THE MECHANISM OF THE AUTOMATIC PISTOL
What the maker of the automatic pistol has to do is to restrain the sudden
smashing blow of the explosion on his mechanism and have it operate
gently. (See Plates 13 and 14.)
The safety of the shooter depends greatly on _the breech of the pistol not
being opened till after the force of the explosion is spent_.
If the breech is opened before the force of the explosion is spent, it
will drive the cartridge out like a bullet, and the pistol will in fact be
shooting from both ends at the same time.
Now will be seen why a very light-charge rifle or pistol is easier to be
made a practical automatic firearm.
With a very light charge, the explosive force is so light that, as long as
it does not instantly blow the breech open (but retards it ever so
slightly), there is no harm done.
Rifles and pistols have long been made to shoot light charges that do not
need the breech securely locked during the discharge, and are perfectly
safe to use.
The original automatic pistol operated as follows:
The discharge drives the mechanism back against a spring at the same time
that it blows open the breech, which the recoil spring then closes,
inserting a fresh cartridge. The spent cartridge is blown with some force
sideways out of a slot at the side of the mechanism, so that it may not
hit the shooter in the face.
In some makes of pistol, the cartridge is not blown out but merely dropped
out.
With a suitable charge the breech-closing mechanism can be made heavy
enough for its inertia to keep the breech closed sufficiently long after
the discharge.
When it comes to such heavy charges that it is necessary to keep the
breech closed till the force of the explosion is spent, the difficulty of
making a safe automatic firearm begins.
With a military full-charge rifle this has hardly yet been arrived at,
hence the delay in its being used for military purposes, but it seems as
if the problem is on the point of being solved.
For the comparatively weak recoil of a pistol, this does not apply. There
are several perfectly safe pistols in use, and there is no danger in using
any of the well-known makes.
Some makes of automatic firearms, instead of using the recoil for
operating the mechanism, have a small tube alongside the barrel, which
communicates by a minute hole with the bore of the barrel near its
muzzle.
The breech does not open till the bullet is just passing out of the
barrel, past the hole into the tube, and therefore the expansion of the
gas of the explosion loses its force.
A small fraction of this gas rushes through the hole into the tube and
operates the mechanism.
This has been the principle I have always worked on in trying to solve the
problem of an automatic firearm.
One system uses the recoil, tempered by a buffer, to modify its force.
The other consists in diverting enough gas from the big explosion to
operate the mechanism gently.
It is conceivable that by this latter system it would be possible to
convert the explosion of a siege cannon into a force just strong enough to
break an egg, and that by two such divisions of the explosion, one would
open the breech and the other close it, without the necessity of any
anti-recoil mechanism at all on the principle of the slide valve of a
locomotive steam engine. (My grandfather, Ross Winans, invented the
locomotive slide valve, not Stevenson.)
I think I am right in saying that this system has not yet been applied to
automatic pistols, and that they all operate on the recoil, driven back by
a compressed spring.
A fault in every automatic pistol I have yet seen, is the difficulty of
first loading it.
The cartridges are carried in a clip, which is inserted in the butt of the
pistol and drops out on pressing a button. Most automatic pistols
indicate when this magazine is empty and the pistol unloaded.
This is very good, but what I complain of is that, after the magazine is
full, you have to bring the first cartridge into the barrel by hand, after
the first shot the cartridges are fed into the barrel and the empty ones
ejected, automatically.
When getting the first cartridge ready to fire in a revolver you
accomplish it in cocking the pistol, and with a magazine rifle by working
a bolt or lever.
But with an automatic pistol, if the hands are wet, cold, greasy, or weak
(as a soldier with blood on his hands and weak from a wound), it is
impossible to get the first cartridge into the barrel, or get the pistol
ready to shoot.
The operation in automatic pistols begins by taking the pistol _in both
hands_. (Compare with cocking the revolver with one hand.)
Then you hold the stock firmly with one hand, and grip the slippery barrel
of the pistol with the other hand, and use considerable force to draw the
barrel back against the strong compression spring.
Your only assistance to get a grip is a slight corrugation on the barrel,
only wide enough for your thumb and forefinger to hold.
Imagine trying to pull hard with only your forefinger and thumb gripping a
smooth and possibly slippery surface, with a cold, wet, or greasy hand.
Let any one grease the automatic pistol and his hand and see if he can
perform this operation. Sandow, no doubt, could do it, but not the average
man.
The magazine rifle is purposely made with a bolt like a door bolt, so that
it can be operated easily under all conditions, but the automatic pistol,
evidently to give it a neat external appearance, has no projection to take
hold of to drive back the slide, which, besides, takes more strength than
is required to operate the bolt of a magazine rifle.
The remedy is simple: have two small projections, one on each side of the
corrugated grip on the barrel, so that the shooter can get two fingers one
over each side of this grip and, holding the stock in one hand, draw back
the slide with his other hand, with a perfect grip under all conditions,
like bending a crossbow.
As to the shape and angle of the stock, inventors and shooters are at
constant war.
The inventor is thinking of his mechanism; he makes his stock at the best
angle, shape, and size to suit what he puts inside it. It is much easier
to construct apparatus to feed cartridges into the barrel at right angles
than at an acute angle.
Therefore, the inventor generally gives the shooter a stock unsuitable to
do good shooting with.
The inventor should work in combination with the shooter. The shape of the
pistol externally should first be decided on by the shooter, so as to be
the best possible for shooting. In my opinion this should be the shape of
the French duelling pistol of the Gastinne-Renette pattern. (Plates 2 and
9.)
The inventor should try to design his pistol to fit, as far as possible,
into this external shape.
Some points, as the distance of the trigger from the finger, and the slope
and form of the butt, cannot be departed from without injury to accurate
shooting and quick handling of the pistol, and yet these are the very
things inventors alter.
Other points the shooter may give way in, if such modifications are of
vital importance from the inventor’s point of view.
The reverse procedure is, however, the rule. An inventor generally has no
knowledge of shooting, or horses, or whatever else his invention applies
to; he is merely a clever mechanic. He has “imagination” and theories.
Generally, such theories are most grotesque and childish.
I will instance an invention relating to horse-shoes.
The inventor showed me a sort of bird-cage of iron and said it was a
horse-shoe.
He informed me that shoeing horses as at present practised is wrong. “It
is brutal to nail shoes onto horses’ feet. How would you like to have an
iron shoe nailed on the sole of your bare foot?”
I tried to explain to him that the outer horn of a horse’s foot has no
feeling, that a horse is hurt only when the farrier is clumsy and drives a
nail into the sensitive inner tissues of the foot, but he was too far
absorbed in his theories to listen to me.
He then went on to show me that his shoe needs no nailing on, that it has
clamps, fastened by thumbscrews which clasp the horse’s foot and grip it
by claws “just below where the hair grows,” to use his expression.
I explained to him that this (the coronet) is the most sensitive part of
the horse’s foot, to press there would give him great pain and cause him
to go lame, and finally his foot would die and drop off.
Also, that these clamps and thumbscrews would strike the horse on the
opposite fetlock and throw it down, and the centrifugal force would cause
the shoes to fly off when the horse was going.
Finally, that these shoes were hideously ugly and no horseman would care
to be the laughing stock of everyone by taking his horse out with such
things on.
The inventor merely said: “All you horsemen are the same. You merely
follow each other without any imagination,” and he went out, to get the
same reply from every horseman he met.
He was firmly convinced that people who have to do with horses all their
lives are fools and never think of what is best for the horse, but it
rests with men like himself who have “imagination” to show us horsemen how
to shoe and handle horses.