I would think that tungsten and/or tungsten carbide could replace the hardened steel parts. Apparently tungsten springs are a popular upgrade in firearms for target shooters.
Apparently tungsten plating has been tested in rifled barrels:
http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=AD0851365
Do you have a cite for that? I know tungsten guide rods are popular for their weight, but I’ve never heard of a tungsten spring being used.
So it seems you could send settler teams across with non-ferrous (e.g. bronze) firearms, as well as other non-ferrous tools like bronze swords, hammers, etc. The intent would be to use those tools/weapons only as long as needed, for example to hunt wild animals or protect against them. Work would start almost immediately on iron mining and the manufacture of long-term steel equipment. By the time the bronze stuff wears out, hopefully you are making steel stuff so it doesn’t really matter. If you really need more time, you could ship some more bronze guns from Earth Prime.
I imagine you could also go with something like the old gyrojet gun which used a rocket-like cartridge. I would think that because most of the acceleration takes place outside the barrel, you could get away with plastic or carbon fiber. And you can use an electronic ignition system instead of a steel firing pin.
I found that book was mostly Baxter, not so much Pratchett.
It seems to me that a Vulcan cannon would be an ideal candidate for a titanium gun. You don’t need strong springs because the action is mechanic and the multiple barrels mean you can fire for an extended time before they wear out.
Iridium-platinum alloy would be more than hard enough for any heavy duty parts, but since it costs more than gold no one’s ever done it.
Hey, it worked for Jim Kirk.
Regarding the rifling, this is really only an issue if you’re bent on using gyroscopically stabilized bullets. An alternative is to have your projectiles instead be fin stabilized and saboted, as many tank rounds are. So titanium is an alternative for the barrel in any case.
I misunderstood; the tungsten rods use steel springs.
But this company sells springs made of tungsten metal:
http://www.springworksutah.com/index.php/materials/tungsten/tungsten-wire.html
No idea if they are suitable to firearms applications.
There is the immortal Glock 7, a porcelain gun made in Germany that doesn’t show up on metal detectors and costs more than you make in a month…
Yes, I just quoted the single most asinine firearm-related error in movie history. The reason is that that quote has been the cause of more misinformation than any movie quote I can think of. Glocks are Austrian, for one thing, and the reason that the first Glock pistol was the Glock 17 was because it was Gaston Glock’s 17th patent. The real “Glock 7” is an entrenching tool, if I recall correctly.
Of course, in that movie he has time to strap into an ejection seat in a transport aircraft (!) before about 15 grenades go off on a 30-second (!) delay, and he ignites aviation fuel with a Zippo (!) which burns fast enough to catch up to a plane on a takeoff roll (!) and the bad guys crash a plane on an instrument approach because they have time to loiter for hours but don’t have the fuel to go anywhere else and have pilots who apparently don’t ever look at their approach plates or altimeters (!), plus the bad guys have blanks powerful enough to cycle the action of an automatic weapon without discharging any projectile, killing the operator, or causing his immediate deafness (!).
Fun movie, but hideously bad if given even a moment’s thought. Gun owners will probably be paying for that Glock 7 quote forever, you simply wouldn’t believe how many people actually believe such a thing exists, including lawmakers.
Cite? Or am I missing something?
The Mythbusters did it.
Thanks for the info! I just ordered one on e-Bay.
Wasn’t there a plastic Glock with a titanium barrel?
That whole thing made me wonder: so, what, he’s using porcelain bullets? The gun’s not the only thing he’d have to sneak through the metal detector…
I have several guns at home made entirely of plastic. Some of them will propel water for quite a good distance.
What about ceramics or carbon fiber. What parts of a gun could not be made out of those?
No. With the exception of the frames and recoil springs, both of which have changed since the original, Glocks are different only in size and caliber. There has never been a titanium-barreled Glock, and all Glocks have frames and magazines largely made out of plastic.
I bought Long Earth yesterday, so this thread bubbled up in my mind.
There is nothing special about iron and steel really, except that they are so common and cheap. The attributes you want for a gun barrel material are: cheap, common, easy to machine, high tensile strength, corrosion resistant (against the residue of the propellants), and reasonably hard. It seems the typical steel is 4140, which has all these attributes. The first metal that came to mind as a replacement would be nickel. Pure nickel won’t do as well, but 4140 isn’t pure iron either. 4140 has a tensile strength of about 1000MPa. Pure nickel is half that, but alloys can get there, although most commercial alloys I found include some iron. I doubt it would be too hard to get there without any iron in the alloy, but probably a little more expensive. After all, there is no reason for anyone to experiment right now to make one. Nickel is cheap and common, although not as cheap or common as iron.
The second obvious metal is titanium. The downside here is that it requires vastly more effort and care to refine and manufacture, and so is much more expensive then steel. It seems to have strengths that roughly parallel steel - and alloys that exceed 1000MPa tensile strength are available - and these only contain iron as a tolerated contaminant. Surface coatings of titanium nitride would achieve any hardness needed. Finally, tungsten would work pretty much out of the box, and treatments to create a carbide layer would make for any level of hardening needed. Its density would make for a very very heavy weapon, as well as a very expensive one.
Guns are made of steel for mostly the same reasons we make anything else out of steel. Mostly that it is such a common and cheap material, with a huge history of manufacturing, so all the next level properties are well understood, and there are readily available alloys that match whatever need you have. After that it doesn’t bring much in the way of special properties.
It would hardly surprise me that there might be a market for the necessarily very expensive, but rather cool all titanium gun. Its light weight, plus hi-tech caché would make for a marketable item.