What kinds of firearms would people start making [After the End]?

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by SRoach

I think the real issue with recovering TL won't be the availability of knowledge, and possibly won't be the availability of materials in the long run, (in the short run, they can salvage,) but the availability of hands to do all the work.

Yes, but that only limits some components of a given TL. Some products of advanced TLs need a huge industrial base to support. Some don't, but do need novel scientific developments. And some don't need either, but just didn't happen to be invented earlier.

The latter two groups are the tricky ones for regressed TL.

[SRoach]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Yes, but that only limits some components of a given TL. Some products of advanced TLs need a huge industrial base to support. Some don't, but do need novel scientific developments. And some don't need either, but just didn't happen to be invented earlier.

The latter two groups are the tricky ones for regressed TL.

This is true, but further, some tricks aren't worth much until you have a need for them, and that need is tied to TL.
For instance, a lot of inventions just come together once the underlying technologies are invented.
A Minie ball is easy to mold, but worse than a musket ball until you develop rifling.
You COULD make a blackpowder machine gun, but it'd only be able to fire for a short while before fouling of the barrel forced you to stop.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by SRoach

A Minie ball is easy to mold, but worse than a musket ball until you develop rifling.

Rifling was invented and widely used centuries before the invention of the Minie ball.

Originally Posted by SRoach

You COULD make a blackpowder machine gun, but it'd only be able to fire for a short while before fouling of the barrel forced you to stop.

Both Gatling and Maxim guns were originally black-powder weapons.

Automatic weapons were long sought-after. They mostly needed sufficiently advanced mechanical engineering and the development of near-modern cartridges.

[mlangsdorf]

Originally Posted by phayman53

This certainly indicates to me that some communities will be able to produce better than TL4 stuff, but it will be relatively rare, and therefore expensive.

Right, which is why TL5 stuff is x2 in cost, and TL6 stuff is x4 in cost.

PK explicitly states in this post that there should be TL5 settlements in ATE game:
http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.p...&postcount=148

TL6 stuff? Less so. It depends on each GM's view of the game and the genre. My upcoming Nu World has a lot of early TL5 settlements, a few mature TL5 settlements, and handful of settlements that can do limited TL6 or greater manufacturing. If I was doing a game based more on Fallout: New Vegas, there would be a lot of new TL6 and TL7 gear coming out of the New California Republic, but that's not the game my group wanted to play. But Fallout: New Vegas is clearly an After the End game, albeit one set 8-9 generations after the fall.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

But Fallout: New Vegas is clearly an After the End game, albeit one set 8-9 generations after the fall.

Not really...

It says "200+ years" on the tin, but buildings are clearly in far better shape than ATE suggests they should be. For Fallout I'd have to modify a lot of ATE assumptions to fit the genre properly.

Don't get me wrong... ATE is a good base to start from for Fallout. But...

[acrosome]

If you can make primers for cap locks, you can make a shotgun shell. A shotgun shell doesn't really require tight tolerances. Though, for that matter, neither do rolled-brass-foil Martini-Henry cartridges. And there are easier (that is, less likely to kill you during manufacture) things to make primers out of than mercury fulminate. Lead picrate comes to mind- you just heat a mixture of picric acid and red lead. Picric acid is made from coal tar or petroleum- though ideally reasonably pure phenol is best- and a series of acid reactions. So, yes it take a bit of a chemist, but there will be otherwise unemployed ex-chemists around. A high-school science teacher could do it in a snap.

It's also really not as hard to make a minimally functional brass cartridge as the OP seems to think- see the rolled brass foil example above. Making one that is as reproducibly reliable and accurate as modern ones is a bit of a trick, but these will work just fine if your standards are low- I think your research was into more modern ones. The Martini had a well-known problem with ripping the (welded) bottoms off the cartridge during ejection while leaving the rest in the chamber, but this was as much a problem with the rifle design as with the cartridge. Well, it was mostly the cartridge, but the rifle was to blame, too. The way it was designed made it incredibly difficult to clear such a malfunction. Something more like, say, a Remington Rolling Block or a Sharps would probably perform very well with such a cartridge, and be easier to put back into action, since you can look straight into the chamber from the back.

But, to answer the OP, I think shotguns would be popular. Slugs or shot. Happily, they fit in with the genre very well, too. Hell, Max Rokatansky carried one...

[phayman53]

Originally Posted by acrosome

If you can make primers for cap locks, you can make a shotgun shell. A shotgun shell doesn't really require tight tolerances. Though, for that matter, neither do rolled-brass-foil Martini-Henry cartridges. And there are easier (that is, less likely to kill you during manufacture) things to make primers out of than mercury fulminate. Lead picrate comes to mind- you just heat a mixture of picric acid and red lead. Picric acid is made from coal tar or petroleum- though ideally reasonably pure phenol is best- and a series of acid reactions. So, yes it take a bit of a chemist, but there will be otherwise unemployed ex-chemists around. A high-school science teacher could do it in a snap.

It's also really not as hard to make a minimally functional brass cartridge as the OP seems to think- see the rolled brass foil example above. Making one that is as reproducibly reliable and accurate as modern ones is a bit of a trick, but these will work just fine if your standards are low- I think your research was into more modern ones. The Martini had a well-known problem with ripping the (welded) bottoms off the cartridge during ejection while leaving the rest in the chamber, but this was as much a problem with the rifle design as with the cartridge. Well, it was mostly the cartridge, but the rifle was to blame, too. The way it was designed made it incredibly difficult to clear such a malfunction. Something more like, say, a Remington Rolling Block or a Sharps would probably perform very well with such a cartridge, and be easier to put back into action, since you can look straight into the chamber from the back.

But, to answer the OP, I think shotguns would be popular. Slugs or shot. Happily, they fit in with the genre very well, too. Hell, Max Rokatansky carried one...

Awesome, thanks for the info about primers, rolled brass foil cartridges, and the link to the Martini-Henry page. It definitely makes such weapons seem more achievable for skilled gunsniths in AtE TL5 towns. I also had not given a lot of thought to shotguns because my historical knowledge of shotguns is pretty limited. I could definitely see them being popular--both slug and shot.

[Calvin]

A lot of what's being posted here is addressing what might be done at the new TL to make stuff from scratch.

The other thing to consider is what's going to be left lying around to work with. One or two generations is only 30 or 60 years, which is not that much time. I should mention though that one assumption I make here is that the setting is in North America, though much of this would still apply in Europe and Asia.

I'd expect that most of the weapons in use are going to be stuff that was modern at the time of the apocalypse. The wear and tear over 30 to 60 years would be significant, but most weapons are not stored out in the rain and snow. Of all the things that could be left behind guns might very well be in better shape than most other things.

The apocalypse (in whatever form it takes) is going to complicate things, but if a gun has been sitting in a warehouse owned by Colt or in some farmer's footlocker it's probably still going to be sitting there 60 years later. It's going to need some work, and semi or full automatics are going to be in bad shape, but bolt action and pump action weapons could probably be fixed in a couple hours of proper attention. Even semi auto and full auto weapons can probably be refurbished if a couple mostly intact examples are found and the working parts are used to make one functional weapon.

Ammo is another issue, and it does cause further problems for semi and full auto weapons, but even some pre-apocalypse ammo will still be lying around. Cartridges stored properly before the apocalypse will probably still be in good shape afterwards, depending on how much damage the building they were stored in took. Primers and empty brass are also going to be available, and probably in large quantities for all the home reloaders out there. Heck, stuff meant for company factories might be sitting in the back of some transport truck or in a bunch of crates in some factory.

Smokeless powder not currently loaded into a cartridge is probably in pretty bad shape regardless, but an amateur gunsmith could do a whole lot if someone hands him a big pile of brass and primers. Black powder rounds could be assembled using those materials. Semi and full auto weapons will have a real hard time though, not cycling, the fouling, etc. Bolt action and pump action weapons will probably be fine though.

I doubt that a whole lot of stuff is going to be made absolutely from scratch, even if it's just a gunsmith using a scavenged pre-rifled barrel. Too much stuff is still going to be lying around after 30-60 years for people not to use it.

[Ulzgoroth]

Remember, though, that there have been people around for that time, using up those resources. It's not just a matter of how long it can survive being abandoned.

[(E)]

One possibly useless thought, casting your own caseless ammunition.