Silencers, An interesting read Options

[Diesel]

I don't mean to be retarded, but how exactly does a muzzle brake work?

I read about them a half dozen different times today looking at rifles and it was "nod the head, pretend you know" sorta thing. Do tell. Thanks.

[Austere Emancipa...]

I'll have a go at a semi-sensible answer for you to go with until Raygun comes back:

A muzzle brake generally speaking includes metal plates at an angle of 90 to 135 degrees to the barrel. Often there's a bit of space after the barrel ends before the metal plate(s), a sort of chamber.

The muzzle brake you can see on most Barretts has two separate metal plates (Barrett calls it "dual chamber" muzzle brake) that extend quite abit from the sides of the barrel. I've never seen what's inside that thing, but I'm guessing the plates simply form 2 sides of a triangle but with a ~13mm hole at the apex for the bullet to go through.

As the weapon is fired, the bullet passes through the holes out of the muzzle brake as normal, but the gases start expanding into the chambers and then slam into the plates, getting deflected 90-135 degrees. In the Barrett muzzle brake, the gas that goes right after the bullet into the second chamber may then hit the plate there and get deflected.

I'm guessing the reason why this reduces recoil is that: A) The gases hitting the muzzle brake push the weapon forward, negating a part of the recoil. B) The gases that are deflected do not increase the recoil like they would have, since instead of coming straight out in front of the weapon, they now come out sideways -- or in the best case scenario, they come out slightly backwards, so that they actually push the gun forward.

And because of the slamming of the gas against the muzzle brake, and the deflection of the gas (and sound, I guess) back towards the shooter, it makes the gun a lot noisier to shoot.

But this is all pure hypothesis. I'm sure there's many things wrong in that, or at least a lot missing.

[Cray74]

[6thDragon]

Another thing to consider when discussing the noise a silenced weapon makes is the area the gun was fired in. If you're outdoors the noise will be less. If you're in an enclosed area the noise will reverberate off the walls (kind of like the blast in a confined space rule from the main rulebook). I remember when I was in the Marines, I was in a stairway in a building under construction and a 12-gauge went off. Wow, was that loud! There was no carpeting or anything to absorb the sound. But then again you can't exactly silence a 12-gauge.

[Raygun]

Exactly. The environment you're shooting in makes a lot of difference in how effective firearm suppression can be. Firing a suppressed firearm in an urban environment is more effective because the sound will likely be dismissed for other, more common mechanical devices such as jackhammers, car mufflers, the general noise of construction sites, etc. In rural or wilderness areas, it is much more difficult to diguise that sound for the obvious reasons.

The sound of a gunshot definitely is louder in close quarters environments due to reverberation. Here is an example of that. Earlier I posted a link to a video of some guys firing MP5SDs outdoors. Here's a video of a guy firing a suppressed UMP45 indoors during CQB training. Obviously the camera is a little closer to the UMP shooter, but the suppressor he's using is more efficient than the MP5SD's. Still, the shots seem much louder because of his environment.

As for muzzle brakes, here's an up-close picture of a dual-chambered OPS, Inc. muzzle brake mounted on a sniper rifle. They really are very simple devices, and they do work in the way that both Aus and Cray have explained. Propellant gases are simply redirected in a way that negates the rearward motion of the rifle by using the energy of the muzzle blast to push the rifle away from the shooter's shoulder.

[Dim Sum]

[Diesel]

Thanks all!