Hey Jow Forums, I notice a large amount of improvised firearms usually consist of these types of actions: 1. Muzzleloading (Matchlock and Caplock) 2. Break Action (Single, Double, Triple, and Maybe Quadruple Barrel) 3. Revolver (Including Pepperboxes) 4. Blowback (Pistol or SMG)
Not to mention generic "Zip Guns" and "Slamfires" which are merely just pipes with (or without, for slamfires) a spring. The calibers of such improvised firearms are usually pistol, shotgun, and intermediate rifle calibers (more rarely)
Why are improvised firearms usually of these actions? I imagine that anything more complicated is much more difficult to produce for the improvised, but is a leap from a break action to a: bolt action, pump action, lever action, recoil action, or gas operated really that difficult that they barely if at all, in improvised firearm circles.
>2. Break Action (Single, Double, Triple, and Maybe Quadruple Barrel) Easy to build, simple mechanics, and can have strong actions to protect user if it kabooms.
>3. Revolver (Including Pepperboxes) There's a lot of information about their construction and design in the public domain. You don't have to worry about head spacing and chamber stuff so much with a straight walled, rimmed cartridge. Can use rifle cartridges for places where pistols are hard to get, including the universally accepted .22LR!
Plus, everyone wants to be a cowboy!
>4. Blowback (Pistol or SMG) Simplest magazine fed gun to make is a full auto blowback with a fixed firing pin.
Matthew Lopez
What about other mechanisms? Would that be considerably more difficult to near impossible for improvised forces?
Things like: 1. Recoilless Rifles 2. Mortars 3. Flamethrowers 4. Surface-Surface Rockets ....can have improvised variations. I am thinking more about basic firearm actions.
Henry Harris
I have two major hobbies, cowgirls, and insurgent activity
>What about other mechanisms? Would that be considerably more difficult to near impossible for improvised forces? Definitely not near impossible, but more difficult, sure. If they've got enough machining and metalworking skill to make a decent barrel and magazine, they'd be able to make whatever given mechanism. The people who make these homemade guns are just in their shed making it for fun or for gang shit, they're not trying to equip a militia. It's possible that they could make like a proper assault rifle, but it's just not worth it for anything other than bragging rights I suppose.
On the other end of the scale, I think the Moros in Philippines have been probably the most successful with building homemade weapons from scratch, they had a reasonable amount of autonomy and held onto small cities, so they were able to have small workshops for arms production. While most of their arsenal was from trafficked guns (or at least parts) and stuff stolen from the Philippine Army, they did scratch build some RPG-2s and .50 cal antimateriel rifles.
The thing is though, once the demand for guns is there, such as a civil war scenario, nature (ie. gun traffickers) will find a way. So it's pretty rare that people have to build guns entirely from scratch, even if they have to build some parts but can obtain other parts. Scratch built guns tend to be from extremely impoverished places which could otherwise not afford guns from traffickers, otherwise haven't got a government benefactor like America or the Soviets, and due to that poverty will also lack the tooling and machinery to make proper guns anyway. By the time you're rich enough to build guns, you're probably rich and/or important enough to obtain them, or at least parts for them.
There's only some specific, narrow circumstances where it's your best option to do it all yourself as a violent non-state actor. But if you're looking for pictures, the recent Central African Republic habbening had some good ones.
Jeremiah Wright
Thank you for this post, it all makes sense as to why Improvised Firearms appear to always have particular mechanisms.
Christopher Walker
No problems. I ran out of characters, but I was also going to mention Hezbollah. They don't tend to manufacture a lot of their own stuff, but they do make rockets, because they have their own specific circumstances. They want to fire off hundreds of rockets at Israel at a time, so it doesn't make much sense to buy them, because at that point they can work with an economy of scale and manufacture them cheaper. Because their main goal is mostly to terrorise civilians, they don't have to be all that good rockets either, driving the cost of manufacture down even more, whereas their rifles still have to be good because if they're using them, they're actively trying to kill someone, eg. an Israeli soldier.
So you see that extremely niche application makes sense for them to build the rockets themselves, which is repeated quite often in other non-state actors: the majority is bought, but a few very specific things are made from scratch.
Noah Howard
Improvised Mortars, Improvised Rockets, Improvised Muzzleloading Cannons, Improvised Rifle Grenades, and Improvised Flamethrowers appear commonly because the mechanism needed to make them does not need to be too precise in contrast to more advance firearm actions.
Jason Harris
Just google how different mechanisms work, it's pretty easy to see why people make what they do. Automatics, even blowbacks are more complex to make, and harder to make reliable, requiring fine tuning of spring/bolt weight and feed ramp/lip shapes. So you have a way harder and more expensive gun to make, which is still way worse than anything factory produced, and your market is generally people that are either fighting the unarmed or guys with machine guns. So even if it only has a few shots that should be enough to kill a nig with an AK, at which point you'll ditch use that gun anyways. For hunting or machete nig defense the automatic has even less advantage. A pepperbox repeater can essentially be plumbing pipes taped to a stick, with holes drilled in, and a lighter taped to it for firing. This would make a relatively safe and reliable weapon, while any automatic would require a high strength steel machined barrel to not blow up, which is usually not feasible, so they might use a barrel for a different cartridge, or god forbid make one out of scrap metal, those get you killed.
Christopher White
Do you know of improvised pump, lever, or bolt actions?
Those are generally harder to make than blowbacks, because they require high strength locking surfaces. A shotgun would be best suited to that, low pressure.
Austin Long
speaking of improvised firearms I once came upon a pdf of a book with a yellow cover on Archive.org that had a diagram for a double barrel over under pull and release pipe shotgun similar to this one Does anyone know of the book I speak of? Going to ask the QTDDTOTT As well
>rubber powered firing pin I like the idea, but not so much the implementation. The Songbird pistol uses a similar system. youtube.com/watch?v=0rzw-TFVbMM
Camden Sullivan
My grandfather was a logging company owner and had to deal with a lot of unions, he kept on of these fags under his desk just in case
