modern pistol/rifle combination with semi automatics and more performance?

[jason41987]

i know my topic seems pretty specific, but ive been thinking a lot lately about how in the later 19th century, when cartridge ammunition was new, and expensive, people purchased a rifle, and pistol that fired the same round, most popular of course was .44wcf...

so with ammo prices going up, availability going down, i was wondering if there was a modern take on this combination that could be implemented today...

so i was curious as to which cartridges would be available for such a task... preferably something with a pointed bullet that would retain enough energy and accuracy downrange to hunt with, while also being potent enough to be used as a semi automatic military rifle, but being small enough to fit in a handgun such as a custom 1911

i noticed the 9x25 dillon cartridge sometimes used in custom 1911s has close to 900fpe at the muzzle, its a 10mm necked down to 9mm... perhaps a .358" pointed rifle bullet could be used with this, and MAYBE, if neccessary, modifications could be made to fire this very potent round in the 1911 with the pointed bullets

pointed bullets are obviously more accurate, drop less, and retain more energy downrange because they dont have as much drag while traveling through the air, and since the 9x25 dillons OAL length is about that of a 45acp, 38 super, etc it may be possible to convert a pistol-caliber carbine to fire it... but how much energy would such a round deliver out of a 16-18 inch barrel?.. at 900fpe from a pistol, it might just end up close to .223 energies from a rifle

other candidates for such a cartridge could be .357 sig, 7.62x25 tokarev, or 7.63x25 mauser, and im sure a variety of wildcats are possibly....

so, id just like to know your take on this, and if you could get such performance from a rifle and still fire it from a handgun, how interested would you be in the combo?...

just remember, as of right now i dont have any plans to do this, just looking to discuss the possibilities surrounding the general idea of modernizing a rifle/pistol combination with modern semi automatics

 

[InkEd]

If you want to have both be semiauto, you'll have more of a pistol and SMG/PDW set-up than a traditional rifle like in the Old West.

A few suggestions:
1911 and Thompson SMG in .45acp
FiveSeven pistol and P90 in FN5.7
Beretta Storm pistol and carbine in a variety of calibers

 

[jmr40]

It has been tried and failed. Pistol caliber carbines chambered in 9mm and 45 were popular at one time. The emergence of short barreled AR carbines have proven to work better at close range and the same chambering with a longer barrel works well at longer ranges.

With the limitations of blackpowder using the same round in handguns and rifles made more sense back years ago.

 

[jason41987]

problem is, the currently available pistol cartridges such as 45acp, 9mm etc perform very poorly at anything more than about 50 yards.... ive seen 357 magnum loads produce about 800 ft lbs from a revolver, and about 1500ft/lbs from a lever action with 18 inch barrel.. i wonder if the 357 sig or 9x25 dillon could come close to that as the 9x25 dillon has close to 900ft/lbs from the muzzle of a converted 1911, if it could achieve even 1200 with a pointed bullet it should still, easily have 600-700fpe at 100-150 yards... which is all you would need to take a white tail, and could be fired in a 1911

7.62x25mm tokarev is very, very close to the physical dimensions of a 10mm necked down to 30 cal with a thicker case wall than 10mm, so i wonder if its possible to squeeze more out of one of these rounds than what you typically see?

 

[jason41987]

45acp, 9mm, 40S&W just doesnt have enough energy to begin with to be useful at range...and the bullets they use have very poor aerodynamics making them good only for close range, theyll never be able to do more than what they do now, which is why i was asking about some of these necked down cartridges that do have the energy neccessary, and could take pointed bullets to retain velocity downrange

 

[Tirod]

The history of arms development is based on extending the reach of the user to increase safety. From the knife and club, to lance, then arrow, the point is to be able to reach out and hit a target further than they can reach back.

We're out to snipers making hits over a mile away. Rifle cartridges deliver 1000 foot pounds of force out beyond 250m and have enough accuracy to be effectively lethal. Pistol rounds generally don't. They have enough force to be lethal out to 50m, and being handheld without a stock, that is also a limit to their accuracy.

I'm sure anyone can poke holes in those generalizations, but the point is they are two completely different tools in the same genre. Using the same cartridge in both then limits one or the other, either a pistol with high recoil, or a rifle with limited range.

In today's usage, I'd rather have a .380 to CCW, and a rifle minimum 6mm for hunting, and would expect to be adequately served. Having something in the way of .357 in both would make the pistol overly bulky for the job, and the rifle underpowered. That's what happens in comparing any other cartridge that could do both. The power level is too high for the pistol, and not enough for the rifle.

It's pretty much why the rifle/pistol combo is usually done in a retro weapons assortment common for the days it seemed to be workable. Nonetheless, it didn't catch on much then. The .30-30 smokeless and 9mm/.45ACP pretty much were the answer: Don't Bother.

In Cowboy action shooting I'd be all over it, but that is a special competition scenario, fun at the range. Not reality. Be advised they're using low powered rounds for cost and recoil control, too.

 

[jason41987]

you really dont see the usefulness in a small, but very potent rifle round with a short enough OAL length to fit in a pistol?... how about the number of rounds you could carry, and how little they would weigh if you were on a camping trip, the sheer power from a handgun, etc.... its quite possible.. in fact, the .224 boz came close to 1000ft/lbs from a 1911, it would come VERY close to a 5.56mm in power, range, and accuracy if fired from a barrel...

but the hyper-velocity rounds are only useful for over-penetration as its what theyre designed for... so a cartridge with energy and range similar to that, using a larger bullet would be useful in both handgun and rifle

 

[Jason_W]

The biggest advantages I see in a pistol caliber carbines/handgun combo are frugality and versatility from a DIY standpoint.

Having a handgun and long gun in the same chambering means you only have to by one set of reloading dies, one type of brass, one type of primer, etc. Straight walled pistol rounds are also a lot faster and easier to load than rifle rounds and typically burn less powder.

In the case of revolver rounds, you can load a .44 mag or .357 mag hot for big game hunting and personal defense out to 100-125 yards, or load down with a cast bullet for pleasant, low pressure, plinking and small game hunting. Try doing that with a .223 AR type carbine.

If you want a semi-auto pistol/carbine duo, then the versatility you can expect is limited. Most semi-auto pistol rounds are a little too mild for large game hunting, and using home cast bullets in them could cause problems.

A cartridge concept I've had for a while is essentially a rimless version of a .357 mag case that could easily feed in a semi-auto M1 or Mini-14 style carbine and also be used in existing .357 mag revolvers by employing moon clips. I'm guessing such a round would be pretty similar to the now obsolete .351 Winchester self loading.

 

[jason41987]

ive thought about a rimless .357 mag as well, it wouldnt even be that hard to do.. take .223 brass, chop it just before the shoulder and put it into a .357 die... should also match up and operate quite nicely with .223/5.56 bolt face and extractors, etc, and 5.56 is a 55,000 PSI cartridge, so the 36,000 PSI of a 357 mag shouldnt be a problem for it...

i wonder if you could start with this.. neck it down to maybe a .30 cal for the added simplicity of using 30 caliber rifle bullets... .357 mag pistol bullets lose too much energy too fast, giving a cartridge that starts out as powerful as a .30-30 to having less than the energy of a .223 after only 50 yards due to the drag of the bullet, the .30 cal bullet would extend your range and accuracy much, much further out, quite possibly further out than a .30-30 itself, since the .30-30 usually has poorly-aerodynamic bullets due the need of working in a tube magazine...

so if you could give a rimless .357 the ballistic coefficiency of a 155 grain .308 bullet you would have something incredibly useful for hunting deer, as well as something you could cycle in an automatic fairly easily... as for a handgun, hard to find a good platform to accept a 40mm long cartridge without it being a revolver

 

[Jeff H]

An AR-15 rifle and an AR pistol both using the same round (223 or some other rifle bullet) would be an option.

 

[PercyShelley]

Pistol caliber carbines are a perennial topic of discussion here. I think it comes up roughly every six months. Here's the Cliff Notes version of what I've learned from previous such discussions:


1) According to a fellow who was in... either sales or design I think, 9mm PCCs just don't sell that well. Ever heard of the Fox Wasp carbine? The D-Max? The Linda? Basically, some fellow gets the bright idea that they're going to make a relatively simple and inexpensive 9mm or .45 ACP carbine every few years (they're pretty easy to design) and goes broke doing so.

2) Thanks to the tireless efforts by the folks at ballistics by the inch there are conveniently available numbers on how much velocity pistol rounds pick up in rifle-length barrels. Some, like .357 magnum, pick up a pretty respectable amount of extra energy from the longer barrels. Others, like .45 ACP don't. 9mm luger is somewhere in the middle.

3) The cartridges that pick up the most extra velocity in rifle-length barrels are those that have lower expansion ratios and higher pressures. These are precisely the cartridges that don't work very well in straight blowback actions. It's perfectly possible to design suitable actions for them, but the extra complexity involved means you're creeping closer and closer to a low-end AR-15 in cost.

4) The cartridges that pick up the most extra velocity in rifle-length barrels are also the ones that are the least pleasant, due to noise and flash and recoil, to shoot in pistols.

5) Due to the 1934 NFA, most pistol caliber carbines can't be much shorter than a short AR-15 is. I have a CX4 storm. It's a little shorter than my 16" AR, but not enormously.

6) Most semi-auto PCCs are straight-blowback designs, which means they have a very heavy bolt. This means that by and large they're not much lighter than a 16" AR-15. It would be possible to go with a more advanced breech mechanism and shed some ounces, maybe even pounds, but again, cost would start approaching that of a low-end AR-15 or SU-16 or what have you. The straight blowback mechanism tends to have pretty snappy recoil too; since a large percentage of the carbine's mass is reciprocating, and because the pistol cases are shorter than rifle-length ones, the return springs aren't as long so it doesn't have as much length to gradually decelerate instead of snapping sharply into the back of the receiver.

So, in short, it's easy to design a 9mm carbine that's cheaper than an AR-15. It is not easy to design one that is especially lighter or shorter while still being cheaper. That leaves you with a design that's somewhat more powerful than a pistol, easier to fire accurately, and drastically larger and heavier. Is this a worthwhile tradeoff? The response from the market has been lukewarm.

 

[jason41987]

who said anything about blowback designs?.. if i was going to chamber a high powered cartridge into a small rifle or carbine, blowback is the last thing i would consider unless it was roller-delayed like a P-90.... with the kind of energies something like 357 mag, 10mm, and their wildcats, they could quite possibly run a small gas system... heck, the underpowered m1 carbine does

 

[PercyShelley]

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 the way, I'm completely sure that the P90 doesn't have rollers in it.

 

[jason41987]

doesnt matter what the P90 has.. 5.7x28mm is a fairly underpowered cartridge.. less energy than a 9mm, blowback isnt a problem for that

 

[adelbridge]

t/c contender/encore addresses this but they have a very limited market and they seem to have a lock on it.

It is hard to get a pistol cartridge to perform well in a rifle, no pistol cartridge will ever compete with a dedicated rifle cartridge

rifle caliber in a pistol = stout recoil and sub par performance because of the slower burn rate of rifle powders.

Then you get into economies of production costs. Pistols can be made much cheaper because they dont need the same high strength forgings due to lower power levels

 

[briansmithwins]

My UZI and Sig P226 work pretty good for me out to 200 yards or so.

OTOH, I'm not confusing 9mmP for a rifle cartridge either.

BSW

 

[jason41987]

well out of the same length barrel, 357 magnum has MORE energy than .223 at the muzzle with the right load, however, after about 50 yards, due to the shape of the pistol bullet, the .223 has more energy from there and beyond... and its all about the shape of the bullet, if 357 mag or something similar (like 10mm) could be given the ability to fire a rifle bullet, with the right load you would have all the energy needed to compete with a rifle round, to compete with hunting rounds, and weigh nearly nothing in comparison, taking up very, very little space as well

can no one really see the usefulness of being able to carry 30 rounds for the weight of 5-10? WITHOUT sacraficing energy or accuracy?

 

[Jason_W]

I think a cartridge that can give rifle-like performance from a pistol sized case is a very tough order to fill. If you find one that works or have the engineering skills to invent one, I'd love to see the end result.

One of the biggest problems with the idea is that rifle bullets are generally a lot longer than pistol bullets and attempting to seat one in a case short enough to cycle in a pistol won't leave much room for powder. You could add a pointy, polymer tip to a pistol bullet that will improve its BC somewhat.

I'm not saying it can't be done, just that there are a lot of obstacles.

 

[jason41987]

well... 357 mag has the energy requirements, it just loses that energy so fast due to the pistol bullet... but if you could neck it down to .308 caliber, put like a 110 grain .308 bullet in it, trimming the case to match... taking a hit on energy at the muzzle, you would increase the amount of energy you would have after 100 yards which is a fair tradeoff if even 1000ft/lbs at the muzzle is possible

 

[303tom]

The .357 Magnum...................

 

[spence]

does anybody make a 10mm rifle? I wonder how that would rate balistically?

 

[praharin]

Magnum Research BFR and Marlin Guide Gun would be my first choice. But if I'm limiting myself to modern designs, I'm going to be modern and just use appropriate calibers for each.

 

[jason41987]

without coming up with a new wildcat, 10mm would probably be best, since theres a number of handguns that already fire it.. im curious as to how that functions in a rifle as well with nearly the same case volume as a 357 mag

 

[jason41987]

out of curiosity.. has any testing ever been done to the 1911 to determine the maximum chamber pressure the action itself can handle?... obviously it has no trouble with 37,500PSI from a 10mm cartridge... im wondering just how much it can safely handle

 

[briansmithwins]

out of curiosity.. has any testing ever been done to the 1911 to determine the maximum chamber pressure the action itself can handle?... obviously it has no trouble with 37,500PSI from a 10mm cartridge... im wondering just how much it can safely handle

The early 10mm pistols built on 1911 frames and slides beat themselves into crap pretty quickly.

BSW