- #1
cronxeh
Gold Member
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So I am curious how many PFers own firearms here. What kind of guns do you own? What do you have on your wishlist? How often do you go on a range or hunting and practice?
Pengwuino said:What is that, a water bottle on the end of that thing?
turbo-1 said:I used to have a large collection of Winchester lever-action rifles and carbines, but I sold them to buy camera gear. Now I hunt deer with a Ruger Model 1 (.45-70) single-shot or one of two Winchester carbines (.30-30), and hunt birds with an old Ithaca 16 ga double-barrel. For plinking, I have a Browning .22 semi-auto, and a Ruger single action revolver with cylinders for .22 and .22 magnum. For home defense, a Mauser P38 in 9mm and a Glock model 20 in 10mm auto.
Almost all mine were earlier than 1935 or so, and many were bona fide antiques. I had a couple of .38-55 rifles (one with a half-magazine) and both were tack-drivers. I had a model '92 carbine with a half-magazine - it was in really nice condition and was a bit on the odd side because the serial number started with "11" and both of the "1's" were upside down. Monday-morning production, perhaps. I kept a couple of the '94 carbines because they are so compact and easy to lug in the woods. My favorite deer-rifle is the Ruger .45-70 with a Redfield 1-4X scope. I keep it dialed down to 1X - a little extra light-gathering at the end of the day is a good thing - magnification in deep woods is not always handy.airborne18 said:I love the lever actions. I only have one that I bought at an estate sale and it is my favorite. It is in okay condition. I wish I had known you when you were getting rid of them.
FrancisZ said:Not to rain on anyone's parade. Technologically, I've always been wanted to build a magneto-ballistic gun, like this...
Ivan Seeking said:Some buddies and I made a rail gun once, but the capacitor bank was almost as large as a tabletop... and something like 1500 volts!
airborne18 said:Do you have any images of it? I would love to see it.
FrancisZ said:Not to rain on anyone's parade. Technologically, I've always wanted to build a magneto-ballistic gun, like this...
It is a very good thing to be afraid of guns, particularly the business end thereof, if you aren't familiar with them. I never saw the show that you referred to, but it's obvious from your description that the characters involved were being portrayed as idiots.FrancisZ said:Personally, I would only be too afraid of accidentally shooting myself. What can I say: that old episode of Gimme a Break when Nell Carter gets shot in the foot by Joe Lawrence really scared the hell out of me as a child.
Looks like it's about 20 gauge wire1, that's close to 10 milli-Ohms/ft. Let's say there's at least 50 turns of wire, with a loop diameter of 1/2", making the length around 10 ft. This brings the resistance to a nice round 100 milli-Ohms (reasonably ignoring any skin effect), and the mass of the copper used is roughly 13 grams. With a specific heat of 0.385J/g-K, that's a heat capacity of about 5 J/K (the length of wire actually doesn't matter within this approximation).jackmell said:I don't think that gun could accelerate a projectile very fast. The wires are too small and I doubt you could push more than a handful of amps through it before they melted. Would be an interesting physics project. Gonna' trip some breakers though.
Gokul43201 said:Looks like it's about 20 gauge wire1, that's close to 10 milli-Ohms/ft. Let's say there's at least 50 turns of wire, with a loop diameter of 1/2", making the length around 10 ft. This brings the resistance to a nice round 100 milli-Ohms (reasonably ignoring any skin effect), and the mass of the copper used is roughly 13 grams. With a specific heat of 0.385J/g-K, that's a heat capacity of about 5 J/K.
How long does the current need to flow for? Let's go with 1 second. At 3 A of current, the Joule heat generated is about 1 J. If you assume all of this heat is contained within the copper and none of it is dissipated out (this puts an upper bound on the temperature, since some of the heat is certain to be lost over these time scales), it raises the temperature by only a fraction of a degree. At 30 A, the maximum temperature rise is about 20K. So it looks like you can force quite a few amps through the wire, so long as you keep it in short bursts.
If you want to play with different numbers, the physics is contained in this equation:
[tex]I^2Rt=mC\DeltaT
1. http://www.interfacebus.com/awg-wire-sizes.html
Ugh! I thought that might be smaller than direct Joule heat and/or limited mostly to the projectile. What material are rail gun bullets made of?Ivan Seeking said:I think inductance becomes the limiting factor in these types of configurations. With the rail gun, the ESR of the capacitors was a problem.
Gokul43201 said:Ugh! I thought that might be smaller than direct Joule heat. Will update shortly ...
Danger said:Dichotomy here: I love (and design) weapons, but I'm a pacifist. If you can ever figure that out for me, I'd be happy to hear the analysis. (Other than the obvious "application of force at a distance".)
mugaliens said:Put simply, I'm a lover, not a fighter, but if cornered, I will fight. I suppose that might require some analysis as well, Danger. :)
Pythagorean said:I'm a pacifist too. I own guns to hunt with. I watched somebody run a fox over on purpose and not even stop to take the hide a couple days ago and it made me kind of sad to see something die for nothing, so I'm not by any means a sports hunter either.
A moose is enough meat for a whole winter; that's a lot of savings for me.
edit: not to mention healthier and tastier than angus beef.
cronxeh said:...Every time some human shoots a moose, it only feeds his fat lazy bottom. You want to hunt a moose like a real man? Grab a survival knife and charge at him.
Averagesupernova said:Hmmmmm. Why the knife? The moose isn't carrying a weapon. You can't have it both ways.
cronxeh said:You want to hunt a moose like a real man? Grab a survival knife and charge at him.