[quote=“DeWolf, post:5, topic:12382”][quote=“ApatheticExcuse, post:3, topic:12382”]I’d be surprised. Rifling is hard without the right equipment. Given that we can’t even work on a car without a hoist anymore, it’s unlikely we’d have access to the required tools, such as a steam hammer and mandrill or a buttoning machine.
Honestly, with the whole “make everything realistic to the point you have to do laundry” (which, btw came apparently directly out of the “terrible suggestions” threat) shit that’s going on, I’m surprised you can even make homemade guns still.[/quote]
What about the gunsmith kit? I can understand why the firearm repair kit probably wouldn’t be suitable to make guns considering what its made of but what about the gunsmith kit considering you can’t make it so I think it may have specific tools that the regular kit doesn’t come with considering its bigger.[/quote]
I think you underestimate how much “bigger” that kit would need to be. I see the repair kit as being a cleaning kit, and the gunsmith kit having some screwdrivers and stuff. Neither of which would be overly helpful in terms of what we’re talking about.
A hammer forging machine weighs more than a few tons and requires a powerplant of some kind. Here’s a picture of a fairly modern one:
A buttoning or cutting machine such as the one we use takes up an area of 134"x 55"x 100". I don’t know what it weighs but can tell you it’s heavy. Here’s a picture of the one we use:
Now, if you don’t mind spending FOREVER rifling your tube, you could build a rifling machine, assuming you have a lathe. Not a little lathe, either. Here’s what a homemade rifling machine looks like, this one being kinda fancy and using some sort of (likely very imprecise) motor rather than man power:
I don’t see any of these things fitting well into cargo pants and a backpack, personally. This stuff is JUST for putting in the rifling - it isn’t counting all the other things you need to make a proper gun, such as a lathe, some kind of heat treating equipment, reamers for chambering, gauges, etc. I’m not saying you need all that stuff to make a FUNCTIONING gun, but a safe, reliable, and accurate one, yes.
Not tracked, for sure. But, and we’ll get a little “technical” here, adding a rifled “extension” to a barrel is pretty hard to do.
The big problem is getting the rifling to line up properly with the old rifling. I’ve never personally seen it done well, and it’s much easier to just put a new barrel on IRL. That said, it can be done.
Two ways I know of doing it:
If your barrel has a large enough contour, you can thread the outside of the existing tube, and the inside of your extension. Now, the trick is, as I say, to get your rifling to line up. Provided you have the skill to do this from reading Guns and Ammo or whatever, you still run into three problems, the only two of which I’ll mention for the moment being that any deviance in internal bore diameter will cause a pressure spike right where the separation was. This is also the weakest point in the barrel. The other problem is that any seam, and there will be a seam, will catch the bullet, which will foul your barrel into unusability over time if not religiously maintained, and will both have a negative effect on accuracy as well as increasing pressure there yet again. I’ve seen this kind of shit work ok with very low pressure cartridges, and I’ve seen it blow up in someone’s face with higher pressure cartridges. Count it as a bad idea.
The OTHER way to do it, which is a little more hypothetical as I’ve never seen it done, would be to use your apparently pocket portable steam hammer to more or less reforge the barrel. Though this would beg the question as to why you didn’t just use an existing barrel or make a whole new one, what with the uneven stresses affecting your harmonics and having a negative effect on accuracy anyway. Count it as a redundant, poorly thought out bad idea.
Now, let’s assume that in the future of Cata, duct taping an extension on is actually a logical, feasible thing, as it would appear to be in game. The third problem with the concept is that longer barrels do not equal better accuracy. In fact, it’s exactly the opposite - shorter, stiffer barrels will ALWAYS shoot better than longer ones, provided we’re talking long arms.
It seems a little counter intuitive, but it makes sense when you think about it - the longer the barrel, the less stiff, and the more it will move or “whip” around when you fire. The only advantage of a longer barrel is to increase velocity, and even then, it’s a pointless endeavor on most guns as they will already come with fairly optimal tube lengths - you do hit a point of diminishing returns fairly quickly.
So, to the original point - since the current direction of the game seems to delve into tedious reality for the sake of… well, tedious reality as far as I can tell, we shouldn’t be able to do any of this stuff.
Or, we should at least require a lathe and press to do so. Name one gun mod in game, and I’ll happily tell you how it requires a lathe.
