If you wonder why it takes so long to get new guns into production, Ian McCollum has an answer for you: Because designing and manufacturing guns is hard. Mainly because of the extensive trial and error necessary to establish the correct tolerances for each part.
Posts Tagged ‘Ian McCollum’
Guns Are Hard
Thursday, May 27th, 2021When Boomstick Booms Wrong
Monday, May 3rd, 2021Today I’m doing something I don’t think I’ve ever done before: Take a video I’ve already linked from a LinkSwarm and put it up here, because there are a lot of important lessons to learn.
You should watch all of this:
On April 9, Scott Allen DeShields, Jr. of Kentucky Ballistics was shooting old SLAP rounds through his single-shot Serbu RN 50 when a hot round burst the chamber, shearing the threads off his locking cap and sending pieces of metal flying back at him. Damage included a lacerated jugular, in-tubing a collapsed lung without anesthetic, orbital bone repair and 5 pints of blood.
Him surviving was a combination of being very lucky, having a father with law enforcement training right there to help slow the bleed, and doing exactly the right things to get him alive and conscious to treatment (the ambulance met them halfway, and then had him life-flighted to Vanderbilt Hospital).
Here, Ian McCollum of Forgotten Weapons discusses the accident, what went wrong (and right) in the aftermath of the Kentucky Ballistics malfunction, and covers in-battery and out-of-battery failure modes for various firearms.
He has some very good advice that goes beyond basic firearms safety. One of the most important is: If something seems “off,” stop and try and figure out what it. The life you save could be your own…
Stop That Tank!
Sunday, January 31st, 2021What better Sunday viewing fodder than tanks, Walt Disney, and Hitler in Hell?
That’s just the beginning of the full video, which gives more technical detail and instructions on how to use the rifle:
The Boys Mark 1 antitank rifle was based on an .50 BMG cartridge upped to a .55 projectile, and was the primary anti-tank weapon available to the British Commonwealth at the outbreak of World War II. Could it actually take out German Panzers?
Eh. Sort of. Briefly.
The Mark II variant bullet was capable of penetrating “0.91 inches (23.2 mm) of armor at 100 yd (91 m).” So it could theoretically take out Panzer Is and IIs. But Panzer IIIs, starting with the Ausf. D version in 1938, had at least 30mm armor, so they were already useless against German medium tanks when the war began. So it was pretty much obsolete when the Walt Disney video was made.
Here’s Ian McCollum talking about the rifle:
And here he is firing it:
And finally, because of the name of the rifle, and because it’s my blog, and because why the hell not:
Worst Gun Ever?
Thursday, July 2nd, 2020Heading toward Fourth of July weekend, I was looking through YouTube for more things that go boom when I came across this video of a gun infamous for not going boom. Ladies and gentlemen, feast your eyes on the nightmare-fueled horror that is the Zip 22:
It’s bad enough that it’s butt-ugly, cheaply made and anti-ergonomic, but is also infamous for malfunctioning. “Worst gun ever” has to be a target-rich environment, but the Zip 22 seems like a real strong contender. (I suppose the World War II Japanese Nambu Type 94 Shiki Kenju 8mm pistol, which could be fired accidentally by touching the sear, is actually worse from a safety viewpoint.)
But the detail that made write this post was the fact that the manufacturer offered an optional backward Picatinny rail for the top so you could mount this gun on the rail of a real gun. It’s like all those “Chainsaw bayonet attachment” memes come to life.
How unreliable is it? Ian McCollum was surprised he was actually able to fire off an entire magazine before it malfunctioned.
Here’s a guy shooting a Zip 22, who experiences a host of malfunctions (failure to eject, double-feed, etc.) in the course of firing off six magazines.
And the ejection port is so close to your finger that sometimes you get hot brass jammed up against your digits, as in this NSFW video:
Don’t think I’ll be buying one of these anytime soon…
Firing A Minigun
Wednesday, July 1st, 2020Today my brain decided it didn’t want to write up a blog post, so instead let’s start easing into the 4th of July weekend with things that go boom. Today, one of the most awesome things that go boom: the legendary M134 Minigun.
On the firing range:
Here’s Ian McCollum of Forgotten Weapons describing in detail how it works:
And here he is firing it in slow motion:
Shermanpalooza!
Tuesday, May 5th, 2020Not sooner do I start writing about Sherman tanks than suddenly all sorts of Sherman-related information starts popping up.
First, here’s are two really detailed videos from Nicholas Moran, AKA The Chieftain, of the features of a Sherman M4A1:
Second, Dwight sent me this twitter thread, that goes into a great deal of detail about how the Sherman’s later reputation for being Not So Great came almost entirely for the way they were deployed in roles they were not specialized for.
Here’s a Tweet from that thread that talks about the weird (but highly effective) redesign that became the Sherman M4VC Firefly used by the British Army:
The story of the Sherman Vc's development is amazing (and look I've fixed the meme for you)… but they arrive at units with a shitty No. 43 Telescope with 3x magnification.
It's marginally better than the standard offering, but isn't really even remotely suitable. /27 pic.twitter.com/ZrHOtGM0Qr
— Jonathan Ware (@ReassessHistory) April 27, 2020
(The way embedded tweets work is you’ll probably have to click on that to see the full meme.)
The British 17 pounder/76.2mm gun used a much longer (and thus higher velocity) shell, powerful enough to take out a Tiger I from the front (though I don’t fancy its chances against the Tiger II), a gun about on par with the German 88mm L/56 on the Tiger I (but not the 88mm L/71 on the Tiger II).
And speaking of the Firefly, Moran did a tour of the Firefly in these videos:
And here’s Moran and Forgotten Weapons host Ian McCollum joining forces to fire the weapon systems on a Sherman:
Finally, it being the Internet, there’s a site dedicated to Sherman tanks. This myths about Shermans post is particularly interesting.