barrel with offset bore ???

RX-79G said:
Theohazard said:
As for suppressing a revolver, it might make a little bit of a difference in the overall sound, but probably not much; too much gas escapes from the cylinder/barrel gap. In addition, traditional silencer designs produce back-pressure, so I would think it might actually sound louder to the shooter because of the back-pressure pushing more gas back through the cylinder/barrel gap.
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This is you saying it is going to be louder than unsuppressed.
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No. That's not what I said at all. This also shows your lack of silencer experience. Notice I said that it might sound louder to the shooter. Silencers are measured in several different ways. For example, both the AAC M4-2000 and its little brother, the Mini-4, are almost exactly the same volume when tested at the shooter's ear. But the Mini-4 is much louder when measured at the muzzle.

So if you re-read that quote, you can see I acknowledged that it would make some difference in the overall sound, but I guessed that the extra back-pressure through the cylinder gap might actually make it seem louder to the shooter. And notice that I in no way presented this as fact, it's simply an educated guess.
 
RX-79G said:
My references are Robhof's post about the CIA revolvers
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A revolver that was modified to deal with the cylinder gap! But I'm talking about unmodified silenced revolvers!

RX-79G said:
and the math I provided on cylinder gap efficiency.
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...Combined with a complete lack of understanding on the difference between the gasses escaping the cylinder gap and the gasses escaping the end of the silencers after it has passed through the baffles.
 
Theo,

That was a reasonable post. But there is a big difference between "it will suck" and "it won't work".

Clearly, there is a pecking order in the suppression world, starting with .22s and ending with .454 revolvers. I just want to know where the .38 revolvers of the CIA and television fall out.

I've fired or been around lots of suppressors, and all of the 9mm and larger centerfires were so much louder than the .22s that saying a .38 would be pointless makes me wonder how much point there is to any of the hot cartridges. Muffling a .38 revolver the same crummy amount as a .45 doesn't seem like an impossibility considering how the cylinder gap doesn't make a regular .38 any louder than any of these guns.

Making it sound like I'm uneducated when I know exactly as little as all of you about suppressing revolvers is just bad manners, though.
 
RX-79G said:
That was a reasonable post. But there is a big difference between "it will suck" and "it won't work".
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You're right. I've never heard anyone in the suppressor world say it won't make any difference at all, but the consensus is that it sucks enough that it's not worth it. So, for all intents and purposes, it doesn't really work.

RX-79G said:
Making it sound like I'm uneducated when I know exactly as little as all of you about suppressing revolvers is just bad manners, though.
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Maybe it is. If you feel like I've personally insulted you than I apologize. But you've basically told us all that we're wrong without any good evidence to actually show why we're wrong.
 
...Combined with a complete lack of understanding on the difference between the gasses escaping the cylinder gap and the gasses escaping the end of the silencers after it has passed through the baffles.
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What, exactly, is it I don't understand?

Hotter gas? Yes. Less gas? Yes. Total amount due to cylinder gap - I calculated it and provided you with it.

If you're going to put me down, you had better start coughing up some facts and figures that demonstrate the stuff you think you understand that I do not. Otherwise, it is just posturing.
 
RX-79G said:
Theohazard said:
...Combined with a complete lack of understanding on the difference between the gasses escaping the cylinder gap and the gasses escaping the end of the silencers after it has passed through the baffles.
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What, exactly, is it I don't understand?

Hotter gas? Yes. Less gas? Yes. Total amount due to cylinder gap - I calculated it and provided you with it.
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The gas coming out of the end of the suppressor is much cooler, slower, and under less pressure. That's how a silencer works. As far as the difference in overall volume, I just don't know. What I do know is that a silencer produces considerable back-pressure, so there will definitely be more gas escaping the gap with a silencer than without. How much? I really don't know.
 
But you've basically told us all that we're wrong without any good evidence to actually show why we're wrong.
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Actually, I have not.

I said that this is commonly stated, but no one ever offers any data to support the assertion. And you haven't. You've speculated about things that are circumstantial, all while saying that I have to disprove your unsubstantiated claim.

This is the equivalent of you claiming your pants are haunted, then getting peeved when someone says "Can you prove that?" You guys made the assertion, I asked how you knew.

Not only did I get no data, I was insulted for asking. But I guess no one here is submitting their ideas to a science journal, so why not just yell down anyone that disagrees?
 
You said that our claim of an un-modified silenced revolver being much louder than a silenced semi-auto was unfounded. You also said that an un-modified silenced .38 was probably as loud as a silenced .45 ACP semi-auto.

I've offered no direct evidence; you're right. But I think my arguments are sound, and I've made all the arguments I can think of to support my assertion. Until I can actually try it myself, that's all I can offer.

I disagree with your analogy of the haunted pants. If you go back and re-read my posts, I've made some very good arguments. If that's not enough for you, then that's fine. But until you can come up with some better arguments of your own, we're probably not going to take you seriously.

That's all for now. I've got to go back to the real world. If I've offended or insulted you, I apologize. I think my arguments are sound and I'm satisfied with the evidence I have that silenced revolvers suck. But I can't actually quantify how much they suck until I try it myself.
 
You said that our claim of an un-modified silenced revolver being much louder than a silenced semi-auto was unfounded
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No, I disagreed when you said:
As for suppressing a revolver, it might make a little bit of a difference in the overall sound, but probably not much
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No mention of autos, just a blanket statement that the net effect would be meaningless.

That is what I asked for you to prove, and I apparently made the mistake of offering some counter examples.

But I should have simply asked you to defend your statement that a silencer on a revolver would do "a little bit... not much".
 
Pretty easy to try and you don't need to get ATF OK or pay a tax.

Just get a good size box and line it with sound absorbing material. Poke a hole just big enough for the revolver barrel. Stick the barrel in the box and fire (with a safe backstop, of course). With the muzzle noise muffled, see how much noise comes out at the b-c gap. Do the same for a semi-auto. If you have a Dan Wesson, you can try adjusting the b-c gap.

Jim
 
RX-79G said:
I apparently made the mistake of offering some counter examples.
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So far the only examples of silenced revolvers any of us have offered have been modified in some way to cover the cylinder gap; you've offered no examples of silenced conventional revolvers and all I have is second-hand anecdotal evidence of them combined with my personal experience with silencers in general. So neither of us have any concrete examples.

James K said:
Just get a good size box and line it with sound absorbing material. Poke a hole just big enough for the revolver barrel. Stick the barrel in the box and fire (with a safe backstop, of course). With the muzzle noise muffled, see how much noise comes out at the b-c gap. Do the same for a semi-auto.
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While that's a pretty good idea and it would be a good thing to try, it completely leaves out a potentially important variable: back-pressure.

The back-pressure coming out of the chamber on a locked-breech semi-auto usually doesn't add much to the noise because the bullet has been out of the barrel for a relatively long time when the breech unlocks, but sometimes if the recoil spring is too light it can be noticeably louder. And straight-blowback semi-autos are often louder because there's more gas coming out of the chamber due the silencer's back-pressure.

The gas coming out of the cylinder gap due to back-pressure on a normal silenced revolver won't be as hot or as high-pressure as the gas that initially comes out of the gap, but I'm pretty sure it will be noticeably louder than the back-pressure gas coming out of the chamber on a semi-auto. But until I actually thread a revolver and shoot it with my Octane 9, I'll never know exactly how much difference the back-pressure makes in the overall sound.
 
How about sticking the muzzle in water, then? That's got to be a fair bit of back pressure.

And my "counter examples" were functional examples; the amount of pressure that comes out of gap and the amount that comes out of different bore sizes, not examples of the exact kind of silenced revolver pictured in this thread.
 
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RX-79G said:
And my "counter examples" were functional examples; the amount of pressure that comes out of gap and the amount that comes out of different bore sizes, not examples of the exact kind of silenced revolver pictured in this thread.
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Fair enough, but none of your examples took into account the extra gas coming out of the gap due to the back-pressure of a silencer. And they also didn't address the fact that the gas coming out of the bore of a silencer is slowed, cooled, and has its pressure lowered. So the gas coming out of the bore of a silencer is in a very different state than the gas coming out of the cylinder gap, even if it has a higher volume.

RX-79G said:
How about sticking the muzzle in water, then? That's got to be a fair bit of back pressure.
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That's another good idea, but I honestly have no idea how the back-pressure produced by water would compare to a silencer's back-pressure.

Basically what you've done here is completely re-kindle my plans to silence revolver. So now I need a host. Anyone know of a cheap .38 or .357 with a 3" - 4" barrel that's easily removable and has a round profile that can easily be threaded?
 
Also, I highly doubt sticking the muzzle in water would come anywhere near the suppression offered by a good silencer. So it would be pretty hard to tell how much difference the cylinder gap made because the overall volume probably wouldn't be suppressed much.

I've shot my Glock 19/Octane 9 combo in a closed concrete-walled garage before (I had a very good backstop and I was out in the country where it was legal) and it was still quieter than a .22 rifle fired outdoors. I can't imagine that sticking the barrel in water would offer anywhere near that amount of suppression.
 
Take the front sight off a 6" Blackhawk and mount a turned extension over the round barrel. You can remove it when you're done.
 
I have zero experience mounting a suppressor that way. It's going to have to be very tight and straight or I'd worry about baffle strikes. I'm no gunsmith, but it's probably much easier to make it straight by just threading the barrel. Even though I'd have to buy a new barrel, it's still cheaper than paying Silencerco to re-build my Octane after a baffle strike.
 
RX-79G said:
Yeah, I guess there is no possible way to verify that it is on straight without firing it.
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I'm not sure why you feel the need for sarcasm, I thought we had managed to turn this back into a civil discussion.

It's pretty easy to tell if it's on straight, but my point is that an extension that's tight enough to not wobble and cause baffle strikes would be a lot more work to make than just threading the barrel.
 
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sounds like the easiest would be to pick up or borrow if you can find one local, a Dan Wesson in 357 Magnum, & machine a small adapter that would act as the barrel nut on one end, but would have the 1/2" thread ( or what ever ) needed to thread a silencer on it...

some of you guys are lucky... in Minnesota, they are not legal, so we don't get to play with things like that, up here... ( I'd love to have a couple for informal range use... but I don't ever see them changing that law ??? )
 
Pardon me, Theo. It's just that every time I've suggested anything on this thread, your immediate or eventual reaction is that I must be wrong.

The adapter I was suggesting is just like the comps made for Ruger MKII barrels, which also need to be very concentric to not have a strike. Lathe turned by a gunsmith, there is no reason that it wouldn't be tight and concentric, as well as faster and cheaper to execute.

And really, I have a hard time seeing how a silencer, which is a huge expansion chamber, could possibly create more back pressure than in a revolver with an extra long barrel. In other words, an 8 inch revolver likely produces more back pressure than a 3 inch revolver with a suppressor because the pressure remains closer to peak for the first 8 inches of bullet travel, while it drops considerably in the suppressor. Suppressors create some back pressure, but not more than a sealed bore - just more than an open muzzle.
 
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