Re: [HOE] Desert Eagle = ultimate wasteland gun

[Darrin Bright <darrin@neobright.net>]

Risik@aol.com wrote:
> 
> Here'a a question for the resident junker's:
> 
>    How would you build a gun that could fire any form of light ammunition?
>    By light I mean up to .50cal

How would a junker do it? The Junk Gun kind of already does that.
Otherwise he'd probably just take a pipe/tube and bind a gun spirit to
it with the instruction "anything that goes through here, make sure it
goes straight".

A more technically-minded gunsmith might design something akin to a rail
gun. The reason why a barrel has to match the caliber of the bullet has
to do with how the gasses expand behind the bullet. The bullet has to be
a tight fit, otherwise the gasses can escape around it and you don't get
decent acceleration. And the barrel has to be long enough to burn the
powder behind the bullet, otherwise when the bullet leaves the barrel
the unburnt powder no longer contributes to its acceleration (and you
get a lot of muzzle flash).

So, if you want a weapon that can take different sizes of ammunition,
you need a barrel that can adjust its size (and still be strong enough
to contain the expansion of hot gasses if you're using gunpowder) or you
need a different kind of acceleration system altogether. A rail gun
would create a "magnetic barrel" that could be adjusted for different
sizes of slugs. Also, you're using the magnets to propel the slug rather
than expanding hot gasses. But you're going to need a lot of power and
probably a pretty long barrel to get any decent velocity... it's
probably *not* going to be a handheld unit.