You know, I am always looking for items that can bolster the armed citizenry's credible deterrence against potential tyranny in this country and still remain within current federal law. Which brings me to the fusion of two ideas. The first, you may recall, is embodied in this Viet Cong propaganda photo that I posted some time ago:
I believe now that the rifle this little NLFer is holding with the grenade on top is probably a Chinese Type 53, a clone of the Mosin Nagant M44.
Now, you know that rifle grenades have been an interest of mine for a long time and that I enjoy slinging inert Israeli rubber-tipped "bottles" from various platforms -- a Spanish FR-8 Mauser, a Yugo SKS and my M14S with a USGI M76 grenade launching attachment -- a diversion which is, as yet, perfectly legal.
I've never played around with Mosin Nagants before, but Hannah's new rifle (and the search for a muzzle brake for it -- see below) combined with the photo above gave me an idea.
Wouldn't it be lovely, given all the Mosin Nagants floating about in the US these days, if we could come up with a quick-detachable muzzle brake that just happened to have an outer diameter of 22mm (NATO standard for rifle grenade launchers)? Or, a flash suppressor/grenade launcher combo? (You probably can't have BOTH a flash suppressor AND a muzzle brake at the same time, although the weapon badly needs both.)
This sounds like a marketing opportunity for someone with a CNC machine, don't you think? And given the possible extension of inert bottle-slinging to a whole new series of extremely inexpensive rifles, it ought to enable the expansion of this arcane, but potentially very useful, rifleman's art to a whole new set of enthusiasts.
I can't think of anything off the top of my head that the Authorities, Tyrants and Fornicators would hate more, can you? And it has the advantage of being perfectly legal.
17 comments:
I cold totally get behind this. My first gun purchase was a Mosin M44 Hungarian from '53, and man, do they seriously need both.. I'd buy one in a heartbeat.
I have bought a muzzle brake for it, but the unfortunate bit about those is they tend to usually be very cheaply made. I've heard horror stories of them coming off (oft times in pieces) on the range, so have not yet tried it, just for fear of my face being blown off.
I'd like something I could use with my Ishy Enfield. It's got matching serial numbers, so I'm not ready to cut it yet, but something that would easily work in place would be fine. I also need a peep sight for it, but that's another story.
Something else that would be good is a universal star crimp for reloading presses. This would let them roll the grenade blanks that are a bit harder to come by than regular ammo.
An Argentine (pre-1994 ban) FAL has a combination muzzle brake, grenade launcher (which happens to be much of the bayonet mount as well).
A bolt-action rifle faces none of the legal problems that a semi-auto has when wanting to thread the barrel for a muzzle brake/flash-suppressor, and could be designed to be external size and thread-compatible with grenade launchers and registered sound suppressors.
No fan of pinned-on muzzle devices.
Cheers.
It'd be easily done. Not anything close to rocket science, and although batch production of large quantities would be a hassle without CNC machines, it's well within the capability of a person with a basic home machine shop (lathe and mill) with thread cutting abilities on their lathe or in a pinch, one could bore it out and put the thread there with a tap that you could make yourself on the lathe. If you have a lathe and you don't need to buy taps as they aren't that hard to make to the level of precision needed for this sort of thing. It could also be easily done with castings of the right steels and a little threading and polishing, though the mold costs would be high if you paid somebody to make the molds. You can CNC 32 pieces or so at a time or cast 32 pieces at a time. Then it's just polishing and blueing or parkerizing.
Tangalor, if all you want is muzzle braking on a Poison Maggot rifle, you can easily ge all the braking you need with proper porting of the barrel and there's nothing to worry you about having fly apart on you. If you want to launch rifle grenades, use good steel and do it properly. Lots of gun show and "****** than d*rt" product buys are not of particularly good quality.
If your life may depend on it, spend the money to buy the real deal or have the work done by a competent person properly for you. Penny saved is not always a penny earned if it lands anybody in a grave or emergency room that you didn't wish to send there.
Mike V.:
Flash Suppressing Poison Maggots would be a hard task but you could do the porting of the brake in such a fashion (no holes below horizontal midline of the barrel/brake) that it wouldn't kick up dust and ground clutter and wouldn't much increase the visible flash. Personally, I don't find them any more or less unpleasant to shoot than SMLEs, but I'm not recoil sensitive.
If I were to invest in tooling up to do a production run, "how many people would actually buy one and for how much?" is the actual question.
Prototyping and start up costs would be significant if only a couple people bought stuff and I'm in business making firearms related metal things that sell in small quantities but sell for enough to pay for bothering, even though some things take 5 years to go from red to black on paper. What's the real market going to be?
How about you take a poll and see how many people would buy one and I'll discount at least 78% of that "I'd buy one" number you'll get from the poll as tire kickers based on past experience, and I'd think about doing it if enough people signed on and perhaps collect enough deposits.
Suggested poll wording:
Would you buy a a quick-detachable or thread on Moseying Maggot muzzle brake that just happened to have an outer diameter of 22mm (NATO standard for rifle grenade launchers)? How much would one be worth to you?
One doesn't invest possible thousands or tens of thousands of dollars in prototyping and tooling up for a production run to have three people end up actually wanting to buy one for any cost less than one third of the cost of the cost of doing it and some profit. Working for others for free sucks. That's part of why we don't like socialists, right?
They could also be produced on a custom basis at standard machinist/tool and die maker custom work rates.
(Bit more than minimum wage :-)
You could have them produced in asia more cheaply but then you'd run into BATFE and State Department calling it "importation of weapons of war" as well as all the related State Department excise taxes, which would cut the profit of doing it offshore significantly. Not that I know anybody(ies) that happened to recently...
Could be done, won't be done with no/tiny market. Not by me or anybody I know.
...If there were to be a war between the states or some parts of the government against some of the citizens, I'd rather pick up M203s and M-79s off of dead guys than have a battle rifle I never much liked that's heavy and antiquated with more money invested in a grenade launching attachment than the rifle is worth if you have a C&R license.
My 2 cents times about 100, judging by how long this post seems to have run. (Having tripped the legal comment lenght trigger so split into two posts...)
If all laws against victimless crime vanished tomorrow, what are the first things you'd do? Modify a weapon? Buy and store a year's supply of your maintenance medications? Park a boat or RV in your suburban front yard? Build an addition to your house? Hire yourself out to build an addition onto somebody else's house? Build a workshop in your backyard and put out a shingle advertising your services? Manufacture and sell muzzle brakes?
Are you going to wait to do those things until it's too late to gain any benefit from doing them? How much of your life will you allow other people to foreclose? As long as you remain on the rat race treadmill, your options are severely limited. Ignore the red tape, work and shop with less waste, and start getting ahead. Avoiding the waste is itself successful activism.
http://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/06/patri-friedman/beyond-folk-activism
Anonymouse et al:
My business partner and myself manufacture muzzle brakes on a custom basis along with making a whole lot of other things, mostly firearms related. Since Mike V. didn't take me up on running a poll as to what actual useful demand would be, I stuck one at the top right of my threeper and other stuff page.
Go vote if you like.
Polling Location. Top right, you can't miss it.
If anybody really wants one as opposed to having Saturday night beer musings they'd never follow through on... Y'all have a week before the polling ends.
Remember, I'm still gonna guess many aren't going to be truthful if they vote yes, based on past experience with people that want custom things. Be many a tire kicker. "Customers" that bolt the minute they find out they actually have to pay to have things produced.
Nothing gets produced for long if there is little to no market for a product, if they even get produced at all other than just for grins to do something different. Basic number crunching at our rates, need at least 200-250 buyers at $100 bucks per unit to make it worthwhile as a production item rather than a custom machine shop project (significantly more than 100 dollars each if you want the brake to work well) to us. Show me "This[really] sounds like a marketing opportunity for someone..."
You can always make one yourself. I've got a couple ideas in mind of really easy ways to do a quick release that would do the job and have braking when the 22mm diameter portion isn't attached if one would like it so.
A flash suppressor muzzle brake is theoretically possible. Look on it as using the flash energy to brake the recoil.
I put that poll on my page and lo and behold, my little corner of the internet gets a visit from the state department 18 minutes later. Those boys are watching us I guess.
Oh well. I didn't break any laws they haven't invented yet. We're really careful about that.
I guess they are watching you very closely , Mike! Wee hours of the morning on a Sunday on the East Coast...
Happy D:
With a Moseying Maggot you'd have a tough time of it because their common loadings are flamethrowers compared to many other cartridges, especially surplus ammo and don't forget the 22mm OD required in Mike's wishes as well as the "quick detach"? That's a pretty tall order for a Nagant muzzle attachment to do all four of.
Lots of things are possible and I've managed a lot of stuff people thought was insane to try, but that one would be difficult to engineer.
I know the physics and aero/fluid dynamics of the things. I design them. I, along with a friend, are the first people in the world that bounced ideas back and forth and made a ONE HANDABLE .458 Lott hunting pistol that only weighs about 4.5lbs loaded and most people don't even like shooting them in a rifle.
Trust me on this one or not, that's my two pence. I may be opinionated and have been called worse, but I'm a little bit smarter than your average bear.
User "moses" on the FALFiles (www.l1a1.com) makes great custom muzzle brakes and flash hiders.
"Respectabiggle:
Many people "make(s) great custom muzzle brakes and flash hiders", and could even do ones that can quick-detatch and launch rifle grenades...for a fee commensurate with the task requested.
Dollars to doughnuts that your buddy doesn't give them out as party favours, especially a specialized design that a responsible person would prototype and test before manufacturing. The indifferent machining accuracy of surplussed Mosin Nagants would make this job not hard but more complicated than you think if you want to maximize your grenade launching abilities without making modifications to the rifle barrel.
FWIW, the better people are going to refuse to do "budget" oriented designs because no machinist wants to go around with something marginal or ugly with his name stuck on it in any fashion to meet a certain price point. Learned decades ago that people will ask you to do marginal work to save a few bucks and if you do it for them they will invariably show it to their friends and some friends will say "that's crap...who did that work and/or made those parts?" Mr. Cheapskater will gladly give your name, permanently losing you a potential customer or customers. Mr. Cheapskate will not defend your honor and say something along the lines of "well, it was the best I could afford/was willing to pay for...he grumbled but I begged so he was nice to me and did the work to the substandard level I requested." You can put yourself out of business rapidly if you do stuff like that in manufacturing and gunsmithing. I've seen people do it.
Judging by voter results, and I'll let the poll roll til it's end at the end of the week for grins, I can't see why anyone would bother to do it on more than a one off/small batch (i.e. expensive basis). Not worth the investment in tooling up to do it.
Poll Results one day later (and many hits from Sipsey Street post above later) we have 8 votes:
1-would buy one for over 100 bucks (custom muzzle brake land)
1-would buy one for under 100 bucks (plausible for batch production with enough customer base)
2- Yeah, for under fifty bucks (would need a hell of a lot of orders to bother)
1- Why bother? (sensible)
3- People still actually would contemplate fighting a "Resurrection War" with one of those things that you probably won't even be able to find ammo for shortly after battles commence? (my vote, even though I didn't vote on my own poll as I have zero interest in even owning such a thing and I have the capability to make one)
Not gonna run out and tool up for that one, myself. Amused that the majority, albeit of a small sample size, have agreed with my initial prejudice/thought about the whole idea.
Let me restate the arguments for rifle grenade capability in hands of the armed citizenry, in no particular order of importance.
1. The art of the rifle grenade can be taught now, while still legal, with inerts.
2. If, as and when, if the ball opens, improvised rifle grenades can be manufactured on a local basis. 40mm projectiles? Almost impossible to do so.
3. The rifle grenade extends the ability of any rifleman so equipped to engage targets with indirect fire. Denied mortars by law now, this leaves the RG as the only way to teach and deliver indirect fire to the average militia rifleman.
4. Properly built rifle grenades contain more explosive delivered to target than 40mm projectiles.
5. Proliferating the ability to roll star crimp GL cartridges by popularizing the inert hobby is a positive social good, because . . .
6. The uncertainty generated in the mind of the jack booted thug by the prospect of facing riflemen armed with improvised rifle grenades is something to be desired.
ANYTHING THAT FOSTERS TACTICAL AND/OR STRATEGIC UNCERTAINTY IN THE MIND OF YOUR POTENTIAL ENEMY CAN HELP PREVENT CONFLICT.
This is the concept behind concealed carry. This is the concept behind arming the citizenry to begin with. This is true when dealing with free-lance criminals or those conctituional criminals sent by tyrannical governments.
So, I'm going to continue to try to figure out how to solve the problem, impractical though it might prove to be.
Mike
III
I just looked up pictures of the muzzle to look at for some thought, and found this:
http://www.amazon.com/Mosin-Nagant-Muzzle-Compensator-Stripper/dp/B000OWLW10
Thought it would be interesting.
An enfield has a piece that goes on near the muzzle, that could help such a part stay on. I was looking at modifying that for mine, but the Mosin doesn't seem to have such a part.
Mike V:
I have no problem with the rifle grenade concept, I don't like the platform you picked to stick it on.
M203/M79-Forgeries in 37mm could fit in.
Blackpowder mortars are legal.
Spending a lot of money on making a Mosin Nagant the platform for your daydream is where I have a problem.
There are a lot of rifle designs in the world chambered in ~.30 caliber give or take a few thousandths of an inch that would be better platforms to try to mass produce such a muzzle device for. The manufacturing tolerances of Russian rifles are lesser than ideal to make a standardized part, much of the ammo out there is corrosive, and they're clunky utilitarian things.
Pick a more uniformly manufactured rifle as to tolerances that will have plentiful supplies of non-corrosive ammo if such a time comes and then you have a viable product.
SMLEs, Springfields, Garands, M1A1s, AR-10s and 180s, FALs, Galils, M98Ks, SKS, AKs, Dragunovs....those would all make more sense to develop for as your grenadier in the platoon is likely only gonna carry one rifle. Nagant would be at the bottom of my list.
It's not the grenadier concept it's your chosen platform that makes me think it an ill advised adventure.
12 hours since my last post of poll results only 8 people total bothered to vote on my poll as to if they'd buy one, hasn't changed since I woke up this morning. 4 said why bother? 4 said they'd buy it. one for over 100 bucks if need be, one for under a hundred bucks, 2 for 50 bucks or less. That's not a CNC production run or a castings run. That's a "why bother?" run. I do stuff for friends for 40-50 an hour at times. It'd take more than an hour to prototype one and it would take more than 4 hours to make 4 of them plus materials costs and misc shop supplies as well as any special cutters or fixtures one might need, design dependent.
It's a no-go Col. V.
If somebody wants to donate their time to design one and put plan drawings or controller files on the internet so people could make one themselves, maybe a couple people would do it.
Not Fiscally Sane as a Business Venture. Your readership probably covers most people with net access that might be interested in such an item and in 2 days only 8 managed to bother to vote on my poll. THAT says everything in th world.
Pick a different rifle, hell, pick a NATO rifle an you don't even need to have them made because they already exist...
Just because something could be done doesn't always make it a good idea. Machinists have bills too. If they work for free they go broke and have to sell their tools and you won't have them when you REALLY need them.
As the stinky hippies would say,
Bummer nobody wants such a brake/launcher to make it worth the bother.
Peace out, brotha man!
Upon further thinking about what some of the more efficient designs might be, I found a potential NFA problem with trying to make a combination item such as you wish.
It could be construed as a NFA silencing device.
BATFE used to require the device "appreciably" lower the sound (see Revenue Ruling 57-38)
Now the working definition seems to be anything that traps gas from the muzzle of the gun, or from porting of the barrel, is a sound suppressor.
Most brakes and flash hiders do not fall under this definition, but some designs (such as ones designed to trap as much gas as tightly as possible in launcher mode for best possible range) could easily fall into the category of NFA SILENCER.
This issue would be determined by the ever fair and prudent BATFE Firearms Technology Branch. Ask Len Savage about them, he says they're really friendly chaps...
Grist for the mill...one more reason I can't see bothering doing it unless one were to clandestinely do one for themselves and I don't dabble in such things that are questionable as it would be an impediment to my livelihood and possibly the ability to breathe air in and out of my lungs, depending on how any investigation might go.
Not worth risking dying or going to prison over. I admire Fincher and contributed a lot of money to his lawyer fund, but that was one of many trials that prove that you can't get a fair trial and I'm not signing up for a potential battle with the BATFE and/or Doj, and now even State Department due to ITAR over some possibly questionable manufacturing of something or other.
If there becomes a war later on, perhaps. As there is no war and there has been no blatant "Ft Sumter" by either side, I'd rather not share a cell with Fincher if it's at all avoidable.
I thought about it enough to make it un-viable unless you want a lesser design.
Interesting side note. Practice dummy grenades and the ability to and launching them are all legal. Manufacturing your own dummy grenades (and possibly dummy grenade "accessories") requires a Type 10FFL (DDs no other NFA).
Sorry to throw a wrench in your spokes, but this looks less viable by the minute.
Whether anybody agrees with me or not, those are the laws as currently enforced and one might be mindful of them.
37mm M203-alikes used to not be NFA at all, as they were considered signaling devices. Now that people have produced anti-personnel bean bags and rubber ball/bullet and flame tossing carts for them, if you are found in posession of a 37mm launcher and anything but signal flares, you best have that thing registered. The rounds are not regulated being non-explosive, non-gas. The launcher is not regulated. Be in possession of both and you are in possession of a DD and need to have it registered or make sure you don't get caught with it, and there's no way you can guarantee not being caught with something you aren't supposed to have unless it's legally registered.
Nobody has 4th amendment rights anymore on a de facto level so if you take the risk you should know the risks you are taking.
They got the wrong kind of bars in prison, no pool tables, pinball, shuffleboard; no women, no George Jones and Hank and Willie on the jukebox. I'm not looking to have them have any excuse to ever stick me in one.
Best of luck on the idea, no go for me.
Might I suggest the Yugo SKS, comes with the 22MM GL, uses the standard NATO practice grenades and you can buy just the screw on launcher at a few web sites for under $30.
This also fits on some AK's as well as the Yugo SKS. The SKS has the sights and everything, even has a gad diverter for when you use the launcher, you get the full pop from the blank. The SKS's are under $400 for a really nice, unissued one and useful wise, is better the any bolt action.
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