Timeline for How can I make guns available, but not swords?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
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| Jun 16, 2020 at 11:03 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
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| May 3, 2017 at 16:47 | history | edited | aebabis | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| May 3, 2017 at 16:38 | history | edited | aebabis | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| May 2, 2017 at 22:28 | comment | added | aebabis | @Schwern Fair enough. Another thing to consider is that if the animal in question can handle 15kpsi sustained, it's instantaneous pressure resistance could be considerably higher. | |
| May 2, 2017 at 22:17 | comment | added | Schwern | Not a bad idea ...except fossils are not the original material and would not retain their original properties. Still, it's worth expanding your answer with the necessary parameters for seashell chambers to be viable. There's still the small problem of a barrel... | |
| May 2, 2017 at 22:11 | comment | added | aebabis | @Schwern Maybe on the OP's planet, the water level lowered several miles millions of years ago and the fossils of giant extinct crustaceans are abundant. | |
| May 2, 2017 at 22:03 | comment | added | Schwern | What if, for some reason, a deep sea crustacean maintaining a sea level internal pressure is an evolutionary good idea? (Note: they don't, so there's no need for a sea shell to be a good pressure vessel.) That could be your pressure chamber! Except the highest pressure is at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, and that's 15 kpsi, barely the low end of what we need (though maybe sufficient for black powder). And our medieval/Old-West tech has to get their hands on them in sufficient quantities. | |
| May 2, 2017 at 21:58 | comment | added | Schwern | Yes, you can make an unwieldy, low velocity, black powder cannon from natural materials (umm... with iron band reinforcement), but did you notice how thick that tree was compared to the size of the bore? The OP wants handguns. The problem is chamber pressure is not a function of projectile diameter, it's a function of projectile velocity. It's always going to be 15-65 kpsi for a decent round. That tree cannon looks about 5x as thick as the bore, so a .38 would need, very, very roughly, a barrel over 1.5" thick, but I doubt it scales even that well. | |
| May 2, 2017 at 21:37 | comment | added | aebabis | @Schwern The concept of tech level doesn't really apply to naturally occurring phenomena. Your example of using a tree for a cannon works because the cellular structure of trees are surprisingly rigid but still have enough give that they don't shatter. Who's to say that a very large crustacean can't eventually evolve the ideal chemical properties to be used as a gun? | |
| May 2, 2017 at 21:13 | comment | added | Schwern | Yes, high tech ceramics, can withstand explosions... but not thin enough for a handgun and will crack and weaken. "Ceramic barrels" are ceramic lined metal barrels. 3D printed plastic guns now exist, but they're tiny, smoothbore pistols that I would not want to attempt to fire. For rifles, 3D printed plastic lowers now exist, barely, but rifle barrels are still metal. All of this is well beyond the stated medieval/old-west tech range. | |
| May 2, 2017 at 20:36 | comment | added | aebabis | @Schwern According to the other answers, ceramics that can withstand explosions exist in the real world | |
| May 2, 2017 at 19:50 | comment | added | Schwern | Ceramics cannot retain the pressures of anything but the most anemic round. Wood will work, but you need a lot of it. Mythbusters successfully tested a tree cannon. | |
| May 2, 2017 at 17:30 | history | answered | aebabis | CC BY-SA 3.0 |