[AtE] Black Powder vs Smokeless

[Verjigorm]

Originally Posted by Rupert

Blowback could be used for quite hefty blackpowder cartridges, given their comparatively low chamber pressures, though for a rifle round the action would have to be fairly massive - practical for a medium machinegun, but probably not for a LMG or battle rifle.

The main issue with black powder for automatic weapons would be fouling. One way of making a gun less sensitive to fouling is to use a larger bore. As blackpowder's low operating pressure makes it hard to get high muzzle velocities, you'll probably want a larger bore to allow a more massive bullet anyway. Thus blackpowder weapons, even fairly sophisticated semi- or fully-automatic ones, will tend to be large and heavy.

This being the case, big revolvers as the handgun of choice makes sense, as does the use of bolt-action rifles, with autoloading actions being limited to machineguns (and those being medium machineguns, probably water-cooled because at that point, why not?), and perhaps some submachineguns for specialist units (without TL7 mass-production and large factories, SMGs cost as much as rifles, sometimes more, so they aren't a weapon for conscript armies before TL7). Cartridges would tend to be things like .44-40, .45 Long Colt, and .450 Adams/.455 Webley for handguns, and .45-70 and .450 Martini-Henry for long arms (or rimless equivalents, though they are a bit harder to make and require slightly more sophisticated extraction systems).

That's more or less my line of thinking. Big bores, simple and dependable actions, and reliable manufacture should be predominant weaponry.

[Minuteman37]

I disagree that cheap SMGs are a TL7 innovation. The PPsh-43 while technically after the 1940 cut off date for TL6 was manufactured and invented by the least technologically advanced and industrially developed country that was able to play a major role in WW2, meanwhile the most technology advanced nation was nazi germany and they pioneered the state of the art stamping technology that was necessary to manufacture the AK-47 series for the soviets post war.

The PPsh-43 was easily produced in mass quantities in the primitive (for the 1940s) soviet factories that were under siege at stalingrad.

I'm firmly of the opinion that modern gun designers with modern knowhow could produce the cheap minimalistic SMGs of WW2 in a TL6 factory.


Now it is worth mentioning that there is a big difference between a TL6 factory and what is essentially a khyber pass style post-apocalypse gun cottage industry, but it's certainly more doable that some make it out to be.

[adm]

Russia was not as technically backwards in 1940s as we in the west like to believe. While not cutting edge, they spent a lot of effort in the 1930's bringing their manufacturing plants up to modern standards, easily equal to France, and ahead of Italy.

For what it may be worth, I will note that Russia was the first country to produce and adopt an all metal cantilever low wing fighter with retractable landing gear. The Polikarpov I-16.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Minuteman37

I'm firmly of the opinion that modern gun designers with modern knowhow could produce the cheap minimalistic SMGs of WW2 in a TL6 factory.

Oh, I'm sure you could, early TL 7 weapons optimized for cheapness are probably easier to make than late TL 6 weapons. They might not be cheap at TL 6, though.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by Rupert

Good barrels will be a problem, though. A lot of those hand-made AK copies (and the Lee-Enfield copies before them) have awful barrels, with poor or absent rifling. Quite a few don't split on first use solely because they have enough windage that the pressure stays low - and accuracy is thus effectively non-existent, and bullet energy well below what you get from a properly made weapon. Some are well-made, most are not.

It is too bad that Pyramid is going away, because hand-made guns in the Philippines and Pakistan could be a good article for someone who shoots and owns the right half-dozen books. Luke Bunyip's setting will probably have many post-Fall firearms, where games set in the Former United States can easily have MOAR DAKKA.

I actually don't know what they use for the barrels ... pipe? Or how they hollow out revolver cylinders.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by adm

One problem you get into with black powder ammunition is if that's the best you can make, you are unlikely to be mass producing it. Fully automatic weapons use a lot of rounds, big bore rounds that you tend to see with black powder weapons are also heavy, and your likely supply network will not be moving them very fast.

700,000-odd trapdoor Springfields and 500,000-1,000,000 Martini-Henrys suggest that black-powder cartridges and the rifles for them can, and were, mass-produced. Mass production can be done without modern production lines of the sort pioneered by Henry Ford. It's just slower and more labour intensive (and the labour needs to be more skilled). On the other hand, it doesn't require as many of the large powered tools that a production line needs to be truly efficient - as with lower TL production in general more labour and less capital is required. This means small-scale cottage industry can make these guns readily in a way that they can't so easily make a TL7 design, though until the car bodies and other sources of sheet metal run out crappy SMGs based on the Sten and PPS would be easy enough to make, with careful manual folding rather than machine stamping (and multiple layers of sheet metal), though the magazines would probably be awful (and the barrels, but for what's really a full-auto zip gun, who cares?).

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Oh, I'm sure you could, early TL 7 weapons optimized for cheapness are probably easier to make than late TL 6 weapons. They might not be cheap at TL 6, though.

That was my point - compared to a simple TL6 rifle, like a Martini-Henry or a cleaned up Lee-Enfield or early (cock on close) Mauser, even a Sten gun or a PPD is going to be fairly expensive to make in a small TL6 facility, because the stampings will have to be done by hand, and that is slow. Likewise a lot of the drilling. The TL6 gun, on the other hand, is castings and milling, which is heavy, and wasteful, but easier to do on a small scale with light power tools.

If the SMGs were built for longer service, rather than for speed of production, that would further increase the cost.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

I actually don't know what they use for the barrels ... pipe? Or how they hollow out revolver cylinders.

The chambers in a revolver cylinder are short enough that they can be drilled out. For barrels, pipe, bed legs, any kind of heavy tube. There's a reason those things don't last long and are often rather unsafe. A good manufacturer might use a barrel recycled from some other weapon of the same calibre, or even have a lathe and slowly cut their own. I understand that heavy wrecking bars are often of a good tough steel that works for such home-made barrels.

[Luke Bunyip]

Originally Posted by adm

... black powder ammunition ... unlikely to be mass producing it...(f)ully automatic weapons use a lot of rounds...

Mmn.... yeah.
I've been thinking about "bang for buck". My gut is going for shotguns and grenades for short range, and bolt action large calibre rifles for sniping. Possibly lever action carbines.
If there's not enough powder for artillery*, and low combatant densities, (IMHO) combat will be long distance plinking, and then a charge followed by a close in melee.


*Black powder mortars? BP rifle calibre grenade launchers? BP M37 Grenade Launcher clones?

[adm]

Originally Posted by Rupert

700,000-odd trapdoor Springfields and 500,000-1,000,000 Martini-Henrys suggest that black-powder cartridges and the rifles for them can, and were, mass-produced. ....

Good points, but even those factories were rather labor intensive, ATE settings are often resource limited, which then limits population. I was also referring more to current perceptions of mass production. If you are used to going down to Wal*Mart and buying 500 round boxes of 9mm whenever you want, the rate of small shop production may shock you.