AOW .410 & 380 flashlight guns

[Randy D]

I'm probably going to get in trouble for this post but I have serched everywhere even tryed the U.S. Patent site.
I am instered in how these work.They are VERY NEAT I'm sure it's like a simple zip gun but the flash light still works.
1. How is the shell contained?
2. Fireing pin
4. Trigger mech.
5. Operation of flashlight?
Any healp would be great

You can view these at url www.autoweapons.com/photosv/dcellgun.html
www.autoweapons.com/photosv/dcellgun.com (http://www.autoweapons.com/photosv/dcellgun.html)
www.autoweapons.com/photosv/flashlights.com (autoweapons.com/photosv/flashlight.com)

I hope I did this right if not go easy on me
Randy
y2kminuteman@yahoo.com

[xyz]

From looking at the photo, they just look like a normal torch (flashlight to you Americans) with a zipgun mounted on the butt end of the handle.

It shouldn't have been too difficult to figure this out.

As for how it works, look around the forum for zipgun designs, although I have a feeling you may not be around much longer...

[FragmentedSanity]

Lo all - SWIM is currently working on a small .22 version. Swim is going to use a couple of button cells in place of the AA batteries to power the torch so that the firing mechanisim and barrel fit inside the torch.

Look up pen gun plans - all you have to do is fit one inside the torch your want to use - that should also answer all the questions you had - except for the opreation of the torch, which you can work out yourself as it will be different depending on your own projects dimensions. Besided if you cant work out how a torch functions you probably shouldnt be making one that fires bullets.

My suggestion would be to make one for .22 first - .410's are not reccomended for improviesd firearms as they generated too much pressure which can be dangerous.

Ill put up some pics of SWIM's just as soon as he gets motivated enough to finish it. So if your still around youll be able to see exactly how it all goes together.

[Ammonal]

This .410 torch without a grip would be very hard to a) hang on to when fired and b) be very difficult to hold and roughly sight your target and if the torch is turned on, you would be shining yourself in the face? Granted it is a pellet munition the aim is not that important but the controllability of this weapon could be questioned (I recall firing a winchester 9" barrel and single shot action by hanging onto the barrel in front of the action, there was nothing else just a one piece barrel and action, and there was a significant amount of muzzle rise which cannot be moderately controlled without some form of grip) , and the website does not give any explanation of how they are fired/held/aimed etc. An email to the distributor/ sales person might yield something more useful than the question that opened this thread.

[xyz]

FragmentedSanity, a .410 shotshell operates at a lower pressure than a .22LR does, the pressure generated by a .410 shell is high when compared to other shotgun ammunition, but is low when compared to rifle ammunition.

The reason that the .410 uses higher pressures is because there is less area for the pressure to act on and therefore a higher pressure is required for the shell to function properly.

.410 shouldn't give you any trouble so long as you make sure that the barrel is strong enough. People use 3mm walls for .22LR barrels (just over half the bore diameter), so you should be fine with .410 if you keep the barrel walls at least 6mm thick.

[FragmentedSanity]

xyz: Ill take your word for it about the pressure of the .410, although it dosent seem quite right from my limited experience with .410 shotguns, but Ive been wrong before - I was simply going by what Ive read in improvised firearm books - they mostly reccomend avoiding the .410 due to the pressure/possible dangers. Obviously if you make an adequate barrel and chamber you can use whatever cartridge you fancy. Id still go for the .22 first tho, but thats just my preference.
I'll get SWIM moving on his little torch - hopefully there will be pictures soon - its nothing flash - more of a novelty - Ill still be interested to hear peoples opinion when Its done.

[xyz]

Yeah, .22 is always the best cartridge to start with, are you using one barrel or several?

They say to avoid the .410 because you can't safely use pipe as the barrel (like you can with 12 gauge), it is fine if you make a stronger barrel though.

[Axt]

The problem with pipe sizes is that they are never rated to the same pressure, youll actually be able to find a stronger pipe with a .410 bore then you can with a 12ga bore as the smaller diametre pipe doesnt need to be nearly as thick as the wider pipe to hold the same pressure. The chamber pressure of the .22lr is also low when compared to other rifles, cant remember any figures but I think its about half that of most centrefire cartridges.

This means holding the pressure for a .22lr is actually quite easy compared to anything else.

[FragmentedSanity]

Ive heard of people using old car areiel's - one part of the sectional tubing fits a .22 nicely - as a barrel for a zip/pengun. It dosent sound like a good idea to me but - its safe to say the pressure is lower than other rounds if a piece of thin walled al can hold up. Ive never tried it myself tho - so thats purely heresay.
Spec's for SWIM's torch;
2 AA battery Aluminium torch ($2.00 from a discount store)- about 15cm total lenght. A single barrel - thats all that will fit, its about 2 inches long and made out of a section of a "push rod" - con rod or somehting like that out of either a holden or a valiant - the walls are a bit thin - but the push rod is made of pretty sturdy stuff so it should be OK. SWIM is going to put something else around the barrel tho - maybe laminate it with another peice of pipe or something similar.
All told - this torch is a little small to turn into a gun - the button cells probably wont drive the globe all that well either - prehaps it could be replaced with a small LED - but for now SWIM will just get it firing to do a few test runs before shooting it from his hands.
SWIM should have pics in a couple of days

[Jacks Complete]

Car telescopic aerials are stainless steel. Hence they bear pressure well.

Also, could people please try looking at the pressures involved from a proper source before spouting off? .22 isn't half the pressure of a centerfire round, as there is no pressure standard!

.44 magnum is capped at 12 or 14 tons per square inch, and 7.62 is either 19 or 20, depending on the exact spec. .223 is about 31. There is a .729" round with a proof pressure of just 3 tons, and that is a nitro load. .410, for info, is 1200 bar, or 8.7 tons per sq.in. proof load.

Anyone know the pressure levels of a .22? I think it is about 6 tons, but I haven't found anywhere to confirm or deny this. So is it half? of what?

(The more firearms aware of you will have noticed that .729" is a 12.)

[FragmentedSanity]

Some (possibly most) car areials are made out of stainless, but I have come across some that are just to flimsy to be stainless - my best guess was aluminium. But even stainless steel with walls that thin seems a bit under strenghth to me - An idea would be to keep a few of the outer sections in place over the section that fits the round correctly, making a sort of quick and easy laminated barrel - the inner section could be examined after firing to check for stress or splits. The outer sections would help a bit if it decided to rupture on you.
Its nice to have a few figures to throw around, just to illustrate how much pressure some rounds can generate, but for simple zip/pen/pipe guns its not all that important to have accurate figures - just use common sense and stick to low pressure rounds like the .22 or a 9mm or a 12gauge then err on the side of caution when it comes to material selectiion.
Obviously - if you have a half decent workshop and invest in decent materials there is no reason you cant make anything you want. High pressure rounds simply require a higher level of sophistication.
For anyone thats interested, a quick update on SWIM's torch, I had hoped to have pictures by now - but swim had a few setbacks, namely in misplaced (and "borrowed") tools - But its coming - Sorry for the delay - I hate when people say that they will post something then dont. I will have a complete writeup for you all before long.

[Bigfoot]

Sardaukar Press distributes the plans for a MiniMaglite mod to fire .22 rimfire. Barrel for it and the pengun is cut from a .22 barrel liner from Brownell's. The liner is less than 2mm wall thickness.

Some online outfit I stumbled across a few years back was actually manufacturing weapons based on some of the Sardaukar plans. MiniMag, Boltgun, a few others.

[Zoth]

You might want to look into a book called "Zips, Pipes and Pens," I believe published by Paladin or someone similar.

Do a search on soulseek for the title; it's really not worth more than a looksee unless you are some kind of aficionado.

All kinds of stuff like this, most of it good. Some plans in there as I recall.

[tiac03]

I know this might be a stupid question but couldn't you wrap wire around your "barrel" to give it more strength? (I ask because I watched a Show that was talking about how they wrapped cannon barrels and then they slipped a tube over the wrapped barrel. (I guess to give it a nicer appearance))


This would then give you more tubes to chose from since you don't need a certain thickness?

They also made one by putting rings around barrels that they forged. (equivilent to slipping washers over a thin tube from top to bottom) this could probably help centre your barrel in your flashlight too if the are the same diameter of the light's "tube"

[NickSG]

If you want a strong barrel, just drill a 7/32 hole through a steel dowel rod.

If you want to increase the strength of a barrel, just drill a hole large enough to fit the barrel in a steel dowel rod.

[zaibatsu]

Of course, why don't we just drill through a steel rod? I never realised it was so easy to make a barrel! :rolleyes:

[tiac03]

Yea I made the mistake of thinking hardened steel was easy to drill through too a while ago. Figured that I could drill through a bolt that I found along the tracks. (was going to make a small cannon with it). Let me tell you after spending 5 minutes making a "dent" (is the best description), I cut my losses. Figured giving up was better than getting a nice hot broken drill bit in the eye.

[NickSG]

Um, if you have the proper machinery you can do it. I cant recall what the name of it is, but in my high school metals lab we had a large drill machine. It could easily drill through steel rods, in fact thats what I did.

I dont see why you guys thought I meant a handheld drill.

[zaibatsu]

Um, drilling a hole through a steel bar requires a deep hole drilling machine incorporating an oil pump etc. I can't understand why your high school metals lab would have one of them - there aren't that many applications for them, or rather that I know of. Therefore, I am assuming you just mean a drill press. If you can drill a hole through the center of a steel rod using standard drill bits for the length of the rod, and end up still on center, with no wandering of the hole, I'll be extremely suprised.

Of course, even if I am wrong in my judgement of this, you were still misleading in your comments - "just drill a 7/32 hole through a steel dowel rod". Either you are very gullable to think it's that simple, or you are an extremely proficient machinist and this is like a walk in the park to you.

[Crane]

I know it might sound sort of dumb, but couldn't you just buy tube rather than rod ? It would certainly reduce the amount of drilling / machining required for the end product ! ;)

[zaibatsu]

Yes, you could. But if you can't get a close fit to the calibre you're using, you might as well not even have a barrel. That means you'll either be doing a hell of a lot of lapping, or you're going to have no support around the round of ammunition. Plus, just using tubing you'll have to pick a straight walled cartridge, like .45ACP unless you want to start cutting a chamber, which kind of defeats the point I think. Also, tubing doesn't often have sufficient wall thickness. Yes, there are plenty of exceptions to that, but you see my point. You're either going to do it well, or "make-do". Once you've decided which, you can decide your own path.

I have to emphasize now that there is little point in rifling the barrel of an AOW like this, so that doesn't work against the concept of using piping. But, anything I'm going to be holding in my hand, I want to make sure it's pretty damn safe.

[NickSG]

I dont know what makes it seem so hard to you. Yes, in fact I did this several times during high school. It did take some time, and the oil had to be spread by hand, but it got the job done. The bits would only wear down if you went to fast or if you didnt put any oil down. Of course you couldnt drill a barrel any longer than 2 inches or so, but I wasnt planning on making any high tech sniper rifle, just a little zip gun.

I dont mean to offend anyone in anyway, but I just dont see why you are so surprised that I did this?

[zaibatsu]

I'm not suprised you could do a 2" barrel, when you said barrel I anticipated you meant something a little bigger, because when you take into account the OAL of some common pistol cartridges, it's hardly a barrel at all, merely a chamber with an inch or so over!

You didn't offend anyone, I just wanted to clarify things for people. Don't worry, in a couple of weeks I'll have some real info on the topic that I'm sure will interest you.

[NickSG]

I look forward to what you have.

Sometime in the next year I will be making a blowback style .22 short pistol. I have the design drawn up, and when I have time, I will post it on here. It is extremely simply, and doesnt have any more than 20 or so parts. The gun will not have an ejector, but instead, when the slide moves back, the casing drops into a small space located within the grips. There will not be any magazine spring, but instead, the magazine will be located on top of the gun and will feed by gravity. It should be around 4 1/2 inches long and 4 inches tall, weighing no more than 12 ounces. So far there isnt a trigger, but instead, you pull the hammer back and release to fire. Im trying to figure out a way to get a trigger in somewhere, but I dont have much free time to work on this. The .22LR version will be slightly longer, and at least 50 percent heavier since tougher materials will be needed to stand up against the higher pressures.

I might look into building my own 4 shot revolver. The cylinder will be made just like you would a barrel (like I posted above), and the firing pin would be on the hammer. This would be a little harder for me to make since these parts will have to be from solid metal rather than heavy guage sheet metal like the blowback gun.

[guerrero]

Bigfoot, you mentioned the plans of Sardaukar Press. I,m looking for that plans, but I don´t know where I can get such plans. Do you know, where I can get such detailed plans of weapons like canegun, bolzgun, buckler, etc.?

[bipolar]

I am also looking for the Sardauker plans that were mentioned in zips pipes and pens but can't seem to find it anywhere, a search on google for Sardauker Press only yeilded this thread. I may try to figure them out from the isometric drawings and draft some drawings myself if no one knows where to get these plans. I am especially interested in the zapper and the buckler belt buckle gun.

[FragmentedSanity]

Ack! Id completely forgotten about this thread... the info at the top of the page tellls me I havent been here since june 5th - And from memory that was when I managed to make it home for a couple of days. Anyway now I feel like a fool for failure to proudce the pics i promised. As Ive said ealier it really isnt anything special - but I said Id deliver pictures - and I wlll just as soon as I make it home for a few days... life turned odd but thats irrelevant. From memory the torch only requires assembly... and maybe a few minutes with the dremel I dont really remember. I dont know when Ill make it back though so I cant make any promises. I can make up some basic diagrams and post them for the time being - but the concept was fairly clear from the posts I made, and there are bunches of designs for .22 zip/pen guns - so the basic sketches may well be redundant. If theres any interest ill make the diagram, if not Ill still make a little web page with a write up and post it - when I get home.
Sorry all.