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Gunsmith Katsumi - Akitsukuni Arms Design Quest

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Character Sheet
  • Informational
    • Tachibana Katsumi

    Stress: 5/10

    Accomplishments
    Mechanical Engineering degree
    Got a job in your field
    Type 37 Special Purpose Rifle
    Type 38 Self-Loading Pistol

    Friends
    Maeda Rumi: Your roommate.
    Sanders Clara Rose: A colleague who works for Naylor, Sons & Daughters.

    Coworkers
    Mr. Watanabe: Your superior.
    Mr. Akutagawa: The boss of the company.

    Workshop 3
    Ms. Ikeda Nioh: Chemist. She also seems to be Mr Watanabe's personal secretary, but you're not sure if that's an official position.
    Mr. Yakade Yasuo: Physicist, specialized in ballistics. A living, breathing Technical Appendix C.
    Mx. Kusonoki Mayumi: Has a degree in materials science. Gets a look on their face when they say they know more about wood than anyone.
    Mr. Shiragiku Hideyoshi: Metalworker. Having met him, you've learned why metalworking is a craft and the meaning of the phrase "thinks himself heaven's gift to women".
    Mr. Kashiwa Ichiro: An apprentice gunsmith with a background in carpentry and actually using guns on people.

    Technologies
    Rifles (Familiar)
    Shotguns (Familiar)
    Pistols (Familiar)

    Rotate-and-pull bolts (Practical)
    Straight-pull bolts (Practical)
    Aperture sights (Practical)
    Stripper clips (Practical)
    Lever-delayed blowback operation (Practical)
    Double-stack magazines (Practical)
    Single-action handguns (Practical)
    En bloc clips (Conceptual)
    Simple blowback operation (Conceptual)
    Short recoil operation (Conceptual)
    Toggle-delayed blowback operation (Conceptual)
    Blow forward operation (Conceptual)
    Simple blowback operation (Conceptual)
    Double-action pistols (Conceptual)
    Automatic revolvers (Conceptual)
     
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  • Informational
    • Derpmind said:
    Looks like there's a chance we might end up making a Technically Advanced Rifle. If we're going by line voting.
    Adhoc vote count started by Derpmind on Sep 25, 2020 at 1:16 PM, finished with 80 posts and 37 votes.
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    Well that's not so bad. The most technically advanced and the most accurate rifle aren't so different to get upset about. Different focus but a lot of crossover.

    What kind of improvements could we feasibly create for an advanced rifle or sniper rifle?

    long range optics?

    Illuminated optics?

    Standardized rail and rail attachments? For example, different scopes you switch out.

    A grenade launcher attachment? I vaguely remember there were some shady looking launchers that shot actual grenades with blanks, or something like that.

    semi-automatic?

    bullpup redesign? That's wayyy ahead of its time, but the empress is very small so it be cool to make short rifle for her that can match a long rifle.

    Those are major changes, some very advanced. What else could we do, or what's more time period appropriate?
     
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    Parzival95 said:
    Well that's not so bad. The most technically advanced and the most accurate rifle aren't so different to get upset about. Different focus but a lot of crossover.
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    Depends on what we focus on, really. "The most accurate rifle" might well be something with a very long barrel and very strong action...that would be totally unsuited for HIH's slight frame. We can go the "let's make the shiny new semi-automatic M1 Carbine for Tiny Empress" route, but that will probably require some compromises to make it less accurate (but make the semi-auto function work).
     
    Parzival95 said:
    Well that's not so bad. The most technically advanced and the most accurate rifle aren't so different to get upset about. Different focus but a lot of crossover.
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    Ehh... We know the most accurate rifle is an achievable goal, and it's something unique and different. Something to show off about and structure the entire gun around. A technically advanced rifle might end up similar but it'll be the same thing we've done before but better. (And I also wanna give Yakade the gun his ultimate bullet deserves.) It's sorta how no matter what we pick we'll be making a beautiful and decorated gun, but with that as our focus we'll make something that puts looks over showcasing Tachibana's design skills.
     
    [X] A rifle
    [X] Push the boat out, make...
    -[X] The most accurate gun you can engineer


    I wonder if we can discover the free-float barrel yet. I ask because, as I see it, if your barrel only attaches at one point, you're kinda halfway to a quick-change barrel, and that sort of development will make developing a practical light machine gun much easier.

    If the sniper rifle barrel locks into the receiver via interrupted lugs, sort of like a rifle bolt, it stands to reason that with slightly looser tolerances and a handle on the barrel you can change it very fast.


    I am slightly concerned with the hypothetical telescopic sight though. Optics is a whole new field that we have no experience with.

    Hey, what if we made a scope that doubled as an auto-zeroing coincidence rangefinder? Rangefinder cameras were a thing in the OTL 1910s


    Vebyast said:
    Hmm. I seem to remember from Matsura Quest that the tanks were effectively immune to bullets, even when strafed by aircraft or going up against fixed defenses.

    This suggests that addressing the last war might require going further afield than simple anti-tank rifles.

    Say, a grenade launcher.

    edit: I'm now envisioning us going up to the Empress and handing her a beautifully embellished rambo-bandolier of 40mm grenades.
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    Parzival95 said:
    Would that work either? It's not the same at all, but I should think the kind of armor that can withstand a strafing run should be at least somewhat effective against a pre-ww1 grenade launcher equivalent.

    I haven't read any other gayaverse stuff though.
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    The Monroe Effect (IE, shaped charges) is a known phenomena already OTL, and I'm pretty sure I could plausibly get us rifle grenades on a 1950s tech level.
     
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    Rifle grenadiers were an integral part of WWI infantry. The British and later AEF split platoons into four sections, one each for hand bombers, rifle grenadiers, automatic riflemen and riflemen. (Note, they didn't fight split into sections that way, but those are the primary arms of an Entente platoon in the latter half of WWI)

    Derpmind said:
    Looks like there's a chance we might end up making a Technically Advanced Rifle. If we're going by line voting.
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    We do have the idea of lever delayed blowback and a perfectly sound box magazine rifle, and if we want to be real fancy we could work on the ball bearing lock idea. After all, if it didn't quite lock...

    Alternately, a scoped rifle as a working overall system is more of a technical challenge than you might think, depending on a lot of fiddly details of the rifle to get things properly right.
     
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    I am a bit surprised, I've not see the objectively most logical combination of votes:

    [jk] A shotgun
    [jk] Push the boat out, make...
    -[jk] The most accurate gun you can engineer
     
    FrangibleCover said:
    Well, I know how you make an accurate smoothbore. The invention of fin-stabilised sabot ammunition at this point would be rather interesting, I don't doubt.
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    shotgun slugs are already a thing. we know that putting fins on the back of an arrow makes it better. just a matter of getting the fins small enough to fit on a shotgun slug.
    i'm very disappointed it's just me and AG voting for art gun
     
    Well we can still make a beautiful gun that is also practical! Case hardened or strawed parts inlaid with mother of pearl with a rising sun radium front sight. Tons of engraving. Great for low light conditions and sunny days! To be quite honest it will be fun to make a lower recoiling and still accurate cartridge. Perhaps something like 7mm Mauser necked down to a long 6.5mm bullet?
     
    We could fiddle around with flechette ammo. There are some practical reasons why they aren't used much, but I bet for a weird one-off rifle we could pull it off. They'd be low mass, low recoil, high accuracy, which is nice.
     
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    Vebyast said:
    Hmm. If we're thinking AT rifle... At what point does APFSDS become a useful loadout?
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    It was introduced in the 1970s OTL, and it produces some odd effects of you use it on anything smaller than 40mm. That's not to say it can't be done, there were experiments using .50 cal, and the sources I found say that it's certainly possible to do that in smaller calibers, but why would you bother?

    It's quite possible that the .50 cal exists in this world, since OTL it was developed in the late 1910s.

    [X] A rifle
    [X] Push the boat out, make...
    -[X] The most accurate gun you can engineer
     
    googlyeyesultra said:
    We could fiddle around with flechette ammo. There are some practical reasons why they aren't used much, but I bet for a weird one-off rifle we could pull it off. They'd be low mass, low recoil, high accuracy, which is nice.
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    The practical reasons unfortunately are they are highly inaccurate, and can be thrown off course by rice paper, or a sneeze.
     
    Vebyast said:
    Hmm. If we're thinking AT rifle... At what point does APFSDS become a useful loadout?
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    AP - Not so hard to come up with, the use case is definitely there.

    FS - Nobody's done it since the early middle ages when things like 'obturation' hadn't really been figured out, and making it work well in the modern paradigm is probably going to be interesting, let alone the actual fun half which is coming up with a plausible reason to do it.

    DS - ahahahahahahaah you've got jokes now. Getting the aerodynamics right on this and ending up more accurate rather than less is the sort of thing where everyone marvels at the crazy souls who decided to find out a solution to a problem through the highly sophisticated technique of random guesswork well before any of the tools to get close before testing have been figured out. A discarding sabot, for people who don't get to treat it as something that the boffins have already worked out, is basically designing a round that's multiple components in close formation that pulls itself apart in a manner such that the ones you don't want get out of the way of the dart promptly and reliably. They need to be pulled out of the way, but not create forces that destabilize the dart (or do create forces while being so finely made that said forces cancel out)

    Getting good sabots for flechette rounds was one of the major stumbling blocks for the ACR project. In the 1980s. Admittedly half of the problem there is making them cost effective, but the other half is that every single bit of scaling effects is working against us on something that wasn't figured out on a large scale until after World War 2!

    Sarpedon said:
    The practical reasons unfortunately are they are highly inaccurate, and can be thrown off course by rice paper, or a sneeze.
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    Darn, took too long. Yes, they're not particularly accurate either once you get past the whole sabots thing. On the plus side your sectional density and velocity are going to be outstanding, which means ballistics gets a good bit easier. On the down side, have fun getting the mechanical accuracy to a point where that's the main source of inaccuracy.
     
    [X] A pistol
    [X] Take it easy, just do a derivative of a previous design (-2 Stress)

    We really need to take this golden opportunity to lower our stress. We are going to need the buffer later.
     
    [X] Write-in: Something else (+1 Stress)
    -[X] A Submachine Gun

    [X] Push the boat out, make...
    [X] The most technically advanced gun you can think of

    Edit: I've got an idea...

     
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    I was serious earlier. I think this could be a real opportunity to investigate bullpup design. Apparently the Thorneycroft carbine was an English attempt from 1901, which according to Wikipedia failed because it was unwieldy with bad recoil. The next attempt I can see is from the French in 1918.

    I think we have a real chance at doing this now, especially when we have the motivation for it. The empress is a small woman, and although I don't really expect her to handle weapons much, we could approach the design with her use in mind.

    A shorter, lighter weapon, but still a quality rifle. In fact, I'm changing my vote to technically advanced because the idea has grown on me. Accuracy has it at this point but I'm putting it out there.
     
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    [X] A rifle
    [X] Push the boat out, make...
    -[X] The most technically advanced gun you can think of

    Sarpedon said:
    To be quite honest it will be fun to make a lower recoiling and still accurate cartridge.
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    7.92/7.62 CETME used a long aluminium/ lead-infused plastic core with a large copper shroud that acted as a flywheel. That round is probably the best example of easily understandable and reproducible kraut space magic I have ever seen. Would also help if we made a comp, threaded preferably.

    xthetenth said:
    designing a round that's multiple components in close formation that pulls itself apart in a manner such that the ones you don't want get out of the way of the dart promptly and reliably.
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    We can at the very least start with APS and then develop onwards like in OTL at the very least. Plus, according to what I could find the Canucks actually found a neat way to solve part of the accuracy problem, they just made a cup style with the core bearly on the sabot with a gap that would allow air to flow around and under the core and it would just slip out extremely easily a bit after passing the muzzle break. Alternatively we make a disintegrating sabot, one made out of paper infused with nitroglycerin so that it would burn up most of the way down the barrel and just fall apart shortly after leaving.

    As a side note it be really neat and useful if we figured out electrochemical machining, especially when we start making auto guns using the ball lock as that would make the fluting a hell of a lot cheaper and easier. Oh and getting some bakelite to, for furniture and mags
     
    It's 19 accuracy to 18 technical. Unrelated to that, what strategies are there to mitigate recoil on a bigger bullet? I don't even know if it's possible outside of bracing yourself. Maybe an under-barrel grip, depending on how short we make it?
     
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    Parzival95 said:
    It's 19 accuracy to 18 technical. Unrelated to that, what strategies are there to mitigate recoil on a bigger bullet? I don't even know if it's possible outside of bracing yourself. Maybe an under-barrel grip, depending on how short we make it?
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    Guessing based on fundamental physics and Forgotten Weapons videos:

    Constant-recoil spring setups, which generally involve fancy staged springs, multiple springs, and/or clever tuning. With a simple system the recoil is unevenly distributed because the main-spring's force starts off low (at the beginning of travel, when the spring is nearest its uncompressed length) and increases over time (as the bolt travels backwards and the spring's displacement increases). A constant-recoil system distributes the force out uniformly, which substantially decreases the peak force required and makes the whole thing more predictable. Essentially it makes it a long, steady push rather than a sharp shock.

    In combination with this, increase bolt mass and increase bolt travel to spread the recoil out in time. Again, this makes recoil take longer so it comes out as more of a long push.

    Align the barrel with point of support so the recoil goes directly back into the shoulder rather than kicking the barrel up into the shooter's face. This helps prevent stuff from rattling around (which are short sharp shocks) and makes recoil more predictable (which makes it feel less nasty).

    Absorb momentum in dampers before it reaches the shooter. You can get incredibly fancy with this, all the way up to finely-tuned reciprocating masses sticking out to the side so a chunk of the recoil is expended in shoving these around rather than back into the shooter. In the simplest case, this just involves big hydraulic dampers, which turn recoil into turbulence in a viscous fluid which rapidly converts to heat. Hydraulic dampers are essentially the only solution for recoil that scales far enough for artillery and other big guns.
     
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    Vebyast said:
    In combination with this, increase bolt mass and increase bolt travel to spread the recoil out in time. Again, this makes recoil take longer so it comes out as more of a long push.
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    Does that apply to bolt-action somehow, or do you mean for a potential semi-auto attempt?

    Edit: Ok yeah, thanks, I was pretty sure that had to be semi.

    Edit: I stand corrected, I'm going through Castles of Steel and the empress apparently is pretty radical and a gun-lover. If we make something good she probably will get good use out of it.
     
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    Parzival95 said:
    Does that apply to bolt-action somehow, or do you mean for a potential semi-auto attempt?
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    Oh. Yeah. Nothing up there applies to pure bolt action because the barrel is attached rigidly to the grip and stock, so all of the recoil momentum necessarily goes straight into the shooter. The only solution there is basically to make the gun really heavy.
     
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