Guns after the fall of civerlisation

[LargePrime]

Um, I get enough things wrong on these boards, whats one more?

What is so hard about smokless power?
Nitric Acid can be made from fertilizer and water. It can be distilled to concentrate it. From there you can nitrate cellulose.

I guess I even question the premise. Why would "civerlisation" say fallen?

[safisher]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

In the short run there are lots of guns to go around without gunsmithing. In the long run, gunsmithing won't be any more a rare skill than iron age blacksmithing. There might be a period when gun stocks are low but gunsmith training hasn't been disseminated well, but I don't think the existing stock will run down fast enough for that.

I agree. Reportedly, the U.S. has 300 million guns in civilian hands, and hundreds of millions of rounds of ammunition in civilian possession. If only 5% of the populace remains, for example, that's mighty lot of guns and ammo remaining. Never mind military stores, those in the manufacturing process, distributors, stores, etc. The most popular/common guns will have a large amount of replacement parts just by virtue of damaged guns that can't be put into service. Anybody with decent intelligence can swap parts out and figure why the gun won't work -- a more talented person could make a template from a broken part and using a file create a replacement part. Native Americans did this during the Indian Wars.

Guns are the least of the survivors problems (in the U.S. at least).

[LargePrime]

Also this
http://www.quackenbushairguns.com/index.html

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by LargePrime

What is so hard about smokless power?
Nitric Acid can be made from fertilizer and water. It can be distilled to concentrate it. From there you can nitrate cellulose.

Are you talking about manufactured chemical fertilizer? I'm fairly sure you can't do that with typical manure...

That stuff is produced by a big, expensive, advanced chemical industry. If you still have that, I'm not sure in what sense you've had a 'fall of civilization'.

Or do you think there's enough of that warehoused to last people? I suspect that'd be used up for agricultural purposes, but I don't know how big inventories are.

Though in certain places, sulfuric acid will always be highly available. There are ridiculous sulfur stockpiles (literally heaps of massive solid-sulfur blocks), and the knowledge of how to make the acid from the mineral probably will be available.

[LargePrime]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Are you talking about manufactured chemical fertilizer? I'm fairly sure you can't do that with typical manure...

That stuff is produced by a big, expensive, advanced chemical industry. If you still have that, I'm not sure in what sense you've had a 'fall of civilization'.

Or do you think there's enough of that warehoused to last people? I suspect that'd be used up for agricultural purposes, but I don't know how big inventories are.

Though in certain places, sulfuric acid will always be highly available. There are ridiculous sulfur stockpiles (literally heaps of massive solid-sulfur blocks), and the knowledge of how to make the acid from the mineral probably will be available.

I am sure all these chemical processes are very simple and easy to replicate with simple hand driven machinery and heating and cooling. Perhaps much of the simple processes will have to be rediscovered. They will not have the purity, or the cheap pricing, but that is not the question. They can be done at the level required to make a functional smokeless powder.

I don't know, but using chemicals in post apocalyptic agricultural is not really justifiable.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by LargePrime

I am sure all these chemical processes are very simple and easy to replicate with simple hand driven machinery and heating and cooling. Perhaps much of the simple processes will have to be rediscovered. They will not have the purity, or the cheap pricing, but that is not the question. They can be done at the level required to make a functional smokeless powder.

Uh, you want to run the Haber and Ostwald processes on a workshop level? I'm not sure that's even possible, but it's definitely neither simple nor easy.

You could produce nitric acid from saltpeter, though. I don't know how hard the process is, but it's old-school alchemy so it'd certainly be possible. And the common methods of producing saltpeter, while not very nice, certainly are simple and doable most anywhere so long as you've got livestock and wood ash.

Originally Posted by LargePrime

I don't know, but using chemicals in post apocalyptic agricultural is not really justifiable.

If you can, why not? High agricultural productivity doesn't get less desirable when you have less people.

[Frost]

Originally Posted by LargePrime

I am sure all these chemical processes are very simple and easy to replicate with simple hand driven machinery and heating and cooling. Perhaps much of the simple processes will have to be rediscovered. They will not have the purity, or the cheap pricing, but that is not the question. They can be done at the level required to make a functional smokeless powder.

I don't know, but using chemicals in post apocalyptic agricultural is not really justifiable.

Using chemicals for agriculture in a post apocalyptic scenario is decidedly justifiable as long as they last. This is doubly true if the incident leaves relitively large populations configned to small or agriculturaly impoverished regions. The real difficulty is replacing the substances you use, which can't be made on a practical basis without complex infrastructure.

While you could try processing some of it to make smokeless powder you are going to hit the buffers pretty quickly. Yes you can make (semi) smokeless powder by kitchen sink methods the results however will be very disapointing. The kind of powders you could produce on this basis are weak, hard to store, have a poor shelf life and still produce a fair quantity of smoke. In short they are probably not suitible for the majority of modern weapons and not worth the additional trouble and expense over gunpowder in the rest.

Most groups of survivors will, I suspect, stick with pre event relics and then move onto black powder when the amunition runs out or the guns fail beyond convenient repair without ever trying this kind of experiment.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Frost

While you could try processing some of it to make smokeless powder you are going to hit the buffers pretty quickly. Yes you can make (semi) smokeless powder by kitchen sink methods the results however will be very disapointing. The kind of powders you could produce on this basis are weak, hard to store, have a poor shelf life and still produce a fair quantity of smoke. In short they are probably not suitible for the majority of modern weapons and not worth the additional trouble and expense over gunpowder in the rest.

Is it that bad, really? Making nitrocellulose is easy if you have acids and cotton. Poudre B, while perhaps not the ideal propellant, looks pretty simple and well worth it. I'd certainly try for it.

[pawsplay]

A preliminary survey of Wikipedia and the Internet suggests that a rudimentary knowledge of the use of nitric substances in explosives would allow someone to make smokeless powder in a shed in their backyard. Producing nitric acid itself is an age-old art, early TL3 stuff.

[Frost]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Is it that bad, really? Making nitrocellulose is easy if you have acids and cotton. Poudre B, while perhaps not the ideal propellant, looks pretty simple and well worth it. I'd certainly try for it.

Everything that I have found sugests that its only real value was proving that it could be done.

It dosen't offer that much of a power increase over black powder. It can still cause fouling problems. Above all it is as interesting to store as I sugested in my earlier post. From what I have read it tends to break down over a fairly short period of time a process that is accelerated by heat and its own breakdown products.

While the chemistry isn't complex the actual processes for producing nitrocellulose and collodion are (as far as I know) demanding and probably impossible to automate on a small scale. If you add in the time needed to process the resources this means that it will require more effort to produce than black powder where the raw materials are compartively simple to process and much of the production can be automated.

So while it is better than gunpowder, it isn't so much better that a society organised on a village or town type basis is likely to invest in its production.