The Firearm Blog

Daniel spotted a very interesting auction at gunbroker.com. The rifle on sale was a Boys Anti- Tank rifle modified by TRW-SYSTEMS GROUP and rechambered for .50 BMG. It was intended to be used for .50 BMG flechette rounds.

Click to expand.

The auctioneer claims that it is only one of twelve built and the only other known example resides at the Ford Benning sniper school.

The .50 BMG Flechette rifle project was contacted out by DARPA in 1960’s. The projectile consisted of a saboted depleted uranium dart weighing 11.9 gram ( 183.6 grains ).

.50 BMG Flechette round cross section. © Paul Smith (Used with permission)

The sabot was fired out of a smoothbore barrel with the dart achieving 4500 feet/sec velocity. That is more than a 32 grain .204 Ruger!

Detailed Drawing © Paul Smith (my modification are in red)

I tried to work out the caliber. Given that 1 cm3 of depleted uranium weights 19.1 grams and the length of the dart is 7.81 cm (I rounded down to 6cm to take into account the spiraling and the point) and then used the formula of a volume of a cylinder:

11.9 / 19.1 = 0.62

sqr(0.62 / ( 6 x pi )) = 0.18 centimeters

[ My math skills not great these days, go easy on me in the comments ]

A caliber of .07″ is seems some what small. It is impossible to know how much titanium is in the depleted uranium alloy.

Time Magazine wrote about the project back in 1967:

TRW’s magic bullets are unimpressive at first glance. Less than 4 in. long and one-tenth of an inch thick, they resemble the steel flechettes (French for “little arrows”) used in some U.S. antipersonnel weapons in Viet Nam. What the TRW flechettes lack in size, they make up in penetration power. In recent tests, they punched completely through a 2-in.-thick armor plate that would stop most steel flechettes or heavy-caliber bullets fired at it.

Dramatic Travel. It is the uranium that gives the flechettes their impressive muscle. Cleansed of its fissionable isotopes U-235, the depleted uranium is safe to handle. Because it is one of the heaviest natural elements (a 1-ft. cube of uranium weighs 1,167 lbs.), even a tiny uranium flechette fired at high velocity from a gun has so much kinetic energy that it can penetrate a target at an angle as oblique as 60°.

At 0.10 in caliber it would have an incredible ballistic coefficient weighing in at 180 grains! In theory it should be super accurate. In reality it was quite the opposite. It shot 10 shot groups of 6 – 8 feet at 600 yards. That’s over 12 MOA!

TRW was hoping to use the flechette in a rotary gatling / mini gun type system. Daniel writes:

The rifle in the GB [gunbroker] ad looks like the one shown in a photo in Peter Senich’s “The Complete Book of U.S. Sniping”. The photo was credited to Don Stoehr, a former TRW employee.

Among his projects were the Low Maintenance Rifle (LMR) and HIVAP (High Velocity All Purpose) machinegun. The HIVAP was really wild. It was an eight-barrel .31 caliber Gatling based on the Dardick open chamber principle. Like other Dardick-derived open chamber weapons, it used ‘trounds’. The HIVAP trounds used lexan cases loaded with saboted flechette. (However, solid bullet variants intended for testing purposes can be found.) The really wild part was the cyclic rate: just shy of 30,000 rpm. Stoehr later wrote that the twin feeders could support 42,000 rpm and that a switch to electrical priming would allow them to double the existing cyclic rate.

However, I don’t know how they’d ever keep such a monster fed. The weapon pod under design only held either 3,000 or 6,000 trounds.

It is an interesting cartridge that unfortunately will probably never be further developed due to the politics and health concerns of depleted uranium. Carrying DE rounds around would likely be a health hazard to the soldier using them.

More information on the round is available at cartridgecollectors.org.

Many thanks to Daniel E. Watters for information and links and to Paul Smith for the use of his photos.

Mossberg’s big muzzle brake, which I call the BFMB (Big “Fraking” Muzzle Brake), first seen on the Mossberg 500 Roadblocker shotgun is coming to the Plinkster line of semi-automatic and bolt action .22 and .17 HRM rifles. Four models will be available with the BFMB.

Click to expand the photos.

Model 817 with scope, thumbhole stock and tip down stock (used as forward hand grip)

Model 702 autoloader

Model 802

Model 817 with scope and bipod.

From the press release:

Muzzle brakes are now available on the following models: the standard 702 Plinkster® (.22 LR autoloading), the scoped 802 Plinkster™ (.22 LR bolt-action with 4x scope) and the scoped model 817 (.17 HMR with 3-9×40 scope). In addition, muzzle brakes will be fit onto a scoped model 817 with a thumbhole stock and Tipdown forend (.17HMR with 3-9×40 scope), and lastly, an 817 (.17HMR) will offer a complete package of a muzzle brake plus an upgraded 4-16×50 scope featuring sun shade, flip open lens protectors and a bi-pod.

I have questioned the effectiveness of muzzle brakes on a low powered cartridge, such as the .22 LR, many times on the blog but this sure looks cool. Do I want one? Hell yes I do

Thanks to Kim for the photos.

The difference is subtle.

Click to expand

This beautiful .38 Super chambered 1911 pistol from Colt is a special edition honoring Vincente Guerrero, the 2nd president of Mexico. The gun features:

Colt factory gold plated barrel bushing and spur hammer and strut. Old style factory roll marks. High polished stainless steel slide flats embellished in 24 kt gold with “La Patria”, the Rampant Colt Logo, and Vincente Guerrero with his dates

The pistol is being distributed by TALO Inc.

Olav @ Firearms and Training wanted a kimber pistol in 9mm but could not find one he wanted that was California approved. He ended up getting a Kimber Pro Carry HD II .38 Super chambered in 9mm Luger / Parabellum.

Read the blog post here.

Earlier this year I wrote about the Gardener gun. Fred emailed me some photos of the Gardener gun in use by the Dutch army at Fort aan Den Ham, one of the 45 forts that make up the Defense Line of Amsterdam, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Fred volunteers at the fort and gave me permission to use the photos on The Firearm Blog.

While these guns could be used in the field, they were mostly used and
more suited to use as fortress guns on forts and ships.

A recent photo of the fort where the guns used to be mounted

Thanks to Fred for the photos.

CR Riddell, PE posted a comment about the Remington 700 VTR triangular barrel and I thought it deserved its own blog post:

I am a professional structural engineer. In 1977, I was granted a patent on a structural system that uses triangular cross-section members with a circular cross-section hole down the middle. Remington’s VTR barrel is identical to that shape. The objective of this shape is to maximize structural force transmission with a minimum of mass.

Remington Model 700 VTR barrel and integral muzzle brake.

During development of the concept, I established that the triangular cross-section provides the maximum surface area for a given enclosed volume. This accounts for the Remington heat dissipation claim/feature. Removing the mass along the central axis leaves the mass in the three corners at a maximum distance from the central axis. This maximizes the axial compression rigidity and the torsional rigidity, also a Remington claim/feature. The torsional rigidity promotes stability under the influence of the rifling twist, a special benefit in a rifle barrel. Flexural stiffness is optimal for downward bending of the muzzle end in the orientation Remington uses in the stock; one corner up and two corners down. That puts the top corner in tension and the bottom corners in compression, where buckling concerns reduce the allowable load-carrying capacity.

From Riddell’s Structural Member and System patent (#4007574)

All this techno-mumb-jumbo counts for doodly, unless the holes in the target get chummy and cuddle up together. As with all accuracy discussions, the teamwork between barrel, bedding, and ammo gives a unique performance result. This must be where Remington spent its advertised years in development.

Obviously, the manufacturer cannot control the customer’s choice of rounds, so they have to shoot for a statistical middle, so to speak. But the bedding is another story. Remington advertises a multi-point mount, not free-floating or glass bedding. This would be crucial for taming the harmonics in concert with the unique tension-vs-compression qualities of the barrel shape.

Thoretically, this barrel should be better than round, but the industrial wisdom and inertia is all compiled for round. Some tuning is required.

Very interesting. Thanks CR for the information.

Last year I wrote about a massive 2 bore rifle, that was not yet fully complete. Colin Stolzer, of Stolzer & Son’s Gunsmithing, contacted me with some additional information and photos of the completed rifle. Colin build some of the parts of the rifle while he was an apprentice of Master Gunsmith Steve Zihn. Click to expand all the photos.

Colin also forwarded on an email from Steve Zihn. I wondered if it was a true rifle or a paradox gun (part smoothbore, part rifled). Steve confirms that it is a rifle:

it’s a real rifle, not a paradox gun. 36″ barrel , but it only came to 22 pounds. If I ever do another one I am going to make a recessed breach because you can’t get your hand around anything larger. that’s why it’s “only” 22 pounds. If I were to use a barrel that would get it up to 30 pounds I’d still have to wrap a stock around it. Then no normal man (even with big hands) can grip it and the recoil will cause it to jump out of you hands completely.

You can tell them about yourself 6′ 5″ tall, and 240 pounds . You shot the 4 bore and it was enough to cause you trouble. So you can just imagine what a 2 bore would be like (4X the recoil at the same scale) It will make a good post for you. then tell them about the 8 bores you are building. If there ask anything more I’ll chime in later and endorse you.

Colin says:

Back when I was apprenticing in his shop he was commissioned to build a 4 bore Muzzleloader in a similar style as the 2 bore.

When it was nearly finished and needed to be sighted in I got the pleasure of helping do that job. The 4 bore exerts 255 PSI at 32 FPS of felt recoil(if I remember the number correctly), and I can tell you that at 6′ 5″ and 240 pounds and being very experienced with big bore guns, it was still more than enough to push be back a quick two step. And after 2 shots left me black and blue for about 5″ around my shoulder area(part of that was because the rifle was built for a smaller statured person so it really didn’t fit me). But the owner of the 4 bore shot it once and sent it back to Steve to sell.

The man bought more gun than he could handle, and I believe it was more painful than he wanted to ever shoot again(speculation on my part).

Heh, personally I am pretty recoil sensitive. As much as I want to shoot one of these *big* bores, I think I would rather watch someone else shoot them

I asked Colin why these types of big bore guns are never seen with a muzzle brake:

In a smokeless powder rifle of these calibers a muzzlebrake would be a necessity but with blackpowder, which is what most of the big bore guns are, the powder doesn’t convert to gas expansion rapidly like smokeless so the benefits of a brake would be minimal.

And then you run into the aesthetics, the guys who buy these kinds of rifles are typically traditionalist and putting a muzzlebrake on a classic African rifle would be a sacrilege to most of them, so it just isn’t done. I’m honestly not sure a guy could build one of these is a smokeless configuration, by the time you got enough steel into the action to hold the pressure, you wouldn’t be able to hold the gun up, and even then the recoil would probably be literally lethal.

I’ve read pretty much everything I can find on big bore rifles, and almost every one of the classic dangerous game hunters wrote of the 2 and 4 bores giving them headaches, spinning them around(Sir Samuel Baker said his 2 bore would try to spin him around like a “weathercock in a hurricane”) nosebleeds, and concussions from the recoil. Sir Samuel Baker ended up with permanent nerve damage from using the 2 bore that effected him in his declining years to a point were it left him basically punch-drunk all the time and his wife had to care for him.

This type of rifle starts at $4500 and then goes up depending on what wood , engraving, checkering etc. you want.

Colin is currently specializing in building custom muzzle loaders, including double rifles and big bore 8 gauge/bore rifles. He can be contacted at his website Stolzer & Son’s Gunsmithing.

Miguel Caballero, a Colombian, is a designer of ballistic vests for military and police and “bullet proof” fashionable clothing. Apparently he requires all new employees to be shot while wearing one of his ballistic vests! Here is a video showing blogger Erik R. Trinidad of The Global trip being shot point blank by a .38 Special revolver.

Even through I posted that impressive video of a guy being shot point blank with a .44 Magnum and .308 Win., I am still amazed at what little effect on the target the bullet has when it impacts a ballistic vest. Sure, I do understand the physics, but still!

More videos of people being shot by Miguel are here.

Someone from Bulletproofjackets.net posted the info about Miguel Caballero. Thanks.

I had adopted, with a few minor changes, the well written comment policy used by Sebastian at Snowflakes in Hell. Basically all I ask is that you do treat others the same as how you would treat them if you were discussing something face-to-face.

Comment Policy: I reserve the right to remove comments at my discretion. Think of comment threads like a dinner party at someone’s house. If you make the party unpleasant for others or me, you won’t be invited back. I am happy to tolerate a wide range of viewpoints, even extreme ones, but I’m not going to tolerate nastiness, rudeness, trolling, vitriol, or excessive snarkiness toward the author(s) or other commenters. You may make your case passionately, but civility is expected. Please stay on topic and respect the technical nature of this blog.

Spam Filtering: To avoid spam, comments are filted using Akismet and then manually approved. Do not be alarmed if you comment does not appear instantly. I do not check the spam folder more than once per day.

I have had very few problems with comments since I started blogging, chances are that if you are reading this blog post I have never had a problem with your comments. With the blog becoming more popular and more people arriving from google vs. other gun blogs, hopefully this policy will avoid unpleasantness in the future.

Thanks to Sebastian for letting me use his comment policy.

A few days ago I blogged about the new Scout Sniper Observation Telescope. I said it would use the Horus reticle. According to Allen, a Marine vet and analyst at The Columbia Group, The Marines will be using a standard Gen II Mil-Dot reticle, not the Horus reticle.

As Jay (jdun1911) said in the comments of the original post a grid is not a great idea for spotting.

Thanks to Allen for the correction.

Seen at SayUncle. It gave me a good laugh!

(Photo of PlasmaFox’s AR-15)

Repeat after me “clips are used to hold cartridges together for quick loading, magazines are used to hold cartridges for feeding into the guns’ chamber”

The best explanation of the differences that I could find is at The Gun Zone.

The terms are NOT interchangeable!

20 year old Briana was shot at by her former boyfriend. The bullet, reported as “.40 caliber” presumably .40 S&W, passed through her windscreen and hit her at the back of the skull. Her hair weave prevented the bullet penetrating her skull. Her only injuries were minor and she never lost consciousness.

What can we learn from this?

* Well for a start having your guardian angel around is a great way to survive a shooting!

* Pistol bullet are low powered especially after penetration of other materials (the window).

* Skulls are hard, hunters with high powered rifles can testify to that.

* Again, pistols are low powered! Tell that to most people and they don’t believe you. Hollywood says otherwise.

Thanks to Jay for the link!

muck @ MP.net came across this photo of a G3 rifle attached to a Steadicam.

While it is very cool looking it is also very impractical. Shooting sticks are a much better idea. If the shooter need to lie down or quickly maneuver he just drops the sticks.

The correct use of a Steadicam. Photo from Wikipedia.

UPDATE: So it turns out this concept was used in the movie Aliens. I have not seen any of the Alien/Predator movies. Only in the past few years have I began to start appreciating sci/fi after reading a couple of the classics. Some Alien movie pictures:

“Colonial Marines Technical Manual” – Thanks to Jimmy for the scan


“M56 Smart Gun”. From IMFDB. Thanks to Linoge and Redfezwriter for the link.

From the same company that makes the chocolate ammo boxes comes a chocolate Glock:

Very cool. Chocolate Weapons are selling it for $29.99.