WesWorld

Quoted from "Rooijen10"

You mean to tell me that you cannot see the "(6.5x55 mm Mori SA)" bit on the image? That's odd as it should be there...

Not with the small-sized preview, which is all I could see until I clicked for full-size. As a rule, I don't open the full-sized images at work, particularly if they lead to photobucket.

6.5x55 is definitely on the heavy side for an assault rifle. The magazine also looks a little short for it, though not by that much.

Otherwise, I'd only have two recommendations: first, the sights need to be raised substantially. Because of the inline buttstock, the shooter is going to have trouble getting a good sighting picture, since the current sights are mounted low. The second recommendation is that I don't see a magazine release catch. It might, of course, be on the left side of the rifle, but most tend to have their catches situated ambidextrously.

Uh, as an afterthought... is that the charging handle right there at the top of the receiver, directly above the trigger?

I completely forgot about Gunbucket when I started drawing my AK-47. I might have to have a look there again and maybe fiddle with my drawing again.

Double-post to add: I actually really like the look of it. I think it's a little too modern for the 1940s, but it could definitely pull off a 1950s look. Nice work.

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Not with the small-sized preview, which is all I could see until I clicked for full-size. As a rule, I don't open the full-sized images at work, particularly if they lead to photobucket.

When I look at the tiny image, I can read it, so I guess it must be the poor-quality monitor you are forced to work with at work.

Still it is a bit annoying that the board needs to shrink images to make them so much smaller. I can understand that it would do that with big images like those of my carrier, but the rifle image is not that wide at all and should not really be shrunk at all or that much.

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6.5x55 is definitely on the heavy side for an assault rifle. The magazine also looks a little short for it, though not by that much.

Originally I was thinking of 6.5x40 or 6.5x45, but the slight lack of power of the 6.5x50mm made me wonder if I should actually make the case slightly longer for a bit more power. Maybe I was wrong about that idea...

As for the magazine's width... Well the round fits much, much better than the image of the 7.62x51mm round (which I took from another image) fits in the magazines of the FAL and AR-10 images (and I think I took a look at it and the 7.62mm round seemed to have the correct dimensions). Probably should try and see if I can find a proper loaded magazine image to see how much space there should be fore and aft of the round. Right now if I were to put the round right in the middle, I would have about 2.5mm on each side.

... of course should I make the round a bit shorter, it probably won't be an issue anymore.

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first, the sights need to be raised substantially. Because of the inline buttstock, the shooter is going to have trouble getting a good sighting picture, since the current sights are mounted low.

Now that you mention it, I should have paid a bit more attention to that as I use the sights of the FAL (which has a curved top buttstock) in combination with the straight buttstock of the AR-10 (which has raised sights). Will probably have to apply a bit of FAL there on the buttstock so the user has some space for his head.

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The second recommendation is that I don't see a magazine release catch. It might, of course, be on the left side of the rifle, but most tend to have their catches situated ambidextrously.

With the AR-10, it looks to be on the right hand side... on the part of the image that I did not use and on the FAL it looks to be on the left hand side... on the part of the image that I also did not use. Whoops! So I would have to add the required bit from one of the two guns.

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Uh, as an afterthought... is that the charging handle right there at the top of the receiver, directly above the trigger?

The charging handle is on the left hand side like on the FAL so it won't be visible when looking at the right side of the weapon. If you are looking at what I think you are looking, then you are looking at the Anti-aircraft sights which I took from the Type 99 rifle picture. Probably completely useless on the gun, but I kinda like it and it helps making the weapon a little bit different.

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Double-post to add: I actually really like the look of it. I think it's a little too modern for the 1940s, but it could definitely pull off a 1950s look. Nice work.

Yes, even with the few bits of the Type 99 I added to it, it is still looks a bit modern due to the large chunks being used from 1950s weapons. Good thing I did not give it the 60s look with the grayish black colors.

Thank you for your thoughts and tips about improving the "The right arm of the Decadent World".

For the magazine release catch, I think most FALs actually have it in the gap between the trigger guard and the magazine.

Actually, the thought of that makes me realize... do you know how the FAL breaks down? The little round circle between the magazine well and the trigger guard is actually a hinge, which you use to sorta 'fold' the rear half of the receiver and the front half of the receiver. This allows the bolt to be removed out the back. Thus, the lengthened magazine well on the Type 8 will probably get folded into the trigger guard before you get the rifle open for disassembly. Ergo - I'd suggest shortening the magazine well.

Quoted from "Rooijen10"

The charging handle is on the left hand side like on the FAL so it won't be visible when looking at the right side of the weapon. If you are looking at what I think you are looking, then you are looking at the Anti-aircraft sights which I took from the Type 99 rifle picture. Probably completely useless on the gun, but I kinda like it and it helps making the weapon a little bit different. :)

Oh, okay - that makes a bit more sense. If it was the charging handle, I would have recommended it be moved. (Reason - bad location for a lefty, and just a bad location overall.)

Quoted from "Rooijen10"

As for the magazine's width... Well the round fits much, much better than the image of the 7.62x51mm round (which I took from another image) fits in the magazines of the FAL and AR-10 images (and I think I took a look at it and the 7.62mm round seemed to have the correct dimensions). Probably should try and see if I can find a proper loaded magazine image to see how much space there should be fore and aft of the round. Right now if I were to put the round right in the middle, I would have about 2.5mm on each side.

That's probably a little tight - I'd guess you'd want at least 5-8mm on both sides.

As for the round itself, that's... going into the whole very deep argument of "what round is good enough"? And most people are going to have a lot of very different opinions. And you're also going to have some fairly different needs based on what environment you expect to fight in. You also have to consider what your strategy for fully automatic fire is going to be.

I don't know how much you know about firearms and cartridge design, so I'll try to keep my comments simple. There's actually an existing 6.5x55 round (6.5mm Swedish Mauser). It'd be classified as a "full-power" rifle round. That's actually a very good rifle round... for a bolt action rifle. For a semiauto rifle, it's okay. And for a fully-auto battle rifle like the Type 8, it'd be overly powerful - to the point where it'd be very difficult to control it on fully automatic mode.

You mention a 6.5x45 round, which I think would actually be a very nice round for a full-auto battle rifle. The Wesworld French have actually fiddled with a 6.5x47mm round which could be very similar; but having an already established round, there's not a lot of interest in picking that round up.

Quoted

For the magazine release catch, I think most FALs actually have it in the gap between the trigger guard and the magazine.

More or less. To me it looks to be the small lever thing right behind the magazine which is not really visible from the right side of the weapon (if the image works)...

http://i463.photobucket.com/albums/qq355/Ironhandjohn/FAL2006.jpg

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Actually, the thought of that makes me realize... do you know how the FAL breaks down? The little round circle between the magazine well and the trigger guard is actually a hinge, which you use to sorta 'fold' the rear half of the receiver and the front half of the receiver. This allows the bolt to be removed out the back. Thus, the lengthened magazine well on the Type 8 will probably get folded into the trigger guard before you get the rifle open for disassembly. Ergo - I'd suggest shortening the magazine well.

Originally I had used the AR-10 trigger section which is fixed to the magazine well so there would have been a different way to access the bolt. However I actually started to like the idea of how the FAL opens up so I changed the trigger section to that of the FAL, realized that the magazine well is in the way and then made it shorter by moving the left side a bit more to the right (which is also the main reason why the bullets have so little space right now). I actually separated the top part of the weapon from the bottom part and then used Paint Shop Pro to rotate the top part and stuck it back to the bottom part to see if it opens up far enough...

Looking at a few photos, the Type 8 actually looks to have more clearance than from what I can see with the FAL as the rear sight bit is part of the bottom section of the FAL while on the Type 8 it is part of the top part of the weapon so it is not in the way of the bolt when you slide it out.
(note that the above image is still the old one and uses the colors I previously used for it)

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That's probably a little tight - I'd guess you'd want at least 5-8mm on both sides.

Okay. That's good to know. Will see what changing the bullet does.

Quoted

I don't know how much you know about firearms and cartridge design

I would probably know much, much more about it if it weren't for these stupid laws here.

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I'll try to keep my comments simple. There's actually an existing 6.5x55 round (6.5mm Swedish Mauser). It'd be classified as a "full-power" rifle round. That's actually a very good rifle round... for a bolt action rifle. For a semiauto rifle, it's okay. And for a fully-auto battle rifle like the Type 8, it'd be overly powerful - to the point where it'd be very difficult to control it on fully automatic mode.

You mention a 6.5x45 round, which I think would actually be a very nice round for a full-auto battle rifle. The Wesworld French have actually fiddled with a 6.5x47mm round which could be very similar; but having an already established round, there's not a lot of interest in picking that round up.

Okay, good to know. Thinking about it, maybe we should have made the French designers happy by picking up that particular round...

... but I doubt that the French government would be willing to allow that to happen.

Quoted from "Rooijen10"

Quoted

Actually, the thought of that makes me realize... do you know how the FAL breaks down? The little round circle between the magazine well and the trigger guard is actually a hinge, which you use to sorta 'fold' the rear half of the receiver and the front half of the receiver. This allows the bolt to be removed out the back. Thus, the lengthened magazine well on the Type 8 will probably get folded into the trigger guard before you get the rifle open for disassembly. Ergo - I'd suggest shortening the magazine well.

Originally I had used the AR-10 trigger section which is fixed to the magazine well so there would have been a different way to access the bolt. However I actually started to like the idea of how the FAL opens up so I changed the trigger section to that of the FAL, realized that the magazine well is in the way and then made it shorter by moving the left side a bit more to the right (which is also the main reason why the bullets have so little space right now). I actually separated the top part of the weapon from the bottom part and then used Paint Shop Pro to rotate the top part and stuck it back to the bottom part to see if it opens up far enough...

Looking at a few photos, the Type 8 actually looks to have more clearance than from what I can see with the FAL as the rear sight bit is part of the bottom section of the FAL while on the Type 8 it is part of the top part of the weapon so it is not in the way of the bolt when you slide it out.
(note that the above image is still the old one and uses the colors I previously used for it)

Yeah, the FAL is very easy to open up for maintenance; one of the things that I like about it. The CETME and G3 are also pretty well-designed on that part, too - though I don't happen to have one, so it's more secondhand observation rather than firsthand experience.

As for the FAL rear sight being on the back part... yanno, it's weird that I don't remember that from the last time I disassembled mine. When I first read that, I was certain it was wrong, but now I'm not so sure.

Quoted from "Rooijen10"

Quoted

I don't know how much you know about firearms and cartridge design

I would probably know much, much more about it if it weren't for these stupid laws here.

Quoted

I'll try to keep my comments simple. There's actually an existing 6.5x55 round (6.5mm Swedish Mauser). It'd be classified as a "full-power" rifle round. That's actually a very good rifle round... for a bolt action rifle. For a semiauto rifle, it's okay. And for a fully-auto battle rifle like the Type 8, it'd be overly powerful - to the point where it'd be very difficult to control it on fully automatic mode.

You mention a 6.5x45 round, which I think would actually be a very nice round for a full-auto battle rifle. The Wesworld French have actually fiddled with a 6.5x47mm round which could be very similar; but having an already established round, there's not a lot of interest in picking that round up.

Okay, good to know. Thinking about it, maybe we should have made the French designers happy by picking up that particular round...

... but I doubt that the French government would be willing to allow that to happen. :)

Well, cartridges usually aren't proprietary. Even when you have the same major dimensions (say 6.5x47), you can still end up with incompatible rounds due to other dimensions not being the same. For instance, the Wesworld French 6.5x47 Experimental is not exactly the same as the real-life 6.5x47 Lapua, a real-world round made in the 1990s. It's just that the major dimensions are the same.

While I'm not an expert on the 6.5x50 Arisaka round, I believe the reason it was found to be "underpowered" was primarily down to its round-nosed bullet design, which IIRC causes more drag on the bullet, resulting in velocity really falling off over range. That in turn results in greater inaccuracy at long ranges, etc. Additionally, compared to the major European calibers at the time it was in use, the 6.5mm Arisaka cartridge was on average about 7mm shorter. (And compared to the American .30/06, the case is 13mm shorter.) But the 6.5mm Arisaka's primary dimensions are actually fairly close to the historical .276 Pedersen round (in metric, 7x51) - 0.5mm wider bullet, 1mm longer case; and most reasonable people don't call that round 'underpowered'.

What I said last night about figuring out your country's strategy for how to use full-auto weapons definitely applies, and I can expand more on that here...

Almost all of the major rifle calibers up to the 1940s were designed for bolt-action rifles and tripod-mounted machine guns. In a bolt-action rifle, because you've got to chamber the next round manually, you can get away with some very powerful rounds. It doesn't *matter* if the recoil is heavy, because you've got to shift the rifle around to work the bolt. This is the generation of .303 British, .30/06 American, 7.92x57 Mauser, 7.63x53 Belgian, etc. The 6.5mm Carcano and 6.5mm Arisaka are also in this generation, although smaller examples than what is widespread.

Moving on to the first successful semi-auto rifles, like the M1 Garand, the SVT-38/SVT-40, and the G-43, you can stick with these same rifle rounds. Since it's semiauto and the action does the work for you, you can pop off another round as soon as the bolt finishes cycling and loading another cartridge. This permits very rapid fire... but now recoil becomes your principle problem, since the next round is ready to go, but due to the recoil the rifle's still pointing away from the target. At this point, people start talking about intermediate rounds or lower-power cartridges, such as the failed .276 Pedersen, which permits much faster follow-up shots due to the lower recoil. The Wesworld development of the 6.5x51mm FAR round, used by France, Atlantis, and Russia, is very similar in performance to the .276 Pedersen.

And so we come to the Sturmgewehr idea, where in order to permit rapid follow-up shots, you reduce recoil by reducing the power of the cartridge and thus reduce recoil. The Germans went with 7.92x33 Kurz, and the Russians went with 7.62x39, and the Brits tried to go with 7x43mm.

But do you actually want or need a fully-automatic weapon? In most cases, I feel the answer is a pretty resounding NO.

I've never had the opportunity to fire a full-auto battle rifle, but I've heard people who describe the three settings (Safe - Single - Auto) as 'Safe', 'Bleep You', and 'Bleep you, bleep me, bleep everything!' They say that their entire attention narrows down to the need: "Control Recoil." Target ran away? Nope, sorry, tell me later - I'm controlling recoil. Someone's shooting back at you? Screw that, I'm controlling recoil!

This leads to large ammunition expenditures for relatively little gain. Soldiers don't usually have the high enough level of recognition and control in battle to say "Huh, I'm wasting ammunition. Maybe I shouldn't." They're getting shot at, and they're usually in the "Bleep you, bleep me, bleep everything!" mentality.

The Russians, when they designed the AK-47, intentionally made it hard for the selector lever to be set to full auto. You carry the gun on safe, see an enemy, and hurriedly mash that lever... past full auto and straight to semiauto, where the stop is. In order to set it for full, you have to intentionally work the lever to find the center position. The Italians did something even more neat with the Beretta MAB-38: the front trigger, which is easier to use and access, shoots semiauto. The back trigger, which is harder to access, does full auto.

The Stgw.44 and the AK-47 both have light enough cartridges that they can be used in full-auto mode in order to provide covering fire, whereas the FN FAL and its generational cousins (CETME / G3 and the M14) mostly have to be used for aimed fire. Any decently useful full-auto work requires shooting prone from a bipod. (I note your Type 8 has the little wire monopod, which is a cool little feature.)

For myself, I'm not strongly of the opinion that full-auto mode is really all that much of a help to soldiers in the majority of combat situations, but there's also a certain national flavor. For instance, the Russians intended the AK-47 to replace their submachine guns, while the SKS replaced the bolt-action rifles. But that didn't happen - the AK just replaced everything. So in Wesworld, the Russians are referring to the AK-46 prototype as a "submachine gun", even though it's... not. That's just how they're thinking of things. Their current intention is to drop a pair of the eventual AK-47s into the standard infantry squad to provide some full-auto firepower, much like their current SMGs are deployed. (I'm probably going to really get AK production going in the 1950s, but not very much before then, honestly.)

Meanwhile, the French are approaching things from a different perspective. At the moment, the French expect either to fight in the jungles of Indochina versus the Chinese, or in the North African desert and Alps against the Italians. In the latter case, the French don't see a need for a full-auto weapon, and want aimed accuracy at range as their primary demand. In the former case, full auto is super, super important... what may end up happening is that they actually buy two very distinct FAL variants for themselves: one fullsized rifle set up for asemiauto only, and a second short-barrel folding-stock variant with a full-auto setting. The second version gets distributed to paratroopers and troops deployed to Indochina, while the first is used by the Army at large.

All this feeds into what cartridge you eventually decide to use. A modern 6.5x45mm round would actually be a pretty nice choice for a full-auto rifle in a jungle environment - it's still powerful enough to penetrate light cover and achieve some decent range, while still being light enough to reduce recoil. On the other hand, in the same environment, the 6.5x55 round will not see its positive benefits and just the negative drawbacks.

...I hope that's all informative and not just mindless rambling.

If you decided to go for a 6.5x45 round or something similar, the Indochinese ground forces might even be interested in evaluating the Type 8 at some point in a run-off, or something like.

For what it may be worth, on the subject of a ‘full auto’ automatic rifle, I will throw an anecdote I recall from my college days (the early 1970s).

One of the guys in class had done his tour in Vietnam in the early/middle 60s, and related that he had managed to keep his M-15 rifle when the rest of his unit was issued M-16s. The M-15 was the full auto version of the M-14 – an admitted beast of a weapon, but it did have a bipod. Charlie was adept at counting – among other things – so when his unit would be ambushed he’d loose off a magazine at full auto – giving a good-enough imitation of the squad’s M-60. Charlie counts two ‘machineguns’ – two squads – and breaks off because the numbers do not favor them.

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As for the FAL rear sight being on the back part... yanno, it's weird that I don't remember that from the last time I disassembled mine. When I first read that, I was certain it was wrong, but now I'm not so sure.

With that one, the rear sight looks to me to be on the rear/bottom part and there is nothing on the top part that swings along when the FAL is opened up. One thing is that with this image, it looks like the FAL has more clearance than I initially thought so it may have been that the other photos I saw created the illusion that it was rather tight due to the angle the photos were taken at.

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But do you actually want or need a fully-automatic weapon? In most cases, I feel the answer is a pretty resounding NO.

I would think that for people who like it a lot, it would be a definitive "YES" for 'want' and "... probably not but I don't care" for 'need'.

Japan has that Type 2 submachine gun I made mixing parts from the pictures of a few other weapons. The two drawbacks of that weapon I see are inaccuracy (as it is an automatic weapon) and short range (due to its low muzzle velocity) but other than that it should be okay. So I would think that the approach for the Type 8 would be more of a 'submachine' rifle one than a 'riflemachine' gun one (with that I mean more like the FAL than the AK-47). I think that the Type 2 SMG is more the "Jungle" weapon while the Type 8 rifle would be more the "Open Field" weapon. Still even for an "Open Field" weapon, reduced recoil is not really a bad thing even if the lower charge would mean less range.

... and most importantly, it is a lot easier to make the bullet a bit shorter than to make the magazine wider and still make the weapon look good.

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I've never had the opportunity to fire a full-auto battle rifle, but I've heard people who describe the three settings (Safe - Single - Auto) as 'Safe', 'Bleep You', and 'Bleep you, bleep me, bleep everything!' They say that their entire attention narrows down to the need: "Control Recoil." Target ran away? Nope, sorry, tell me later - I'm controlling recoil. Someone's shooting back at you? Screw that, I'm controlling recoil!

Because I was not an infantryman and just a simple radio operator, I only fired the Uzi Peashooter at full auto (once... and it jammed after like 10 rounds). Still that what you describe sounds more like "I have it on auto so I need to pull the trigger continuously and... Oh crap! I can't controll it! Better keep on pulling the trigger in the hope I will regain control!" More seriously, I would expect that a battle rifle on full automatic would still be a handful even if you were to give short controlled bursts.

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FN FAL and its generational cousins (CETME / G3 and the M14) mostly have to be used for aimed fire. Any decently useful full-auto work requires shooting prone from a bipod. (I note your Type 8 has the little wire monopod, which is a cool little feature.)

The monopod was on the Type 99 picture and it seemed neat to stick it on the Type 8. It would help somewhat but will be a bit less stable than a bipod (after all, you're more stable standing on two legs than you are standing on just one).

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...I hope that's all informative and not just mindless rambling.

Not rambling at all. Quite useful indeed. Also nice to read about the Russian and French ideas.

Messed around with it a bit...

The top of the buttstock is now that of the FAL so the user should now be able to looks through the sight without having to cut part of his face away. The shorter 6.5x45mm round would mean there is a bit more space for it in front and behind the round when it is in the magazine.

The magazine release catch is a bit more trick as I would probably have to mess with the bottom of the weapon to get one like the FAL and the one like the AR-10 would end up too high to my liking and probably interfere with the internal movement of the bolt carrier... so I thought a lever in front of the mag would have to do which should be fairly easy to use for both left handers and right handers, a great spot for dirt to get into the weapon and an excellent location for a person to bump against objects and lose his magazine.