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One of the requirements for the US military pistol competition that resulted in the selection of the Beretta 92 as the M9 was that the pistol should have a certain amount of energy for reliable ignition of (sometimes hard) military primers. How was this measured? Was it just the amount of...

I work for a package company. I had wondered what that weird, new symbol was. Thanks.

Yes, JMB was the first, but I don't think his patent was that much earlier than the patent for the WSL rifles. A decade, tops.

And people will still argue that the telescoped bolt on the Sa. 23 was somehow a new development...

But even that is downright prosaic compared to the late WWII plans for a 15mm roller-retarded-blowback aircraft gun (I'm unsure if any were ever made), or for that matter the Becker/Oerlikon family of autocannons, which included the 20mm type 99 and 30mm mk 108. Becker/Oerlikon are often...

There actually have been straight blowback sporting arms firing rather hefty cartridges; the Winchester Self Loading designs from around a century ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winchester_Model_1910 Cartridge for the largest ones was the .401 WSL, capable of flinging a 200 grain bullet at...

Interesting; I hadn't heard that before about the SVT, but the FAL will occasionally exhibit a similar problem. The downward-tilting bolt is usually fingered as the culprit. Because the tail end of the bolt goes downwards it has to fight magazine spring pressure. Therefore, the exact...

There were a few designs that used rigid roller locking and gas piston operation (I can think of three; one Mauser, one SIG and one Rheinmetall), but these are extremely obscure and nobody has ever heard of them. HK G3s look like they have a gas system because of the way the cocking tube...

Take a look at the ACR, née Masada, or for that matter any GPMG that isn't an MG3. Having a gas system attached to each barrel doesn't seem to be an unconscionable burden, and in fact it's helpful in some ways. Different barrel lengths and different calibers have different dwell times and...

Seems substantially similar to the Lewis Gun, just with a whole lot of metal removed. I had always read that these things fired from an open bolt for FA and a closed bolt for semi. Looks like they actually fired from an open bolt for FA and from a less open bolt for semi.

I've been thinking about takedown/folding rifles after seeing a friend's excellent factory takedown Mannlicher-Schoenauer (I committed the sin of coveting things that are my neighbor's, I'm afraid). It occurred to me that it's very easy to store a pistol in some manner that's inconspicuous...

That would be a MAS-49/56, different rifle (confusing, since they're both something-49 and they look somewhat alike). The SAFN-49 is Belgian, the MAS-49 is French.

In WWII there were various experimental tank cannons that were rigged to squirt compressed air down the bore after every shot to clear out the fumes. I want to say that the KwK 43 8.8 cm L/71 actually had this, but I can't find a diagram to say for sure. So, the idea was constructed and...

IIRC the kel-tec line from way back when was that you're supposed to pull the magazine, flip the rifle over and access the breech through the magazine well. Not exactly the most streamlined process, but it is something. Also, the F2000 and RFB forward ejection work rather differently. In...

The action is actually eerily reminiscent of an SKS, and beyond the broad strokes like "it uses a short stroke gas piston and a downwards-tilting, rear locking bolt." A lot of the incidental details are similar too, like the little lever, trigger-blocking safety, the takedown lever that holds...

As Oleg Volk is fond of pointing out, forward ejection was used in the Maxim MGs from over a century ago. It's hardly an untested novelty. In fact, it occurred to me while fooling around with an F2000 that it might actually be more reliable than conventional side ejection because the...

This rifle in particular, or the SAFN-49 generally? The OP's rifle is assembled in the US from Egyptian parts (didn't know they US-assembled SAFN-49s. Aren't they 922 cool to begin with?), so it didn't serve anywhere. More generally, the SAFN-49 saw some use in the Egyptian Army in their...

Suitability for blowback action isn't simply a matter of overall power. Read Chinn's The Machinegun, available for free download here. It's a (somewhat complex) function of how thick the case head is, how much pressure it can support over a given unsupported area, and the rate at which...

Caseless systems get hit coming and going. In a cold barrel they lack the case to absorb some of the heat from firing, so the chamber heats up faster. In an already hot barrel they lack the extra thermal mass of the case, which soaks up some of the energy before it can start heating the...

At which point you need to machine locking pieces with close tolerances made of at least reasonably good steel with appropriate heat-treat, etc etc. Straight blowback actions aren't particularly great, but they are drastically easier and cheaper to design and produce than anything else. By...