Hacker News Reader

Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

As others have mentioned this isn't particularly newsworthy, you've been able to make guns at home since forever. Its a rifle of course, and rifle ammunition you can't make at home, but as others have mentioned you can make black powder weapons in a completely untraceable way (from making your own black powder, to casting your own lead ball shot) but we're not worried about a bunch of home hobbiests fielding a Napoleonic infantry. They don't mention how you can make a gun out of a stuff you can buy past security at an airport [1].

Its just click bate. Next up, 'I made an untraceable battle tank at home with some steel pipe and an arc welder!'

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lsem22DkIjw

View on HN

You can definitely reload rifle ammunition at home very easily. You just need to collect the brass cases after you've shot store-bought rounds or just go to an outdoor range and collect buckets of brass cases since most people just leave them.

The one time I "reloaded" rifle ammo, it was to work up a small-medium game load for a sporterized Springfield 03A3 .30-06 I ended up with as a teen. By then my father and his hunting friend were no longer using that round, so we started with a box or two of new brass like this: http://www.cabelas.com/category/Reloading-Brass/112555980.ut...

The author actually makes that same point in the article.

What I think elevates this article above the level of clickbait is that beyond any firearms related issues, it is a really interesting point of comparison for different "maker" related technologies: traditional machining, 3d Printing and desktop CNC.

It sounds like he used a purpose-made CNC machine, rather than a general-purpose CNC machine, though.

It's like comparing a stand-up toaster to toasting bread in a toaster oven -- one of these is more flexible, and one of them is "point and shoot".

> and rifle ammunition you can't make at home

You can absolutely make rifle ammunition at home.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handloading

You can assemble shell, bullet, powder, and primer.

You'll be hard-pressed to make any of those components yourself. Shell? could be milled (stamping unlikely in your garage) but relatively very expensive and probably imprecise. Bullet? swaging is possible, but possible != precise & accurate; milling is possible but relatively expensive. Powder? probably not to the precise quality needed (just shape of the grains can be an issue, as found in the Vietnam War). Primer? gets well into chemical manufacturing & toxicity issues you don't want to deal with.

Yes, it can be done - but you won't be turning out sniper-grade rounds for $1 each.

I was focused more on the 'making' rather than the assembling. I've reloaded shotgun shells for a long time for example, and pistol rounds. However I've always purchased the powder, balls (bullet ends), and primers.

Of the three, primers are particularly challenging (certainly for reliability) but making a good, high performance, smokeless gunpowder is not just a simple "mix and hope its good" kind of thing.

It should not be surprising that developing the capability to make high performance weapons "off grid" as it were is fairly actively tracked (which I discovered when ordering chemicals from Aldritch one time and getting a call back from them to fill out some government paperwork before it could proceed)

From reading about how Lake City does it, I got the strong impression that making reliable, military grade primers was pretty easy, albeit with access to the right chemicals. And there are several generations of chemicals that can be used, e.g. from corrosive to the newest lead free formulations.

On the other hand, I'll point out that single base smokeless powder is made from nitrocellulose (the explosive also known as guncotton), and double base adds nitroglycerin to the fun.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com