Post-Apocalypse Firearms

[Steve]

I’m currently working on crafting a post-apocalypse setting where it has been several hundred years since the end of civilization.

 

Because of this, it seems to me that most modern firearms would stop working after all that time due to broken parts except for revolvers, which seem to have the most robust and simplest construction. Such weapons could be family heirlooms, I suppose.

 

Ammunition also seems to have a limited shelf life, admittedly one that could be measured in years or decades. However, after several hundred years, all ammunition would then likely be more like home-made reloads.

 

Does this sound like a reasonable way to look at it? Are there other considerations I should think about?

[C-Note]

Depending on your technological level, firearms manufacture would probably revert to single-shot black powder weapons.  Flintlocks, matchlocks, wheellocks, etc.  A functional repeating firearm using smokeless powder cartridges would be a rare find, indeed.

[Beast]

1 hour ago, C-Note said:

Depending on your technological level, firearms manufacture would probably revert to single-shot black powder weapons.  Flintlocks, matchlocks, wheellocks, etc.  A functional repeating firearm using smokeless powder cartridges would be a rare find, indeed.

why the formula for smokeless powder is probably just as likely to survive as black powder
lots of stuff won't need to be reinvented just looked up in surviving texts(books)
and that there probably will be some working models if you can make a wheellock doing a revolver is not far off
paper cartridges and mini-ball are more history lessons than anything else

[Sundog]

The formula for nitrous-based powders would survive, but the chemical processes to do it are significantly more complex than making even good quality black powder. That could easily make it expensive and hard to get.

If you have the metallurgy to make even single-action revolvers, you can also make lever and bolt-action single shot guns, and it's only a little further (spring steel) to making magazine-fed versions of those. Fulminate of Mercury for primers is tricky but not complex. So thinking Old West levels of weapons tech should work.

[g3taso]

To expand on C-Note a bit

 

1. There won't be handloads. What factory is making cartridges? And people reusing the same cartridge for centuries doesn't work. You will have bullet molds to cast your ball of lead.

2. Black powder is king. Made from charcoal, sulphur and saltpeter (often from  bird droppings).

 

Matchlocks, flintlocks and black powder. Think Pirates of the Caribbean technology (the pirates, since the British had better arms).

 

[Steve]

I'm okay if the tech level reverts to something more like Old West level. I'm not sure how they made shell casings back then, but steam-level technology would seem workable to keep the manufacturing of such things going.

 

It would make bullets a valuable commodity, and a town able to make shell casings would probably be rich.

 

How many times can you reload a shell casing before it is too worn to do so anymore? I'm guessing three times might be the limit.

[Sundog]

A cousin of mine reloads his own brass. He prefers not to reload the same case more than twice, but if you were using black powder, pressures are considerably less - though simultaneously, you have to deal with more corrosion. I think your guess would be close.

[Steve]

6 hours ago, Sundog said:

A cousin of mine reloads his own brass. He prefers not to reload the same case more than twice, but if you were using black powder, pressures are considerably less - though simultaneously, you have to deal with more corrosion. I think your guess would be close.

That’s what I was able to find out online. Two or three reloads seems to be the practical limit.

 

I wonder if reloading a shell casing causes any increase in misfire chances? I’ll have to check through Dark Champions to see if there is anything on this issue there.

[Zeropoint]

With straight-walled cases like most pistol ammunition, the most likely mode of case failure is splitting lengthwise. This can lead to difficult extraction but in a revolver is unlikely to cause much other trouble. Having a case split in a semi-automatic could cause a jam, if it won't extract properly.

 

Bottleneck cartridges have it worse, because they can fail by having the front of the cartridge break off and stay in the chamber, and that will put the gun out of operation until you get it out. If you're really unlucky, the next round will get firmly stuck.

[Steve]

According to Dark Champions, a character with Weaponsmith (Firearms) can reload twenty empty standard shell casings an hour on a successful roll (per the chart on page 83). I couldn't find any mention of increased failure chances for reloaded casings.

 

I'd probably just let one reload go without any trouble and maybe add a misfire chance on the second and subsequent reloads of a shell casing.

[Beast]

you could go with a 5-10% rate of spent casings as unreuseable

[pinecone]

A lot of the wild west was single shot rifles and cap and ball revolvers. Thats the sort of tech anybody whose handy might be able to craft. There might be no factories though hand crafted for everything...?

[Sundog]

If you have the capacity to make percussion caps, you have the tech to draw brass and make cases. The only reason cap-and-ball stayed popular as long as it did was a combination of military conservatism and Smith and Wessons' patent on the drilled-through revolver cylinder, which made it difficult for other companies to make cased repeating handguns.

[Steve]

Since brass can be recycled, old shell cases could be melted down and remade into new ones. I could see brass being a valuable post-apocalypse commodity along with bullets.

[Zeropoint]

A quick look at a Google image search tells me that percussion caps have at most a 1.5:1 depth to diameter ratio, AND many of them have split or corrugated sides, both of which will make the drawing process easier. In contrast, cartridge cases start at about that ratio and move up to maybe 6:1, and they need to be made with smooth, continuous sides. I can imagine a culture having the tech to draw percussion cap bodies but not the skill to reliably draw proper cartridge cases. However, such a situation couldn't persist very long unless you had a very small population of inventors and/or remarkably slow diffusion of ideas.

12 hours ago, Steve said:

I could see brass being a valuable post-apocalypse commodity along with bullets.

Brass is commonly acknowledged among reloaders to be the most expensive component of a cartridge on a cost-to-purchase basis . . . but also the cheapest part on a cost-per-shot basis, because of how many times it can be reused. It's also the part that requires the largest industrial base to produce. Cartridge cases in good condition would indeed be highly valued until your society has returned to a post-industrial-revolution economy.