Comments on: M1911A1 Video Remix

M1911A1 Video Remix

Tube — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 21:02:05 -0800

Technical animations are sometimes dull, with no soundtrack and limited change in viewer perspective. The M1911 Animated Assembly Video Remix is much better.

It's actually an M1911A1.

By: ryanrs

ryanrs — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 21:17:23 -0800

Guns are beautiful tools.

By: stavrogin

stavrogin — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 22:05:53 -0800

They should have used one of the good recordings of John Lee Hooker's Boom Boom.

By: MadDog Bob

MadDog Bob — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 22:14:04 -0800

For my dad, the Colt Peacemaker is the quintessential handgun. For me, it's always been the M1911. That was very cool, thanks.

By: clockworkjoe

clockworkjoe — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 22:56:40 -0800

It's not really a remix if the guy just added a soundtrack to the animation.

By: Punkey

Punkey — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 23:22:11 -0800

You gotta love the engineering that goes into something like that. So few moving parts, exposed to so much stress and heat, and with a little oil every so often, it never, ever goes wrong. Of course, given the intended use of most firearms, there's never really a good time for them to go wrong...

By: dhartung

dhartung — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 23:43:25 -0800

Once you've seen one grip screw bushing, you've seen them all.

By: roue

roue — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 03:22:24 -0800

My grandfather, likes to say (of the 45 in particular, probably his favorite firearm): "designed by geniuses to be used by morons."

By: mattoxic

mattoxic — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 04:08:31 -0800

Only in America.

By: monocultured

monocultured — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 04:51:08 -0800

Good example of technical illustration. A bit different pacing and labeling of the parts would have been neat, but the final firing sequence was very clear.

By: blahblahblah

blahblahblah — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 05:10:49 -0800

"To-day we have naming of parts.."

By: MonkeyToes

MonkeyToes — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 05:48:46 -0800

Eagerly awaiting the AR-15 edition. Thanks, Tube.

By: yath

yath — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 05:56:44 -0800

I didn't know Youtube could induce motion sickness, until now.

By: rdone

rdone — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 07:44:14 -0800

John Lee Hooker and John Moses Browning: the remix.

By: Max Power

Max Power — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 08:41:55 -0800

Makes me want to buy a gun.

By: not sure this is a good idea

not sure this is a good idea — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 10:07:53 -0800

isn't there a way to load the bullet so that it's further back in the barrel? it seems like there's a lot of space wasted that could be used to have a longer barrel (and hence, i think, a more accurate and powerful gun) in the same outer dimensions. are there other designs, or are all semi-automatics more or less like this?

By: five fresh fish

five fresh fish — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 10:37:05 -0800

Once you've seen one grip screw bushing, you've seen them all. And you can thank Samuel Colt for that. Prior to his use of assembly line and automated machining, you couldn't honestly say that once you'd seen one grip screw bushing, you'd seen them all: they were hand-made and not all identical.

By: Artw

Artw — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 10:47:57 -0800

Pleix have that beat by about a million percent.

By: localroger

localroger — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 11:12:37 -0800

five fresh fish: Actually you have Eli Whitney (of cotton gin fame) to thank for that. He developed the so-called "American System" for making interchangeable precision parts. Colt designed the first practical repeating revolver, which probably could not have been manufactured without Whitney's method. And when Colt received his first order for 1,000 revolvers from Zachary Taylor, he subcontracted Whitney to make them. That was what made it possible for him to open his own armory, which was built from the ground up around Whitney's system.

By: five fresh fish

five fresh fish — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 11:25:06 -0800

Well, I guess I just learned something!

By: Bora Horza Gobuchul

Bora Horza Gobuchul — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 11:34:11 -0800

Isn't there a way to load the bullet so that it's further back in the barrel? it seems like there's a lot of space wasted that could be used to have a longer barrel nstiagi, you're thinking, perhaps, of a bullpup design, which places the action and magazine behind the trigger, and is used in a number of assault rifles (primarily European or Israeli in design or manufacture, although a few American designers have been coming on board of late). It does give the advantage of longer barrel length (and thus increased accuracy), and a shorter weapon overall. The design hasn't been used in pistols, to my knowledge, due to problems of ergonomics: having the magazine of a handgun above the wrist rather than clasped in the hand would be detrimental to the balance and recoil of most pistols.

By: P.o.B.

P.o.B. — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 11:40:14 -0800

Everything's better with a soundtrack!

By: paulsc

paulsc — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 11:42:35 -0800

"isn't there a way to load the bullet so that it's further back in the barrel? ..." posted by not sure this is a good idea at 1:07 PM on July 26 Bullpup designs attempt that, but are not without their own limitations. A key problem for most automatic weapons is extraction and ejection of the spent brass case, overlapping with feeding of the next fresh round. H & K and a few other makers have experimented with caseless ammo guns such as the H & K G11 and the G11 PDW. Without the need for a brass cartridge base which needs to be ejected after each round is fired, the firing cycle for a caseless automatic can be simpler by a couple of steps, and without the complications of an extractor mechanism, there is more room in the frame for a barrel. The tradeoff for this, especially for high rate of fire weapons, is a tendency for ammunition cook off. On preview, what Bora Horza Gobuchul said.

By: rdone

rdone — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 12:53:30 -0800

Having the magazine in the grip of a handgun/submachinegun also expedites replacement of the magazine in combat conditions: the "hand finds hand" principle.

By: not sure this is a good idea

not sure this is a good idea — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 12:59:34 -0800

thanks. i guess i wasn't thinking of a bullpup design (not that i had heard of that before now) as much as something more like a "four-stroke" system (if you think of the present system as two stroke - i have no idea how you'd power it but somehow the internal barrel moves back after loading the next round and before firing).

By: paulsc

paulsc — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 14:14:48 -0800

"... i have no idea how you'd power it but somehow the internal barrel moves back after loading the next round and before firing)." posted by not sure this is a good idea at 3:59 PM on July 26 Most, but not all, automatic weapons are gas operated, meaning that they use some pressure from the burning propellant in the cartridge to cycle the weapon, performing the spent cartridge ejection and the loading of the next fresh round. Because of timing issues in doing a serial load, fire, eject, reload cycle, energy has to be stored and delivered sequentially to various parts of an automatic weapon by the mechanical components. Therfore, the weapon as a whole is inherently sensitive to the kind of ammunition used with it, and to the state of cleanliness and lubrication of the weapon. That's why automatic weapons are inherently less reliable than mechanically operated weapons like revolver pistols and externally powered Gatling guns. In general, for efficiency, accuracy and reliability sake, you don't want to move something heavy, like a gun barrel, in a reciprocating motion, in an automatic weapon design. If you try to do that, you have a lot of mass to cope with in recoil. Ideally, you want the minimum movement, at the lowest pressures that will reliably cycle the weapon, and you have to carefully balance the reciprocation with the ammunition, to keep jams to an acceptable level. Even so, to do even something as benign as fire blanks, you need additional components like a BFA, for most automatic weapons. If an inexpensive mass produced version of the Metal Storm technology is ever produced in handgun calibers, gas operated weapons are going to finally look like the major compromises they really are.

By: not sure this is a good idea

not sure this is a good idea — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 14:28:23 -0800

thanks again - interesting stuff.

By: Artw

Artw — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 15:18:58 -0800

Of possible interest.

By: lupus_yonderboy

lupus_yonderboy — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 15:29:41 -0800

Urgh, disappointingly not at all as advertised. Here's a definition of Remix, you can see how this would extend to video but this isn't it. Even given that aside, this was very dull (unless you have hotties for the product in question). Even forgetting about the naming, there's no explanation of the purpose of any of the parts in the original video nor interesting things like failure modes and tolerances (for example, they could show high-tolerance parts by making them "glint" more). (And the music didn't sync to the video either).

By: smackfu

smackfu — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 17:19:37 -0800

You don't need to know the names of the parts or what they do, you just need to know how to put them together.

By: Kadin2048

Kadin2048 — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 08:33:27 -0800

Surprised nobody has mentioned caseless ammunition yet. That's been a sort of holy grail of firearms designers since the 50s, one of those ideas that is just so conceptually appealing that it has managed to hang on despite numerous failures to make it practical. The idea of caseless ammunition is to eliminate the brass cartridge case, which must be extracted from the chamber and ejected in conventional firearms. Each round consists of a projectile and propellant in a combustible case, which is consumed during the firing process. You just touch one off, wait for it to burn up and clear the chamber, and then stuff the next one in. The savings in weight, space, and mechanical complexity is pretty profound.

By: not sure this is a good idea

not sure this is a good idea — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 10:03:42 -0800

actually, paulsc did mention it - see the comments on cook-off.