UTMC

I am not a "Gun Nut".

I don't tread the waters of political diatribe and deeply seated convictions that many folks do.

That said, I think guns are really, really neat.

Especially as mechanical devices, and design challenges.

I've retreated from my original status of "only need the one: that Sig 9mm will do just fine, thanks" and now accept the truth that I will likely pine after and eventually amass a small collection of various firearms.

The Sig is about as exciting as a pair of really warm socks, and as critical a starting point for me if I am to branch out.


I've found I'm utterly uninterested in classic platforms like the AR series, the Colt 1911, etc. but am deeply intrigued by more fangled and interesting offerings such as these two:


Keltec SU-16C (.223)





Chiappa Rhino


stubby


full size



Earlier gun crushes of mine were the FN P90, and the Calico








I'm curious what you folks might have to add to this list?

It's always fun to explore the weirder ideas, manifested as actual machines, especially when they prove to be not just mold breaking, but respected improvements in the field!

Always thought this Steyr was the balls!



came up on this one by accident, but I like the pure functionality, no extra bells



both are cost prohibitive I assume.

Out of hand guns always liked the PPK, some day I might own one, but first will be replacing my stolen .22 with ?

S&W 41 or Beretta or Rugger ??

I'm not a gun nut too, but also think they're super cool.

That Rhino thingy is pretty awesome in concept. Teh bullets come out the bottom so the recoil is directed into your hand instead of levering it up and back.
Is that what they were shooting for?*








* sorry

Taurus Judge: .45 and .410



be your own Hellboy

Color me old school but I remember when the Steyr was introduced and I severely disliked it, the whole bullpup design just made it unattractive.
My faves are still the FN FAL and variants, the AR platform and HK stuff.
I had a Glock cop gun for awhile, carried it (legally) for a bit, and eventually got rid of it. Neat and all, but just too much gun and the lack of a thumb-type safety gave it the feeling of being inherently unsafe.
I still have the AR I've owned for 20+ years, someday I hope to trade it for an FN.

FN 2000



French 1915 Chauchat Light (8mm LEBLE) Machine Gun

Almost forgot; I also still have one of these:


Surprisingly accurate, once the smoke clears... Haven't shot it in I bet about fifteen years.

Pete, you're spot on with the recoil consolidation aspect of the Rhino- I'd love to get a chance to fire one of those!

I keep seeing the Judge in a PINK finish in local gun shops! Kinda a weird platform to try for the "ladies" market!

Sisyphus wrote:Almost forgot; I also still have one of these:


Surprisingly accurate, once the smoke clears... Haven't shot it in I bet about fifteen years.

There is something very similar in my dad's attic. Great-great grandfather's or something. 3 or 4 notches filed in the grip. In decent shape as far as I can tell, but it hasn't been fired in 100 years.

my dad has ancient 12 ga made form Damascus, probably will never be fired again. Needs black powder shells anyway.

Not a 'fire' arm, but a new air rifle, the .357 Benjamin Rogue

blackjoe wrote:One of my all time favorites is the Le Mat revolver. One of the sexiest ever:

<a href="http://home.hiwaay.net/~stargate/lemat.htm"><img src="http://home.hiwaay.net/~stargate/images/Lemat.jpg"></a>

My dad has three of those. They are neat.
He's also got a Damascus barrelled (double) shotgun and I don't think he's keen on shooting it, either. I think it's one his dad made.

[quote="Zim"]Not a 'fire' arm, but a new air rifle, the .357 Benjamin Rogue

That's an air rifle? .357? Holy crap.

My dad's also got a Garand. By now you all might have gathered that he collects guns. He knew/knows a lot of other collectors, some more, um, eccentric than others.
Growing up, I remember going to one guy's place to do some business or other.
Guy lived in an upstairs apartment and lived off the heat from the downstairs neigbor, slept in a mummy bag on an army cot. Every dime he made as a maintenance guy at the local foundry he spent on guns. Never showered, had at one time belonged to some m/c club. Ate C-rations and MRE's. (this is mid-80's). This guy had, among other things, in his apartment one M1911A1 pistol from every armory that ever made one, two which had never even been cocked, the rest had never been fired. Armory racks with M14's, Garands, numerous Nazi paraphernalia, knives, who knows what else.
My dad knew he was wierd but he was also known to have good items and was worth dealing with, IF he would deal with you. I wonder what ever happened to him. He smelled horrible and didn't take care of himself.
So I didn't mean to threadjack or anything but this air rifle thing intrigues me. I have a problem with varmints and that might just be the thing.

Boorchardt C-93


My father claims this firearm was designed by a direct ancestor, Hugo Borchardt. I really don't know if it's true, as my old man is pretty full of shit- but, ever since i was a boy, I've admired the form.

Some pretty interesting, and often quirky, engineering was thrown down in the years that automatic weapons were having the wrinkles ironed out of them.

I too do not consider myself a gun nut, but firearms have been my profession for the whole of my adult life (over a decade now, sounds weird to say). I look at them as a professional mechanically speaking, rarely am I dazzled by a slick outer shell. Just like motorcycles I tend to be drawn to examples that set a new standard or reflect a design ethic where the accountants have been kept at bay. Solid, beefy engineering, redundant mechanisms that keep the firearm functioning after mild failures, and an ease of maintenance that reflects both operator level and mechanic level knowledge are things that really draw me in. At the end of the day I see firearms as tools, tools where failure can cost the life of the operator. Not though the failure itself, rather the operator finding himself in a gunfight with just a club.

With that being said I am a bit confused by the equating a Sig P226 to a pair of wool socks. I am without doubt bias when it comes to this make, having worked for the company and having mild involvement in development (I ran 5,000 plus round the the P220 Carry years before it was released). The other side of the coin is I saw the insides of these pistols after many thousands of rounds and decades of daily use. I see the traditional Sig operating system as a thing of beauty, and standard even. A largely unchanged design now past 60yrs of age. One of the earliest automatic pistols as we currently know it. Beefy in all of the correct spots and with a utilitarian look. Nothing that it doesn't need to be there, rather a finely crafted and rugged tool.

The Browning M2HB is one of my favorite guns to have had the pleasure to shoot and work on. Large simple internals, stupid reliability, time tested design. A design that I saw first hand fail to be bested when put against the FN M3M in a test that was designed to make the M2HB's inherent shortcoming glare as weakness.

The Mauser K98 is another work of industrial art. The grand-daddy of most bolt action rifles and a design that still is in heavy used today. A design that changed the face of firearms.

The Glock. Most people that have talked firearms with me know this is not my first choice for handguns. But one cannot fail to give a nod to this design. Generally "good enough" is never something I like, but in this case I will give the combat tubberware props. Again, simple, no frills, easy to use, easy to work on, accurate enough.

Overall I find that most of the most interesting stuff came from the first half of the 1900's. That was a revolutionary time in firearms development, in the course of not many years technology leaped massively ahead. These first or second generation designs are almost always amazing to study and handle. Since then we have largely only seen refinement of earlier designs, and sadly a cheapening in quality in many cases. I currently have a pre 1913 L.C. Smith grade two shotgun on my bench I am working on. I am floored by the quality of the work. It is a simple robust mechanism that has a feel of quality many current firearms lack. This was done in an age before CNC machines and really with quality being the driving factor. I know it is worth close to two grand today, and to buy a shotgun of the same sort of quality new would run a bit north of that today as well. Even my 1950 .22LR Remington 511 Scoremaster seems crazy high end next to its modern counterparts.

I know I am rambling a bit now... It seems these days all to often a slick plastic shell around a rehashed, and converted to cheap stamped parts, firing group is what gets called "exotic" and "innovative." The FN PDW90 made waves not for its operating system rather the round, the ability to have a compact weapon that would defeat NATO body armor at 200m. The same was true for the H&K MP7 (a much slicker weapon IMHO). The Kal-Tec SU16 seems to be interesting largely because it is not an AR or AK platform, though it seems to be closely related in its operating system to a AR180, the first cousin of the AR15.

Maybe our grandfathers did the job too well with their manual milling machines and slide rules, or maybe we could say they did it right. Ammunition seems the be the area of heavy development these days. Attempts to make a better battle field rifle have proved fruitless, not through lack of trying, rather it seems we have hit the limit to what can be done currently.

By "warm socks" I mean "critical, reliable, core starting point"

I have nothing but respect for my Sig as a rock solid piece, it's just such a standard it's almost boring?

This thread spawned from an appreciation of the quirkier design platforms out there, weird leaps of exploration and occasional moments of brilliance that result.

I humbly defer to those with more direct experience that myself in regards to actual build quality and feasibility per application, but I still like the weird and interesting!

I think a look to history will help put things into better prescriptive. The late 1800's and early 1900's were fully of crazy innovation, hell we didn't even know what caliber was the one to go with, let alone operating system. Firearms technology leaped forward every year or two, at times within months. Out of this crazy fur ball we saw automatic pistols as we know know them emerge, along with what now are standard cartridges. Reliable high power bolt action rifles, then the shorter rifles we think of as battle field rifles, en bloc clips, then box mags, water cooling came and went, then select fire and modern assault rifles. The history makes the boring standards of today shine as the mold breaking chunks of mechanical awesome that they truly are. I'd recommend starting with old John Browning designs and moving on from there, they might not be uber street cred getting cool guy steam punk TEOTWAWKI zombie guns, but I guarantee they are more awesome in every way, and they work.

Like I said earlier history is where you are going to find the really cool stuff. The accountants have made there way into the engineering departments, and we are not faced with any need to do crazy innovating. Personally I am not overly impressed when someone answers a question that was not asked or did not need to be asked, most of the time it becomes a "We fixed it until it was broke." Also many "new designs" have been done before, like with most things, not much is new anymore, it's just of matter if anyone remembers the original.

Back to the Sig, the history will help, but let me put it another way. A 500hp maintenance whore of a Ferrari is pretty neat, but a 500hp reliable OHV Corvette is a much more impressive feat of engineering.

Did someone say uber street cred getting cool guy steam punk TEOTWAWKI zombie guns?




Sorrry to dumb down an otherwise interesting and worthwhile conversation with this picture.

The Browning M2HB is one of my favorite guns to have had the pleasure to shoot and work on.

In Africa I saw one manufacture by AC Delco sometime before '45. OLD.

Do you guys know any cool looking weapons from the 70's or vietnam spectacular tools? I'm making some researches for a project.

I like the M-79 grenade launcher for a Viet Nam era weapon...

if I can ever afford it I will get one of those, something about it appeals to me...



unfortunately just the scope and mount is worth more than my car

One of my all-time faves, particularly for its historical signifigance which is relevant to my interests.

"The story of Smith & Wesson submachine gun began in around 1966, when US Navy failed to obtain a batch of Swedish CarlGustaf M/45 submachine guns for clandestine operations in South-East Asia.The peaceful Sweden blocked the sales of war materiel to USA, and US Navy went for domestic source of 9mm submachine guns."
The rest here:
http://world.guns.ru/smg/usa/smith-wesson-m76-e.html

MATPOC wrote:if I can ever afford it I will get one of those, something about it appeals to me...



unfortunately just the scope and mount is worth more than my car

Tokarevs are damn sweet. If you don't have one, pick up either an Mosin M44 or 91/30. 54R fun on a much smaller budget.

Here's my contribution:





Or IMHO the perfect sidearm for dealing with the undead:



Mmmm.. 30rnds of 22mag.

I'm not convinced we've hit an apogee yet. Just running through a few newer concepts off the top of my head:

Bullpup designs. 50 years from now, the milspec firearms enthusiasts among our grandkids will ask, "No, they seriously had these in full production over 20 years before the 21st century? And they didn't use them? Were our grandparents high or some- right, nevermind."

Quick-change barrels/upper receivers. The XM8 had a sweet concept, where transitioning from machine pistol/SMG to sniper rifle to full-auto light machine gun was only a few quick detente presses away. I wanted to have sex with that weapon for a number of reasons, including...

Metallurgy advances. Stronger, more heat-resistant grades of steel and better composites mean that firearms can be built to feel lighter and flimsier, but are actually tougher. Sure, you don't get the same reassuring solidity, but I bet people felt the same way when walnut stocks started going away.

Exhaust gas management. This one blew my mind the first time I saw the concept attached to a quick-firing naval deck gun. Basically, the exhaust gases are shunted out the back-side of the gun while the round is still in the barrel. But by very precise timing, the low pressure wave doesn't catch the round until after it's already left the barrel. Result? Negligible loss in muzzle velocity, massive decrease in effective recoil and heat transfer. If the technology catches the hype, this would make shoulder-fired .50 caliber semi-auto heavy rifles practical. (Yes, they exist now. I've seen someone shoot a 60mm mortar from the hip too.)

Exoskeletons. BLEEK, HULC, all that stuff. How does this relate to firearms? Right after carrying a 100 pound battle load becomes practical, someone's going to figure out how to use all 100 pounds for more firepower. The only question is whether it's an engineer, or some grunt imitating his favorite action hero on full auto.

Wider pipes, thinner screens. Think data, not chrome. One of the first uses of the overly heavy, low battery life XM28 rifle was to point it at the enemy HQ's battle plan and send a picture back through the tactical internet to friendly HQ. Not quite what anyone was expecting from the "And now you can use the built-in camera to look around corners!" feature. Networked warfare has a lot of interesting potential. The challenge is integrating power management, EMCON and security.

@ Sysyphus My local friendly gun shop owner and my sponsor in the the gun club that I belong to now has that S&W and I got to shoot it, FUCKING FUN! but it jams alot, like every clip at least once

@ Red, I already have a Mosin, an authentic scope and mount for it still cost more than my car and I don't like the conversion kits. There is something about the shape of SVT that makes me want one, that receiver is just like none other. Also there is an adjustment for the gas piston that allows you to fine tune for different types of ammo

I also have this in 54R, have not used it in years...

baby.....