with it as well. Just remember your basic physics: if you're ejecting a 20g projectile at 1200fps, the 600g slide is going to travel backwards at 40 fps (which is still very fast).
Cyclic fatigue is also a thing; which is why you make sure to keep your springs lubricated and replace them periodically. A gun is a machine that must be maintained properly, like any other.
The 1911 I believe was designed around a ~230 grain projectile (15 grams) that fired at about 850ft/s. There are some 185gr. rounds on the market today that do advertise the 1150-ish ft/s. velocity, but I find in practice that the feel isn't markedly different.
Along those lines, it's important to note that "felt recoil" is perceived somewhat differently to different people (grip strength, hand size, body type), and some people are simply more sensitive to recoil than others. Case in point: I don't find the 1911's recoil to be particularly notable; some think it kicks like a mule. If you're firing heavier projectiles, it'll feel like more of a push than a snap, but it's definitely not unpleasant (the impulse of the recoil is just as important). The 185gr. rounds tend to be a bit snappier (shorter, faster recoil), but still manageable. I'd classify "hell of a recoil" as anything from .44 magnum on up, and there's plenty of large, really ugly calibers out there that are probably very unpleasant to shoot (500S&W comes to mind). The .45ACP is definitely not one unless you're shooting it from a much smaller gun.
Since we're on the topic of felt recoil and considering it is also a function of the weight of the gun, I'd much rather shoot a 1911 than some of the tiny .380 autos on the market like the Ruger LCP [1]. If it's unpleasant to shoot, you're not as likely to practice with it. Even the smaller calibers can hurt if the gun is light enough. :)
And yeah, any sort of magnum cartridge (.357, .44, .50) is a beast because it has double the powder load. The .50 S&W in particular, as you mentioned, has so much recoil that it's prone to double-firing (S&W even recommends that you only load 1 round at a time). But among standard handgun cartridges, I still think the .45 kicks a lot more than say, a 9mm. It's also just big enough that you can't really stagger the rounds in a magazine without making it super-wide; hence why a standard 1911 holds 8 (7+1) rounds and 9mm pistols of the same weight can hold 15+. I find a modern .45 like the USP (12 rounds) to be uncomfortably wide for me to hold; though a Glock 17 (9mm, 17 round mag) is fine. That definitely makes the recoil feel worse.
Eh, it doesn't really matter, IMO!
Realistically, no matter what the math might say, felt recoil is still a subjective spectrum (within reason, obviously too much force is going to hurt), because two people can fire the same gun and have different reactions.
Although, you definitely wouldn't catch me with a .500S&W ;) There comes a point when it's too much gun to be enjoyable.
My father had a .454 Casull once. He sold it because he could only go through a couple cylinders before a blister would wear on his hand through gloves. I've since borrowed his philosophy: If a gun hurts a bit too much to be fun, there's no point owning it!
If I'd put that same amount of ammo through my Glock 17, I would have had a sore wrist at least for a little while. I find the 9mm to be more of a "kick" while the 45 is a "shove".
The construction of the gun is going to make a difference as well - the Glock is mostly polymer with a metal slide, slide rails, barrel, and some other internal parts (mag liner, etc) while the 1911 is mostly steel.
Google says the SR1911CMD is 36.4oz, while the Glock 19 is 23.65oz, unloaded.
In your example, the projectile has...
1/2 * 20g * (365 m/s)^2 = 1330 joules
1/2 * 600g * (12.2 m/s)^2 = 44 joules
1/2 * 0.600kg * (x m/s)^2 = 1330 joules
0.300kg * (x m/s)^2 = 1330 joules
(x m/s)^2 = 4433 m^2/s^2
x = 66.58 m/s
Another nitpick: I think your example is not representative. A 20 gram bullet and 600 gram slide are both very heavy for a handgun. Using typical numbers: Hydra-shok 9mm +P has a bullet weighing 8 grams, which exits the muzzle at 350 meters per second. That gives 490 joules of kinetic energy. I weighed the slide on my Sig Sauer P239 at 300 grams. Plug those numbers in, and you get a slide traveling backwards at 57 meters per second. Not too different, but worth mentioning.
That said, I completely agree with everything else in your comment. Thank you for explaining the intricacies of handgun and ammunition metallurgy.
Those malfunctions are referred to as a "bore obstruction" and a "misfire" respectively. A bore obstruction during firing is very dangerous, as it results in the chamber pressure exceeding design limits, which may cause a catastrophic failure of the weapon. Misfires are usually due to defective ammunition or a failure to hit the primer hard enough (hammer or striker spring too weak, firing pin too short or the chamber or ammunition having incorrect dimensions).
One, it is a hell of a recoil
Almost all semi-automatic handguns are recoil-operated, including .22 rimfires, which are known for having almost no recoil. Generating enough force to cycle the action is not at all difficult; the major difficulty in handgun design was actually the converse: keeping the action from cycling too quickly. Using a heavier slide and stiffer spring is one option, but it becomes unattractive with anything but low-powered cartridges. Most pistols designed for police, military and self defense, using medium-power cartridges like 9mm and .45 auto use a locked breech action like the 1911 shown here. It and its prototypes were the first to use the tilting barrel mechanism which is found on most pistols today.
The alternative to recoil operation is gas operation, in which a port in the barrel diverts some of the propellant gasses to push on a piston to operate the mechanism. It is common for rifles, which typically use more powerful, higher-pressure ammunition than pistols, but rarely found on pistols. The Desert Eagle is a notable exception.
The .45's recoil is not generally considered severe. Most people find it milder than the .40 S&W cartridge used by the majority of US police today, itself developed as a milder-recoiling version of the 10mm auto cartridge.
Two, it only works if you don't let the gun go backwards, if you shoot, and allow it to go back, the energy of the recoil will be spent by your body, not the slide, thus the slide won't slide, thus you will have to slide manually... Making it very non-semi-auto.
Failing to hold the gun firmly is known as "limp-wristing" and does increase the chances of a malfunction. Most modern pistols will still cycle in spite of it, but the chances of malfunction are increased. Inertia usually provides enough counter force for the recoil to push against.
Also I noticed the ejector also rely on some small machined parts (like the one that hold the cartridge rim), and thus if not made properly will probably fail (the slide will go back but the cartridge won't go back with it, this probably would be the sort of jam that is an actual jam, you would need to push the cartridge out with another object).
This is called a failure to extract. It's a common cause of malfunctions. Most newer pistol designs, including many revised 1911s used a much larger extractor that protrudes from the side of the slide.
And the amount of springs I am seeing around, mean cyclic fatigue failure of the metal probably causes a couple of issues, I think that a frequently fired gun probably more than cleaning also might require frequent change of springs.
Correct. Replacement of the recoil spring every few thousand rounds is a good idea to reduce fatigue on other parts. As the spring weakens, the forces experienced by other parts are increased. This is more of a problem in some designs than others. The Beretta 92/M9 used by the US military, for example uses a tilting locking block instead of a tilting barrel, and the locking block is prone to fail if the spring is not replaced on schedule. Most pistols are less prone to this category of failure, and some would consider it a design flaw of the Beretta.
The M9s have an awful reputation from the sandbox. Likely a lot of it was magazine related.
Also, your characterizations of the .45 "putting someone on their ass" is complete crap. Handguns simply do not have that kind of power (nor to most rifles).
They do test fire them at the factory (10 rounds or so) but it takes anywhere between 200-500 rounds to properly break a firearm in. And even then it can depend on the brand, type and quality of the rounds you are using. I bought a bunch of cheap ammo for practice. my Sig Sauer runs it fine, my friends old no name gun Fails to Eject it 1 in 5 times.
That is why most firearm instructors say to never trust a firearm and ammunition combo for defensive purposes until you've run 500 rounds.
That said, it's a hell of a design to still be in use 100+ years later.
You're absolutely right about more complexity in the design though. Modern "hole punchers" like M&Ps and Glocks are far simpler and exceed a 1911 in reliability. But a 1911 will wipe the floor with either of those pistols in an accuracy contest.
That said, I own both a Glock and a 1911. Both shoot well and are probably far more accurate than me. :) I tend to like the Glock a little more because of its simplicity and ease of taking it apart. That's not to say the 1911 is that much more complicated, but it can be off-putting to some. I happen to enjoy cleaning my guns. So, there's that.
I have no connection to the app or developers, FYI. I found it very useful when learning how to disassemble and reassemble my Ruger Mark III.
I'm pretty sure there's either a desktop version of this, or there's a clone of it for the desktop. Either, way, highly recommended if you're a gun person.
I like 1911 style guns and my next gun will probably be such a model.
For instance:
.50 BMG = Browning Machine Gun; the round and the M2 machine gun.
The Browning Hi-Power.
The .380 auto is sometimes referred to as the 9mm Browning. Probably obvious why...
Heck, I should just stop listing these off, because there's way too many things JMB took part in. I'll leave this [1] link instead. It's also worth mentioning that you could probably credit Browning indirectly for a number of other designs currently in use that either borrow directly from his work or are inspired by it, including most modern automatic pistols (yes, even Glock).
> I like 1911 style guns and my next gun will probably be such a model.
I'd definitely suggest it. Sure, it's not as "elegant" as some of the polymer frames out there these days, but it's still a workhorse. There's something about the older designs that are remarkable feats of engineering for their day, to say nothing of the incredible history behind them that seems attractive to be a small part of by way of ownership.
That said, owning both a 1911 and a Glock, I'll admit that I can't really pin a favorite. I like both for different reasons. While I doubt I'll buy another 1911 (I won't rule out a conversion kit, though...) since I have my eyes on other Glock models (and possibly another brand of polymer), it's a design that's almost timeless. Mine's an SR1911 (model 6700) with rosewood grips, and it's sexy. But loads of other manufacturers are making some great looking 1911s at all different price points. It would almost seem sacrilegious to have a gun collection without a 1911. :)
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Browning#Cartridges (and the "firearms" section below that).
Very true. I think a lot of the appreciation I have for the 1911 comes from its history. I learned to shoot with a 9mm, but honestly the "adjustment" people talk about to a .40 or .45 is negligible. I will say that when I have all the pieces laid out, I do like looking at the Glock (23) on the table a bit more.
I will probably get myself a G17 in the future (maybe), but probably not before I get a Glock chambered for .45ACP.
Given your comments, I'm starting to wonder if one can't have too many 1911s... ;)
It's because "clip" refers to somthing different, if related. A clip refers specifically to a mechanism that clips onto multiple rounds of ammo in order to allow it to be inserted into a (fixed) magazine[0]. Some guns with fixed magazines use clips to enable faster reloading, while guns with removable magazines don't need a clip, because the entire magazine is swapped out.
From outward appearances, and to a possibly untrained observer, reloading via inserting a clip looks similar to reloading with a removable magazine, which I presume is the source of the conflation. But, for some people, correct terminology is important; "coder" vs "hacker" vs "cracker", I suppose?
Its a way to distinguish those who know what they are talking about from those who do not. See also shibboleth [1]
You see it all the time in other communities, like how people here on HN would laugh at someone purporting to be a 'hacker' going on about how they like to 'program in HTML'.
Now, if you really want to have fun with gun people, break out the old suppressor vs. silencer argument. The distinction between the two is ill-defined and there may or may not be a difference depending on who you ask, but some people will argue for hours over it.
But honestly, I think it has more to do with ham-fisted and ignorant attempts by lawmakers to ban guns. The amount of technical illiteracy that litters gun laws is frustrating in the extreme to people who have to actually comply with those laws. Clip/magazine snobbery is just a way of venting that frustration.
Almost no modern weapons use clips; the last popular one was the M1 Garand (standard issue US infantry rifle in WW2).
It's a more than a semantic difference because there are some weapons that are capable of accepting both magazines and clips. Though such weapons are rare and I can't think of a modern example, there is a good reason for being picky.
Some samples that come to mind:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mannlicher_M1895
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauser_C96 (the old "broom-handle" mauser)
I'm sure there's a few others. I saw a couple on Forgotten Weapons (they have a really great Youtube channel--check it out sometime) besides these two, but their names escape me.
That does not make that terminology incorrect.
My pet theory is that the M1 is a big source of the current conflation of "clip" and "magazine". Millions of men were conscripted for WW2 and Korea in the US and for a great many of them their first experience with a self-loading firearm was with the M1 they were issued in training. To many of them, no matter how many autoloaders they were exposed to aftward, that thing you shoved into the gun that held the cartridges was called a CLIP, because that's what the drill sergeant in training called it. These men then went on to spread this habit of using CLIP and MAGAZINE interchangeably, and at this point it is too ingrained in the vernacular to ever go away.
Huh, never thought about that. I'd imagine one way to test this theory might be to examine changes in the colloquial use of both terms relative to specific firearms and proximity to WWII.
Although, as I pointed out in another comment, some firearms used both: An internal clip-fed magazine. Bet that's an even better source for confusion. :)