Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Raving Bull.

Once upon a time, on Glock Talk, this kid registered and started a post in one of the subforums about this radical Glock his buddy had. It seems, so he claimed, that his buddy had "converted" a .45ACP Glock 21 to fire the .454 Casull cartridge. We all blinked politely for a second, and then someone pointed out to him that the Casull was not only a rimmed revolver cartridge, but also quite a bit longer than the .45ACP. He blithely replied that his buddy had "adjusted" the magazine for the longer round. It was then explained to him that aside from difficulties caused by the dimensions of the longer round, if you could magically shoehorn one into the Glock the chamber pressures and breechface thrust of the .454 would turn the G21 into a polymer-and-steel pipe bomb. His response was that his machinist buddy had, after some experimentation resulting in blowing the gun up a couple of times, "converted" two thirds of the barrel to titanium.

It was at this point that a somewhat gruff senior member explained to him that while his buddy may have converted a Glock 21 to .454 Casull in a computer game, he certainly had not done so in real life. While stories like that may impress the kiddies on a Counterstrike forum, they are unlikely to draw anything but derision from people who actually know how these things work.

Not to name names, but this may be something to keep in mind when you make a comment on someone's blog in which you claim to have used an M2 barrel to convert an H&R shotgun to .50BMG, especially someone's blog who has worked around, collected, and written about firearms most of her adult life. This fib is embarrassingly transparent to anyone with a working mechanical knowledge of guns, and probably shouldn't be made in the presence of people likely to call you on it. Just sayin'...

24 comments:

  1. My girlfriend from Canada did that once...

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  2. Pfffffffft. I suppose next you'll be telling us that not everyone's rifle really shoots eighth of an inch groups at 200 yards.

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  3. Ah, comeon, no linky for laughter of the masses?

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  4. I'd hate to get on Tam's bad side on something she's acutally passionate about! :)


    B&N - Exactly what I was thinking.

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  5. So I should save the description of how I converted my J-frame Airweight to fire 20mm Solothurn?

    It's not as unbelievable as it sounds... I had to drop it to a 4-shot.

    :)

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  6. What? But my buddy really DID convert a glock to 454 Casull. And it fires really neato! Hold on, I'll check with him and get him to post some pics.

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  7. Ok. Just got back from talking to him. Turns out instead of "convert a glock to 454 Casull" he concerted a glock to $454 Cash.

    I musta misheard

    And instead of it "fires really neato" he used the money to get a fire-patterned Speedo.

    You don't want to see any pictures of that. (brrrrr)

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  9. Wot robb, she only converted 2/3 of your barrel to titanium?

    Canajins. Eh.

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  10. b&n,

    See #21 in "No comment" commentary, below.

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  11. I know just about enough about firearms to know which end the bullet comes out of (as well as the "basic four", I might add) and even I would have split a gut laughing at that booger-eatin' moh-ron!!

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  12. Ah hell. I guess Tam's about to slam me next for telling the tale of my brother who's good with tools helping me turn some old plumbing supplies, tritium watches, 3 rolls of duct tape, an old Timex Sinclair and a road flare into the prototype for the Nukem 5000 Personal Nuclear Device in the convenient back pack delivery system.

    Available now in new colors Plum and Gunmetal.

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  13. It's harder to scream BS! when the person adding up yarns is your boss. One of the guys I knew at work who'd just been promoted was BSing with me about precision shooting. I'd just gotten a 700 Light Tac that shoots 3/4 MOA with factory ammo. he was going on about how the black powder .50 was one of the most accurate long range rifles available. I read at the FCSA website so I know better but I have to be more er diplomatic.

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  14. "They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance."

    Though to be fair, it was a Whitworth, not something flavored in .50 caliber.

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  15. Well, a buddy of mine spotted a Glock labled as .357 magnum (not SIG!) in a gun store not far from here... I wonder how they did that with it being a rimmed round significantly longer than anything else chambered in the Glock line. Maybe they sawed two Glocks in half and then bondo-ed them back together? I really like the idea, though!

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  16. "converted two-thirds of the barrel to titanium?" Alchemy is not dead!!

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  17. Alex,

    Your buddy misread it.

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  18. Not too long ago some poor sap on another forum claimed that his friend/uncle/GF in Canada had fired one of those 4-barrel COP .357 Mag derringers, and all 4 barrels went off at once.

    The responders who explained about the derringer's rotating firing pin and the bogosity of his claim were a lot more polite than I would have been, but he was still given a good spanking for lying to his elders.

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  19. You know, having seen a .50BMG AR upper, I don't think converting an H+R shotgun to .50BMG is actually impossible.

    But it would take more than just a barrel, and it'd be pointless and ugly.

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  20. Sigivald,

    The difference is that an AR upper is the gun; the lower is mostly nothing but the fire control assembly and a place to hang a buttstock. Heck, they make them out of plastic at CavArms.

    In the H&R/NEF shotties, however, the "lower" is the actual receiver, which contains the locking mechanism and the breechface.

    Further, you couldn't just "turn down" a Ma Deuce barrel, like this guy claimed to have done, as you'd need to machine the lug to attach it to the lower (brazing or welding would be contraindicated with a .50BMG...) To top it all off, you certainly don't want to "turn down" the area of an M2 barrel surrounding the chamber, at least unless you're trying to build a pipe bomb.

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  21. You mean everything written on the internet is not 100% true! Egad!

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  22. Tam,

    Apart from the mechanicals, why would anyone want to attach a .50BMG barrel (value: $$$) to the H&R action (value: $)?

    Kinda like the guy who claimed to have put a Ferrari V-12 into his VW Beetle.

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  24. Some day Tams, you'll be working in your bosses' shop. You'll hear either a loud motorcycle engine, or maybe smell the fried chicken smell of a bio-diesel car. A big bearded bonking bastard shall ask for your evaluation of a rifle. He will then present you with that which you publicly said was impossible and a 'transparent fib'. In fact I'm tracking down the rifle now. I've wanted to make your acquaintance since I've become addicted to all three of your blogs. The fact that I can wow you with something you're sure is impossible...

    I mean how can a guy resist.

    and to the others, Sigvald said 'Pointless and Ugly', that's an Uzi or Mac-10 Kim Du Toit pointed out the price of an M2 barrel. I bought it in 1981 for 1/2 ($) half the price new of the 10 gauge H&R.

    I'm also prepared to find out my child didn't survive the 22 years between then and now. In which case I'm prepared to rebuild it.

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