I’m oberdorf gemacht
That was completely fascinating.
Interesting, definitely worth a watch.
Hammer forged for the win along with an original boresnake sighting.
OP video, just going to embed.
They don’t make them like that anymore, unless you go to Pakistan, Iran, or Turkey.
H
Holy crap that is awesome. They should have just kept developing that thing.
Amazing, how did we not find this earlier!
Answers some questions (hammer forging process, etc).
All also was interesting to see the flyer on the target. I’m wondering if they just loaded five rounds and that was on the last round.
I love these old films. The AR-10 and now this.
FAL was good but the HK G3 was pretty high speed for its era.
To be fair, they did develop it well into the 1980s with the HK G41. But by then money and so forth kind of killed it.
It was an HK 33 style rifle that took AR mags.
The cold war was an interesting era for small arms
The G11 and end of the Cold War is what almost killed HK. All that R&D for a weapon that might never have been completely worked out so the contracts never came. Then Germany unified and the west absorbed the cost of restoration for the east.
I’m curious, what did you find interesting about the flyer?
Trying to figure out what factors influence mechanical firearm accuracy has been a pet project of mine for the last year or so.
Here’s another video that displays parts of the cold hammer forging process: https://youtu.be/bNjCtpeMYHk?t=1016
More info on cold hammer forging: http://projects.nfstc.org/firearms/module04/fir_m04_t06_07.htm
Note the first paragraph on this page regarding “what makes a barrel accurate”
Comments from the last link match comments from other sources I’m finding.
Here’s a post from Definitive Arms on Facebook on CHF AK barrels that’s since been removed:
“Russian CHF barrels can be a bit of a gamble when it comes to accuracy.
Some are better than others, and this becomes apparent when dialing them in on a lathe for fine machining. In particular the concentricity between the lands and grooves inside the barrel. Not all barrels are consistent. They can be out of round and not capable of achieving <.001” run out, or better, between the grooves.
In this particular case, Robs action (born of a 5.45 Saiga) was hand picked from our own stock for one of the better barrels. Dialed in to damn near perfect zero, with the width of the lands seemingly consistent as well."
Considering that Steyr does make a sniper rifle that features a CHF barrel, this leads me to understand that cold hammer forging can either produce very precise barrels or poor shooting barrels, depending on some factor or factors.
It appears that an important factor is whether or not all the grooves are pressed into the barrel to uniform depths. I can see how not having uniform groove depths could result in a situation where the bullet’s center of rotation (from the rifling) and the bullet’s center of mass don’t line up. An exaggerated visual representation of the bullet traveling down such a bore would be an aircraft performing a barrel roll. The bullet fully stabilizes shortly after leaving the barrel, but no two bullets are going to stabilize exactly the same, so the greater the bullets’ initial angle of attack, the greater the likelihood that any group of bullets are going to stabilize on more widely varying trajectories from one another.
Just that it was a very good group, then a noticeable flyer on the last shot they showed. Something was different, my read.
I know for sure that CHF can be accurate, don’t need convincing… and the mfg care when doing so can make a big difference. (correct/smooth initial drilling, etc)
Yeah, that video is a good example of why, if you really want to know your rifle’s group size with a particular ammo, you need a larger sampling size than just 3 or 5 shots. If only that one 5-shot group were fired, it’s entirely probable that the “group” he saw that one time might have all clustered in that tiny group. Subsequent groups would have revealed those “flyers” and would have indicated the “flyers” were actually just the real group size. Too many folks testing out a rifle’s accuracy assume that every “flyer” is shooter error and that the small cluster as seen in the video is the real grouping.
I’m not trying to convince about anything, I’ve just been studying barrels and how they affect accuracy the past year or so and am anxious to share what I’ve found. I found cold hammer forging fascinating as it has the potential to allow rapid production of some very high quality barrels, but can also produce crap if the operators don’t stay on top of wear and tolerances.
Seeing that cool old video just brought it all to mind and I thought I’d give you guys a look since you tend not to find that kind of info unless you go digging for it.
Did anyone else’s heart skip a beat when Hans threw that G3 on the shop floor? The 60’s swank music reminded me of Batman & Robin. What I would give to have one of those crates they were loading up there at the end.
The Germans also manufactured a 4x24 compact stanag scope for the G3 by the hundreds of thousands. It was built by Hensoldt, Schmidt & Bender & Karl Kapps.
They are mounted on the HK QD mount and feature a modified #1 ranging reticle.
Upon completion they were sighted in while mounted in a shooting test device that was coupled to a optical camera that displayed hits on a screen before the
technician, then packed away in a handy green heavy plastic case with lens filters ect. to await the Russians breaching the Fulda Gap.
That day never came and eventually these beauties were sold by the German Government to many companies in the United States.
I purchased mine from Deutsche Optic many years ago in new unissued condition for a few hundred dollars, my best friend did likewise and as a test we switched
scopes from my rifle to his, and his rifle to mine and they grouped the same .
The Germans really are masters of weapon and optics production, too bad they don’t make the 91/93 series of rifles anymore, I will never sell mine.
Waaay cool video, thank you nostalgia!