13 ms·

a gun is a sophisticated weapon? I though you could make one with a metal pipe, nail and springs; provided you have access to cartridges. could be wrong though.

bronco21016 8y ago
Not only is a simple gun, as you describe, able to be readily and easily made but, one can also make a sophisticated gun (AR style) through 3D printing or even using a relatively inexpensive CNC.
- Rebelgecko 8y ago
  You can even build an AR-15 without a CNC machine. It's doable with a hand drill, although will look nicer and may function better if you use a drill press or router. There's a video on youtube of a guy that made an AR-15 out of beer cans, although he had some blacksmithing equipment if I remember correctly.
  - anth_anm 8y ago
    saw a guy who made one out of old casings. Really cool. He had a milling machine though.
  - roel_v 8y ago
    If this is the same video we're talking about, he 'just' melted down the beer cans into a block of aluminum and then machined a lower from it, right? (and he also made a video where he melted down spent brass and machined an AR lower from it) If so, that melting down can be done using $15 of home depot materials (metal bucket, thermal insulation wool or cement, 2 propane burners) (DIY metal smelting/foundries are a great way to waste a few hours watching Youtube videos)
- AWildC182 8y ago
  Guns are weird because to be effective they typically need to be rifled. You can obviously make a shotgun with some home depot pipe but the pressure bearing components of a gun can't be 3D printed. Even with 3D metal printing, you still need to machine the parts to final tolerances and your average garage setup is not remotely capable of rifling a barrel. Hence, when you hear about people 3D printing an AR, they're making the lower receiver which is both a trivially simple part, largely non load bearing, and also due to US law, the legal "gun" part of the gun. In most other countries the pressure bearing parts are the controlled items as those are the hardest to manufacture. In the US you can just buy an upper with the bolt, barrel, and chamber without a background check and manufacture the controlled lower however you want to obtain a complete rifle. I guess this is all a long winded way of saying the 3D printing panic is both right and wrong but neither side is looking at it in a factual way.
  - mirimir 8y ago
    True, but fin-stabilized sabot rounds (~darts) for the 12 ga shotgun are damn impressive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGzgbXCrWHQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGzgbXCrWHQ
  - apr 8y ago
    You can rifle a barrel in your garage. Search youtube, there are DIY videos. Btw, you need a rifled barrel to make accurate shots at long-ish distances. For close quarter combat a submachine gun with a smooth bore would do quite well. Something similar to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borz. Any machine shop can crank those out in numbers.
    - AWildC182 8y ago
      I was a bit simplistic given that I didn't expect all the HN gun experts to come out of the woodwork on this one but I'll bite :) Yes, you can get by with a smooth bore but "long-ish" here is significantly less than buckshot range. To get really nerdy, if volume of fire (submachine gun) is going to replace accuracy, the difficulty in creating a reliable magazine dwarfs the difficulty in rifling and while I haven't tried, I don't think 3D printing has the tolerances to solve that...yet. Yes you can rifle a barrel in a garage but you need real machine tools as well as some very specialized tools that you'll need to either acquire or build which kind of adds steps beyond "have machine tools" -> "make gun"
      - apr 8y ago
        To crudely rifle a barrel you just need a press. Or you can make a machine like this: https://www.alloutdoor.com/2017/04/17/watch-homemade-barrel-rifling-machine/ https://www.alloutdoor.com/2017/04/17/watch-homemade-barrel-.... I once saw a video of a machine which did not require any machine tools, you'd just make a guide and then manually cut the riflings. All you need there is a lot of patience. For these designs you also do not need 3d printing at all. You just need suitable pipes, or sheets of metal that you bend and either weld or use fasteners to make the receiver. You are right though, designing and building reliable magazines is probably going to be one of the things that require a lot of attention to details. There are books that have full blueprints for crude SMGs, here is an example: https://www.amazon.com/Do-yourself-Submachine-Gun-Lightweight/dp/B00FGVMQ0K https://www.amazon.com/Do-yourself-Submachine-Gun-Lightweigh...
- grkvlt 8y ago
  See P A Luty [0] and his submachinegun, made entirely from scratch using basic machine shop tools (i.e. not requiring a CNC machine, just a bench drill, hacksaw, angle grinders and various hand tools, see page 4 in his book. [1]) which was tested and confirmed as a viable firearm by the UK police (in order to prosecute him) although it doesn't have a rifled barrel... 0. http://armamentresearch.com/pa-luty-9mm-submachine-guns/ http://armamentresearch.com/pa-luty-9mm-submachine-guns/ 1. http://www.thehomegunsmith.com/pdf/Expedient-Homemade-Firearms-Vol-II-PA-Luty.pdf http://www.thehomegunsmith.com/pdf/Expedient-Homemade-Firear...
ChuckMcM 8y ago
Well you can make a cannon as easily, but the BATF has been aggressive at pursuing people who discuss gun making, the more sophisticated (like 3D printing them) the more aggressive the pursuit. A project for recreating a black powder musket? Not a lot of heat. A project for a repeating launcher that lobs soviet era grenades while pulling the pins on exit, very aggressive pursuit.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- anth_anm 8y ago
  It's legal to build your own guns. 3d printing isn't that sophisticated considering you can build a working AR with off the shelf parts, a drill press, and a hand router.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    There's plans for an 7.62 Tokarev pistol based on the AK style action that have been floating around the internet since forever. No drill press or router required. Just a drill, file and some misc hand tools. The AK style action lends itself well to that kind of ghetto fabrication because it's a stamped receiver and machining tolerances can be described as "optional"
  - Rebelgecko 8y ago
    It's legal to build your own guns but people who disseminate info for how to do so have got in all kinds of legal trouble. Defense Distributed, codeisfreespeech.com, etc
mirimir 8y ago
Hey, I did that when I was 13 or 14. There was lots of ammunition lying around in the woods, if you knew where to look. Mostly 7.6 mm, but some 12.7 mm and 20 mm.
- mesofile 8y ago
  What woods were these that had 20mm cannon rounds scattered about?
  - mirimir 8y ago
    Not far from Veliky Novgorod.
  - PostOnce 8y ago
    Probably means 10 gauge shotgun shells but I've never heard anyone call them "20mm" edit: hmm, maybe that doesn't make sense since he also says 12.7mm, maybe he lives where there was once a war like m0zg says
    - ivanhoe 8y ago
      20mm was a pretty popular caliber for AA guns, and you can often find them in the ground around the cities and military bases in Europe that have been heavily bombarded in WWII. In Europe it's a lot of fun to play with metal detectors since there's a lot of stuff in the ground around old cities, from ancient coins to more modern things like WWI and WWII bullets, broken bayonet blades, helmets, and all kinds of old metal junk.
  - m0zg 8y ago
    This is true of nearly any country which had a real, actual, land war on its soil. Which is most of European countries, and especially the former USSR and today's Russia. As kids in Russia we burnt TNT for fun (or whatever the waxy thing was that's found inside artillery shells) and threw WW2 rifle rounds into bonfires. Only much later did I find out that TNT fumes are toxic.
    - 8y ago

bronco21016 8y ago

Not only is a simple gun, as you describe, able to be readily and easily made but, one can also make a sophisticated gun (AR style) through 3D printing or even using a relatively inexpensive CNC.

Rebelgecko 8y ago
You can even build an AR-15 without a CNC machine. It's doable with a hand drill, although will look nicer and may function better if you use a drill press or router. There's a video on youtube of a guy that made an AR-15 out of beer cans, although he had some blacksmithing equipment if I remember correctly.
- anth_anm 8y ago
  saw a guy who made one out of old casings. Really cool. He had a milling machine though.
- roel_v 8y ago
  If this is the same video we're talking about, he 'just' melted down the beer cans into a block of aluminum and then machined a lower from it, right? (and he also made a video where he melted down spent brass and machined an AR lower from it) If so, that melting down can be done using $15 of home depot materials (metal bucket, thermal insulation wool or cement, 2 propane burners) (DIY metal smelting/foundries are a great way to waste a few hours watching Youtube videos)
AWildC182 8y ago
Guns are weird because to be effective they typically need to be rifled. You can obviously make a shotgun with some home depot pipe but the pressure bearing components of a gun can't be 3D printed. Even with 3D metal printing, you still need to machine the parts to final tolerances and your average garage setup is not remotely capable of rifling a barrel. Hence, when you hear about people 3D printing an AR, they're making the lower receiver which is both a trivially simple part, largely non load bearing, and also due to US law, the legal "gun" part of the gun. In most other countries the pressure bearing parts are the controlled items as those are the hardest to manufacture. In the US you can just buy an upper with the bolt, barrel, and chamber without a background check and manufacture the controlled lower however you want to obtain a complete rifle. I guess this is all a long winded way of saying the 3D printing panic is both right and wrong but neither side is looking at it in a factual way.
- mirimir 8y ago
  True, but fin-stabilized sabot rounds (~darts) for the 12 ga shotgun are damn impressive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGzgbXCrWHQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGzgbXCrWHQ
- apr 8y ago
  You can rifle a barrel in your garage. Search youtube, there are DIY videos. Btw, you need a rifled barrel to make accurate shots at long-ish distances. For close quarter combat a submachine gun with a smooth bore would do quite well. Something similar to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borz. Any machine shop can crank those out in numbers.
  - AWildC182 8y ago
    I was a bit simplistic given that I didn't expect all the HN gun experts to come out of the woodwork on this one but I'll bite :) Yes, you can get by with a smooth bore but "long-ish" here is significantly less than buckshot range. To get really nerdy, if volume of fire (submachine gun) is going to replace accuracy, the difficulty in creating a reliable magazine dwarfs the difficulty in rifling and while I haven't tried, I don't think 3D printing has the tolerances to solve that...yet. Yes you can rifle a barrel in a garage but you need real machine tools as well as some very specialized tools that you'll need to either acquire or build which kind of adds steps beyond "have machine tools" -> "make gun"
    - apr 8y ago
      To crudely rifle a barrel you just need a press. Or you can make a machine like this: https://www.alloutdoor.com/2017/04/17/watch-homemade-barrel-rifling-machine/ https://www.alloutdoor.com/2017/04/17/watch-homemade-barrel-.... I once saw a video of a machine which did not require any machine tools, you'd just make a guide and then manually cut the riflings. All you need there is a lot of patience. For these designs you also do not need 3d printing at all. You just need suitable pipes, or sheets of metal that you bend and either weld or use fasteners to make the receiver. You are right though, designing and building reliable magazines is probably going to be one of the things that require a lot of attention to details. There are books that have full blueprints for crude SMGs, here is an example: https://www.amazon.com/Do-yourself-Submachine-Gun-Lightweight/dp/B00FGVMQ0K https://www.amazon.com/Do-yourself-Submachine-Gun-Lightweigh...
grkvlt 8y ago
See P A Luty [0] and his submachinegun, made entirely from scratch using basic machine shop tools (i.e. not requiring a CNC machine, just a bench drill, hacksaw, angle grinders and various hand tools, see page 4 in his book. [1]) which was tested and confirmed as a viable firearm by the UK police (in order to prosecute him) although it doesn't have a rifled barrel... 0. http://armamentresearch.com/pa-luty-9mm-submachine-guns/ http://armamentresearch.com/pa-luty-9mm-submachine-guns/ 1. http://www.thehomegunsmith.com/pdf/Expedient-Homemade-Firearms-Vol-II-PA-Luty.pdf http://www.thehomegunsmith.com/pdf/Expedient-Homemade-Firear...

ChuckMcM 8y ago

Well you can make a cannon as easily, but the BATF has been aggressive at pursuing people who discuss gun making, the more sophisticated (like 3D printing them) the more aggressive the pursuit. A project for recreating a black powder musket? Not a lot of heat. A project for a repeating launcher that lobs soviet era grenades while pulling the pins on exit, very aggressive pursuit.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
anth_anm 8y ago
It's legal to build your own guns. 3d printing isn't that sophisticated considering you can build a working AR with off the shelf parts, a drill press, and a hand router.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  There's plans for an 7.62 Tokarev pistol based on the AK style action that have been floating around the internet since forever. No drill press or router required. Just a drill, file and some misc hand tools. The AK style action lends itself well to that kind of ghetto fabrication because it's a stamped receiver and machining tolerances can be described as "optional"
- Rebelgecko 8y ago
  It's legal to build your own guns but people who disseminate info for how to do so have got in all kinds of legal trouble. Defense Distributed, codeisfreespeech.com, etc

mirimir 8y ago

Hey, I did that when I was 13 or 14. There was lots of ammunition lying around in the woods, if you knew where to look. Mostly 7.6 mm, but some 12.7 mm and 20 mm.

mesofile 8y ago
What woods were these that had 20mm cannon rounds scattered about?
- mirimir 8y ago
  Not far from Veliky Novgorod.
- PostOnce 8y ago
  Probably means 10 gauge shotgun shells but I've never heard anyone call them "20mm" edit: hmm, maybe that doesn't make sense since he also says 12.7mm, maybe he lives where there was once a war like m0zg says
  - ivanhoe 8y ago
    20mm was a pretty popular caliber for AA guns, and you can often find them in the ground around the cities and military bases in Europe that have been heavily bombarded in WWII. In Europe it's a lot of fun to play with metal detectors since there's a lot of stuff in the ground around old cities, from ancient coins to more modern things like WWI and WWII bullets, broken bayonet blades, helmets, and all kinds of old metal junk.
- m0zg 8y ago
  This is true of nearly any country which had a real, actual, land war on its soil. Which is most of European countries, and especially the former USSR and today's Russia. As kids in Russia we burnt TNT for fun (or whatever the waxy thing was that's found inside artillery shells) and threw WW2 rifle rounds into bonfires. Only much later did I find out that TNT fumes are toxic.
  - 8y ago