1911 black powder and fixed barrel no recoil lugs.

B

boesman

Inactive
hello people,

me and my buddy were having a discussion about the 1911 and the main question that came up was

"does it need the recoil lugs on the barrel, or can it just use a a fixed barrel when shooting black powder?"

we both know that a fixed barrel straight blowback pistol usually doesnt use calibers above 380 acp and some sort of delay/lock mechanism is used for bigger calibers.

but we also know that shooting a semi auto pistol with black powder can cause problems because the slide doesnt move with enough speed/force? to properly extract and chamber the cartridges.

so then we thought what would happen if you put a fixed barrel in a 1911, instead of the tilting/locking barrel and shoot .45 acp loaded with black powder.

what would happen? would the black powder pressure be high enough to cause a case rupture because the slide moves back too early?
or would the slide move backwards at rocket speed?:eek:
and would rifling or smoothbore make much difference?

needless to say neither me or my buddy think a blackpowder straight blowback smoothbore 1911 would be something usefull :D

(p.s. we cant have guns in our country so our gun experience is mainly based on experience in the army and watching hours of youtube (forgotten weapons, hickock45, royal nonesuch, mark serbu, demolitionranch, iraqveteran8888)

hope there is someone out there who can give some info to solve our question (please dont blow up your 1911 for us)
 
What is a recoil lug on a 1911 and how would you create a fixed barrel 1911?

I imagine your concept is possible but probably not practical.

I can't see how black powder would cause a case rupture due to the low pressure associated with BP loads. However I can't imagine shooting black powder out of any semi auto is going to work for very long with out a break for cleaning.
 
The OP is talking about the locking lugs on the top of the barrel that keep the barrel and slide locked together until the bullet leaves the barrel and pressure drops.

In a high pressure pistol, if the breech is not locked or the slide made very heavy, the pressure will open the breech too soon and the the cartridge case will rupture.

The 1911 pistol is recoil operated, so it is the recoil created by bullet movement that operates the pistol, not pressure itself. I don't think you could get enough black powder in a .45 ACP case to operate a 1911 pistol normally. But if you did alter the gun to a straight blowback, it would probably work.

Two things should be easy to try. It would be a simple matter to load .45 ACP and, say, .380 ACP with black powder and try. .380 pistols are normally blowback and the round is almost a perfect scaled down copy of the .45.

Jim
 
The cleaner burning BP substitutes would probably work just fine in a regular auto loader.
Triple 7 burns about as clean as some smokeless powders.
Just have to clean the gun after using.
 
I guess my first question is " why"?

I assume this is an academic exercise since the OP doesnt have access to guns, but even as an academic exercise the premise is questionable. Use the ammo the gun was designed for.
 
i saw the video's, nice to see some smoke :)

i'll try and explain a little better what i meant with my question:

the 1911 works with delayed blowback because it would need a very heavy slide as a straight blowback with .45acp and 9mm para.

a lot of pistols in smaller less powerful cartridges like .380 acp (200ft/lbs) work with a straight blowback.

now we were thinking if for example a 9mm para would be loaded with black powder, would the energy be low enough for a 1911 to work as a straight blowback instead of delayed blowback?

a 9mm para loaded with black powder would have about the same energy as a .38 short colt, around 140 ft/lbs.

a normal 9mm para has about 518 ft/lbs with the same projectile weight.

so i assume that if the energy stays below the 200ft/lbs (from .380 acp) a 1911 doesnt need the delayed blowback and can run fine as a straight blowback. (also assuming a 1911 slide weighs the same or more than a random .380 slide)

does that sound right or did i forget something?


p.s. i'm in holland where they find guns scary and its forbidden to have a smile on your face at a gun range where everything is forbidden. thats why me and my buddy can only talk about this stuff and not test things because it would be againt the law. getting a gun license is hard and breaking a window by accident in an arguement is enough to put you on hold for 8 years before you can apply for gun club membership. then you have to shoot their weapons for a year before you can apply for a firearm at the police station, and only for guns approved by a civilian organisation (which is unlawful btw). and the funny thing is even if you are in the army, working with an ar-15 all day long you still have to go through all the same application stuff as other people. so you can shoot 1000 rounds on full auto on the job and not being allowed into any gunclub and not being allowed to own any firearms. (only antique wallhangers for most people)
 
There are direct blowback 9mm and 45acp pistols mass produced currently.
I'm not sure where that fits into your question as I'm still not sure I understand it.
 
The 1911 type is not a blowback or a delayed blowback, it is recoil operated. When the round is fired, the barrel and slide are locked together and will not unlock except in response to the recoil of the bullet moving forward. (The same is true of many other higher power pistols, like the C96 Mauser, the Luger, the Beretta 92, etc.)

If the barrel is blocked in such a way that the bullet cannot move, and the gun is fired, the gun will not recoil and the barrel and slide will not unlock. The pressure in the fired round will dissipate slowly and no, the gun will not blow up.

Jim
 
i think i got somewhere...

9mm para 124 grains bullet @ 1140 ft/s = 2.79 kg m/s impulse momentum.

loaded with black powder it's around 760 ft/s = 1.86 kg m/s impulse momentum.

a straight blowback 9mm, lets take a hi point c9 for example has a slide weight of 0.522 kg. combined with the impulse momentum of the 9mm para 2.79 kg m/s that gives a velocity of 5.4 m/s.

the slide weight of a 1911 i found to be 0.368 kg. with the impulse momentum of the 9mm para with black powder, 1.86 kg m/s it gets a velocity of 5.05 m/s

because that 5.05 m/s is lower than the 5.4 on the hi point the slide speed shouldnt be a problem.

so basically if you put a fixed barrel without locking lugs on the barrel in a 1911 and shoot 9mm black powder loads the slide doesnt move at crazy speeds.
 
i know storage of black powder was limited to something like 1 kilo, for licensed people in my country. it think the maximum storage for smokeless powder here was something like 3 kilos.

the danger with black powder is it explodes, even when it is not contained in something like a cartridge shell. smokeless powder just burns at a slow rate.

this also makes a difference when loading. smokeless powder doesnt have to fill the whole cartridge, air gaps is no problem.
with black powder however air gaps is a recipe for disaster. thats why people use filler materials in black powder cartridges to fill up the air gap in the cartridge if it isnt loaded to the top with black powder.

and ofcourse smokeless powder even in small amounts will most likely blow up any "black powder only" gun because of the higher and faster rising pressures.

with black powder thats nearly impossible as some have shown. there's a clip on youtube where they fill the entire barrel of a muzzleloader with black powder and a couple of roundballs. massive recoil, crazy smoke and flames, but barrel survived without problems.

p.s. there's also a clip on youtube that shows what happens when you shoot next to an open black powder container, the shooter basically gets covered by a big fireball...not good. thats one of the reasons why they always say to reload blackpowder from a small container instead of from the 500 gram bottle.
 
I've heard... that movie guns - real guns converted to function with blanks - have their barrel locking lugs removed.

From a WWII re-enactor site on converting a 1911 to fire blanks:

"Simply the barrel needs to be re-profiled and the muzzle tapped for a set screw. The locking lugs are ground off, the locking link is removed, a the underside of the chamber infront of the locking link is ground as well. The muzzle is tapped for a set screw, with a small hole drilled into the screw, the size of the small hole determined by what will best cycle the weapon. Finally the recoil spring may need to be changed out for a weaker spring."
http://s12.zetaboards.com/The_Trench_Line/topic/128893/1/
 
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