Chapter 18 - My Own
I have time. I wonder, how to even go up against a three man dirty drug task force cop team. Its not just her, its her whole three man team including her, that went and did it.
By the numbers. If they posted up a man in the car, a wheel man. I could figure out a way to get the drop on him and take him out. That would be one third down, out of the gate. Before they even knew anything was up. With only two floating in the house? I simply surprise and take the first one I see out. Bang. Just like that? Its not three on one, its one on one.
Could I even do that. I found that I thought I could. I wondered what the right weapon would be. Shotgun, but too big and noisy. Noise. What about a silencer. A real one. Caliber? Something useful, close up. Ballistics, though. Stray cases flying around.
I bought a small to medium size bench top metal lathe years back for hobby work. Its not the littlest one they make, either. Its fairly beefy for being the home version of the big thing.
I can catch cases, in a bent for the purpose aquarium fish net. You get big enough a net, opened up and bent close to and around the ejection port? You get 100% case retention. Which for someone like me that reloads, is a figure of merit.
I need a semi automatic, in a useful caliber. I need the original barrel? And an extended aftermarket barrel. Bought for cash, preferably somewhere else. Barrel only? Is not a registered item. Only the frame is. The barrel, once off the gun? Is just a gun part. No sales tracking or paperwork needed. The extended aftermarket barrel? I'm going to smooth bore it.
I've bored other short metal tubes. This will be longer. I need just the right drill bit, is what I need. Then? To open it up and finish it, polish it. A carbide bit. Size? Critical. A hair below final proposed diameter. I get caliber right, a bigger size cast projectile available the next size up. I could make something useful, maybe.
The lathe? Drilling and cutting the barrel. The whole silencer. Extended barrel? Threaded for the silencer.
All easier said than done.
For initial reasoning? I needed a useful, meaning deadly up close, handgun caliber. I also needed, access to useful projectiles, a size larger up. Big enough I had to drill past the lands and grooves, but some size where I wasn't drilling out the sides much more than the lands and grooves. These source and target bores? Were critical criteria.
38 special, 9mm, 380, 9mm Makarov. All are more or less the same caliber. You can even fire 9mm rounds in 38 special guns? Specially made to provide what are called half moon clips to hold the rimmed 9mm. The bore requirements of each? Are quite similar.
Problem is? There's not a close size larger up. Not without drilling out the sides of the barrel silly. 45 looked promising. Then? It hit me. 10mm. Actually a true .410 caliber. Honestly, made from a .40 as a parent case. Stretched for more powder, gun made to handle pressure and recoil.
I can get .42 round ball. Its an oddball, but I've cast lead things before, both gun projectiles and lead sinkers both. Round ball? Is easy to specify a mold in an odd diameter.
Tests with blueprints of 10mm cases opened up in my CAD program on my laptop. Showed that definitely two, and possibly three round balls would fit in a 10mm brass case.
One round ball in any modern case caliber? Is way too light. Two round balls, does better. Two round balls, can get you up into light for caliber weight. But because the 10mm is so long and lengthened, I might be able to just press a third one down in the thing.
That, would bring the weight up and swing it the other way. Up into heavy for caliber. Which, coincidentally, is where subsonic silenced ammunition starts. I want slow speed, slower than the speed of sound. Below 1,000 feet per second for a start and then a little more. The higher the weight? The more useful.
It was harder to drill out the barrel and polish it? Than it was to locate blueprints for an effective silencer, and to construct it on the lathe and with hand fitting. It took me a couple weeks to find something I thought the recommendation meant something.
There's actually no end to the sheer number of blueprints on list at the patent office, all for everyone trying to outdo one another for a silencer. And if you've ever tried doing a home made silencer at home? You have your work cut out for you, if you're just following word of mouth, what you heard.
Here's what doesn't work, if you're interested.
If I see one more Hollywood assassin, with a neat goatee or beard, sporting the infamous small caliber silenced revolver? The professional's choice, according to how many shows and movies the infamous silenced revolver shows up in.
It simply doesn't work, it can't work. There's enough of a gap at the cylinder, that there's no point to even trying to silence a revolver of any kind, regardless of caliber.
A rubber on the end of a gun, or a balloon? Nope. I tried the prophylactic on the end of a ten pump BB gun for the hell of it, and I swear it made it louder, if its possible.
An empty two liter? Isn't big enough to fit over anything. If you build up some tape carefully, and try an empty three liter? No.
In the end, there's only one way to silence a gun. The pressure has to be down below a certain point, when the bullet exits the barrel. And, the projectile needs to be going slower than the speed of sound, which is under 1000 feet per second. Also? You need to have ammunition made for the purpose.
The "I heard this works..." gun gossip grapevine, then has a list of updates you go back and try. Oh, the three liter works. You just need a little water in it, it deadens it. You need a two liter inside the three liter, and the two liter needs holes in it. You need to tape the rubber, it won't work if you don't tape it, the pressure leaks out where its slipped on. But, you'll also hear the rubber didn't work? Because you taped it, you were supposed to let the pressure escape, to keep it quiet.
So you circle back around, and then you try these other rules, again. To no more success than at first, which is of course none. Also, all silencers are not created equal. I went down the "I heard this..." route too many times, before I just started internet research.
Gun guys have a million silencer videos online. Some work amazingly well and some don't. There's a weird idea out there, that you buy the 30 caliber silencer for your AR rifle? Then it "sort of works" on your 223. Yes, you can get a 223 down to about a regular 22 noise, in this fashion. But, if you ever heard a 223 AR, with a 22 caliber silencer, with properly loaded 223 subsonic ammo? You'd never again think of the 30 caliber as "working" on another caliber.
Finally? I hit what I wanted. A technical discussion of the subject. All math, no shooting or construction videos. So? It was a nice, lonely website. Just me and my equations, and some time.
They started by explaining what's going on. You have a high pressure situation inside the gun barrel, with high pressure pushing something tight down a tube to shoot it out the other end. When that projectile breaks air? If its moving faster than the speed of sound, there will be a crack noise, and quite loud. That's the sonic boom or sonic crack. There's also a traditional roar or boom from the pressure coming out all of a sudden once the projectile is free.
The game plan is actually quite simple. First off, we have to be going under 1000 feet per second when we exit the barrel, there's no other way. Also, at that speed? Pressure needs to be below a certain threshold for noise. On top of that, the silencer itself needs to be constructed properly.
The website went over a standard 22 loaded commercially, and gave the volume of gas that was given off by the powder inside. A 22LR is an amazingly well understood cartridge. With a diameter and length of the barrel producing a volume geometrically? The math showed what your ears already know. There's still high pressure and a projectile over the speed of sound at the muzzle.
And here is how a silencer works. The website explained it. Take a 22 short, and fire it in a long barreled 22 rifle. A lot more quiet. Why? Less powder, smaller volume of gas. So, pressure is less when the projectile is exiting the muzzle. Velocity is lower, from the smaller amount of powder.
Now. Imagine drilling a hole in the middle of a 22 barrel. Nothing would happen ahead of the projectile, but after the projectile passes over the drilled hole? Pressure escapes out that hole, before the projectile exits the muzzle. Velocity is lowered, too. Now, simply imagine drilling more holes. As the projectile passes over the holes? Pressure is released out of all of them.
Simply contain those drilled holes to a confined space? That's all a silencer really is. Its doing exactly what a muffler on a lawn mower is doing. Its just operating on a different bore size, different pressure, different level and time of power impulse.
Once you run a few Boyle's Gas law equations? You see it. A standard 22, makes this volume of gas. Its more than can be contained in the barrel, and its coming out behind the projectile.
A well made 22 silencer, will have holes drilled into the barrel. These holes will lead to a barrel around the barrel, and allow the gases that come out the hole to expand down to low enough pressure. These need to be sealed, so it ends up like a series of little chambers around and down the barrel. Some designs each chamber is blind, some designs pressure can get to the next chamber ahead or behind to spread out.
You can look at professionally made silencers, and they will describe construction. Shape of chamber, number of chambers, a little cartoon drawing to illustrate. All professionally made silencers, claim to have their own groundbreaking addition to the basic design? And almost all so strongly resemble the patent blueprint of their original design they follow, that its obvious.
Reading only, no posting and talking... in more than one instance? This one mythical "flashlight silencer" build got mentioned more than once. Now, that one? I know about. A certain auto parts store, has Chinese flashlights branded with their logo. Pretty standard business swag.
Someone somewhere, once took it upon themselves to take a break from professional silencer making? They had their own class III shop and sold their own brand of silencers. And on a bet and a dare, decided to see which popular "easy silencer build, no machining" would actually work? And which would maim or kill you.
Apparently, everyone was laughing at this one build. The flashlight silencer build. You bought this overpriced Chinese flashlight, re-branded to the auto parts store logo. And while you were there? You bought freeze plugs for a V-8 Chevy motor, and a few other things.
Apparently, the basic plan was that the flashlight main aluminum tube would take the freeze plugs and use them like baffles. One part of the flashlight body, was the right standard threads that barrels and silencers mainly use.
I was able to garner more then enough from all the articles on the "flashlight build" that I basically set about making my own flashlight, so to speak. My dry run, was to make something functional for a 22 rifle, the easiest build for a DIY silencer.
Following the flashlight build as a guide, made it fairly straightforward. As a self taught machinist, I can only do certain things. Threads isn't one of those things I'm good at, so I simply purchase taps and dies to cut threads. Some of these taps and dies can be an odd size and big, guaranteeing that they are pricey.
I had to spend a couple of bucks on a tap, but it was the only expensive item. Before this? I used my metal lathe mainly for making flashlights and flashlight parts, and laser parts. Some parts of what I was making or working in? Had a critical size. This tube? Must fit very very snug into this tube, for instance. The rest? Was more or less not critical, and I was working to a finish or a look, more than to a specification.
For my flashlight silencer build, all dimensions were critical. That's why I took a "known good build" or what I imagined seemed like a good one, and used it. The less fabricating from scratch I had to do, the better chance of success I had.
Where you can run a spacer to the next baffle, or just stack more baffles? I went with more baffles. Build notes said that was heavier, but worked better. My dry run, was my initial 22 flashlight build inspired do it yourself try. I was initially scared to test fire it, so I tied it to a tree and set the trigger off with a string. It was so quiet and worked so well? I was ashamed of myself.
Because I had added as many baffles as possible, instead of adding baffles until noise was down to desired levels? I had mine working overtime. While it worked and extremely well? I had to admit it had a slight rickety quality to it. Something ticked when you shook it, and in more than one spot.
I built it a second time. Knowing I could make it turn out working so well, I could now concentrate on fitting each part tight. I traced it moving extra slow to the freeze plugs. Made sense, they weren't critical parts themselves. They were just plugs, shoved into a bore. If it went below freezing? They exploded protecting the block.
They were cheap metal cups, basically. I could make them, but it wasn't a good use of my time. They were too cheap, and so close to perfect. They were in fact working perfect, I just wanted less or no rattle. I wanted perfect or as near as I could get to it. Freeze plugs are cheap. I bought a box of them.
I ended up attacking just the freeze plugs and giving them all of my attention. A combustion engine like a car engine? Has a weakness, and its winter. Holes of precise size are drilled in the engine block, and these so called freeze plugs are tapped in tight. Should the water circulating the block freeze in a cold snap, they're weaker then the engine block. They blow and preserve the physical integrity of the block. You can just tap new freeze plugs in again.
With no other function, they simply have one control dimension. Diameter. If I had to guess? Its a cheap pressed and cut shape, then forced into a bore, if not more then one of them. They're a hair too big, and you beat the soft steel into your own bore, sealing it.
I slowly realized, that they did not take on their final and critical diameter dimension? Until they were put to use. Pressed into a bore, and pressed back out. Of just the right size of hole. This, would make them perfectly uniform in diameter. As long as this one perfect hole set up the flashlight tube just right, things would be tighter.
I concentrated on what I was using for a flashlight tube. It had a very regular inside diameter. I wanted a hole just that size, to pound the freeze plugs into. I ordered a block of steel, and paid a machinist to carefully bore the perfect sized hole. With money not being an object, a couple hundred extra dollars saw the hole drilled undersized. Then slowly approached to the critical dimension by reaming. Then, polished out to final tight specs.
Pounding them in was a workout, and pounding them out yet another. I made a thick metal frame I bolted together, so I could use a truck jack to force the freeze plugs through in an orderly fashion. When all lube had to be wiped off of the sized plugs to even think about tapping them down into the tube? I knew I was on the right track. Diameter? Was perfect.
Length was now off, and uneven on the loose end. The solid end of the cup shape was way more square.
I also own a milling machine. Like my metal lathe? Its one of the bigger "table top" machines to find in a home. I clamped down a thick piece of steel, and slowly lowered my surface cutter until I made first contact anywhere, going over the piece with a dial indicator an inch back from any hint of the work piece. Sensing and seeing the true height.
The high spot located, I slobbed some blue inky staining solution there in that spot. I came down in smaller and smaller increments, stopping to take measurements until I made gentle contact with the steel in the general middle of that spot. I firmed up contact, then turned on after a few squirts of cutting fluid.
Machining isn't really that hard, at least the basic operations are pretty straightforward. Its very important that I know how to locate the high spot on the steel flat I'm working on. Its now fairly routine to go to work. The mill is basically a giant drill press, and you move the precision table under the cutter to do your work.
At the contact point, turning the machine cutting speed up slowly gets the surface cutter scuffing this high spot. When I have the little high spot scuffed? The top of the squashed "mountain" has a pronounced plateau on it. I raise the table, which drives the surface cutter deeper into the work piece. After enough slow and careful passes? The flat plateau extends and grows and takes over the whole top of the piece.
I flip it over and repeat this whole procedure. Now perfectly flat for all practical purposes, I carefully drill and tap and bolt this square of flat steel onto the bottom of the special machined hole I ordered. I press with the truck jack, and voila. The freeze plugs bottom out, and under the high pressure take the perfect cylinder shape of their steel container.
I can now unbolt the plate, and the freeze plugs only have one flaw left. Uniform in diameter, the solid round end square and round... the loose or open end of their cup shape? Is to the eye, perfect. Measure from the bottom of the now highly regular bottom of the cup, to the rim? Its off going around the rim.
I pack them in tight, in a matrix. I pound them with a leather hammer to get them tight as well. Then I carefully find the high spot on the milling table. Then starting there? I move around and level off the work piece, which is the ends of metal cups. The actual height itself isn't as critical, as the regularity of it. These have to butt up against one another and seal up. I'll drill holes to direct the pressure around and break it up and redirect it.
When I was done, I test fired it first running bare. Just a hole in the silencer's "barrel" to each baffle. It worked really well, mainly on account of running in all possible baffles mode. Overworking. I started learning. I took all the baffles out, and fired both regular and subsonic 22 rounds through it. I added one baffle at a time. I put the limited number of baffles at the front or the back.
I could now make a much shorter 22 only version. So? I did. I drilled one hole in each baffle, except for the first and last, which I marked with a punch. One punch pip, front. Two punch pips? Back or muzzle end. I started lowering the number of one hole drilled baffles. I looked at the original design. It had a system of holes. I was just starting into my first hole in each baffle, and the original had a network. I was now seeing how efficient they were, what they did. Slowly.
You want to think of the space inside each baffle? As a sort of big barrel. At bore size, the pressure can't lower itself quickly enough. The hole into the baffle? Once the projectile passes it, the pressure goes in. As the baffles take the increased pressure behind the projectile down, pressure and noise go down. The projectile is still under its initial leaving the barrel velocity. It already has all the speed its going to get. Nothing is lost, as the pressure behind this projectile is lowered in steps, baffle to baffle before exiting this added bit of "barrel".
From the first hole in each baffle piece, less baffles were needed to be as effective. The added holes in the pattern of the original, continued the trend. Notes on the original patent? Essentially true random hole locations worked better. Each baffle gets to "help" its neighbor. The baffle ahead? Has two baffles behind it to load up. Then three. And so on.
I can see this working, too. Even less baffles needed, to be just as effective. With truly subsonic 22 rounds. 50 grain soft lead round nose, and velocity around 900 feet per second. I now know enough about construction, that I can make my own and I have a coherent strategy for a well constructed, tight build. Easily broken down and cleaned and oiled and wiped and reassembled. Each inner piece has a "pip's code" hammer punched into it. To identify its order of assembly. The pips all line up on the "top" or the side where the sights on the gun would be, on top of the slide.
I can tackle the 10mm now. I went quickly with essentially a bigger diameter flashlight body tube, stepping up to the 10mm. It produced noticeably more pressure than the 22, believe you me. Freeze plugs and the same procedure scaled up all over again. The freeze plugs simply came from industrial sized diesel blocks.
I had more trouble drilling out the extended length aftermarket barrels. More specifically, without breaking the expensive carbide tipped drill bits. I had to lower speed considerably. I jogged in lightly on cuts. Cutting a virgin hole, a drill bit wanders a good bit. Making an existing regular hole larger? It just centers itself and cuts if you go in steps. This is a slow and careful one cut procedure.
What I need, is an impossibly slow feed rate. I already have a modification where a clamped electric drill gets its speed set on a volume knob. I want way slower, but constant. The original design works by taking big O-rings and getting them on pulleys. I did that project over again, with an additional pulley added, and two O-rings. The drill drives the pulley, that slowly drives the pulley, that drives the knob the machinist usually turns by hand. The so called power feed option? Makes for a better fit and finish than by hand. Stepping the gearing down? Allowed it to take forever to drill slowly.
It worked.
Having construction done, I turned my attention to making ammunition for it.
Since a relatively slow speed is one of the criteria for subsonic ammunition, people sometimes assume that subsonic ammo is inherently weak. Not necessarily. The heaviest projectiles in 45 auto for instance, are around the speed of sound.
30-06 even has an amazing potential for subsonic use. I was reading about it, and the author went through the math of it. Modern customary use of the venerable and ubiquitous 30-06, has everyone buying 150 grain ammo for it. Worst mistake in the world. The twist rate is almost undoubtedly one in ten, the standard 30 caliber twist rate.
Just about any load in 180 grain, will produce groups as compared to the pie plates at 150 grain. At 150? You have to find one and tune it. At 180, you pick the most easy going load out, and run with that.
Calibers that have a sort of a reputation for coming subsonic? 45 auto, 9mm Luger. 22 LR. All have one thing in common. At normal sonic loading level, where loud noise noise is of no concern whatsoever? All have a normal load that is at or very near, the speed of sound.
The 30-06, believe it or not, does too. The old timers, our great grandfathers? Used to do a lot with the 30-06. They liked it for black bear medicine, and used to get 220 grain round nose projectiles and had established reloading data for it. Turned the 30-06 into more of a brush gun. A big brush gun, compared to the 30-30. And while not subsonic, it starts getting close. It becomes obvious looking at the reloading charts, that 30-06 somewhere in the 250 grain region? Will go subsonic as a normal loading.
Normally, the 30-06 produces a large volume of gas when firing. But modern smokeless powder has a peculiarity. As the weight of the projectile goes up? The amount of powder goes down. The heaviest projectiles also have the least amount of powder under them.
The 10mm as a handgun round? Is nothing more than a lengthened 40 caliber. I simply ordered a mold for casting lead handgun projectiles. Round ball molds are available in any size, so I got a gang mold in my diameter, a couple thousandths of an inch over my smooth bore barrel.
I had to go through several brass manufacturers, before finding one that was a little longer than the others. I could just get a light crimp going on the third round ball down into the 10mm casing. Working over a cheap chronometer to measure the actual speed of the projectile, I actually had a really quiet load in no time.
I'm used to loading for accuracy, and it was weird to load for fit and function, knowing accuracy was going to be dicey no matter what. At ten yards, the three holes from each shot were at a triangular pie plate size. I practiced at ten yards and under though, and found once I gave up fine aiming that I was switching over to pointing at the close targets.
Three round bursts made nine 40 caliber holes appear in the chests of my under ten yard silhouette targets. I wasn't used to giving up accuracy for firepower, it was against my religion going shooting with the boys.
This went on over a couple of months. I'd work at my routine. Once a week fishing trip, couple trips a week just to walk him and lay an eye on the target property. Renting a garage made swapping SD cards out a breeze, by keeping my fishing stuff there. The majority of two weeks would in actuality be taken up by mainly the machining project.
After two weeks of steady toil that took my mind off of things a little, I would go out for a weekend at my lawyer and meet with my investigator friend. It was weird to think of halfway across my state as "home base", but I did. In two week blocks that stacked up to be months, I had completed my machining project.