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ShadowDragon8685
It's not going to take my players long to hit on the idea of arming their militia with cheap, self-produced weapons, and honestly I'm having a hard time coming up with a reason why they couldn't, since they have an Armorer shop, and the Jungles likely would as well.

Given that my players are clever, and their characters likely are as well (as well as being history buffs, since one of them is an old elf who actually has the benefit of an early-twenty-first-century public school education,) they're going to remember that simple submachine guns like the Sten gun or the Grease Gun were easily manufactured with any equipment that can press metal, and home-made by a gunsmith with the plans.

I'm having a hard time figuring out any reason why that wouldn't work. So, if they do decide to do it like that - put their shop equipment on the truck and haul it to the jungles, download the plans for cheap, simple submachine guns and assault rifles, and get the mechanically-inclined people to start working on assembling them, what would be the likely rate of manufacture for simple guns in the style of an AK-47/Sten/Greasegun? Or would it be simply cheaper/more effective to buy construction kits for the modern weapons at half-price and have them assembled on-site?
Chinane
QUOTE (ShadowDragon8685 @ Feb 16 2012, 09:36 AM) *
Given that my players are clever, and their characters likely are as well (as well as being history buffs, since one of them is an old elf who actually has the benefit of an early-twenty-first-century public school education,) they're going to remember that simple submachine guns like the Sten gun or the Grease Gun were easily manufactured with any equipment that can press metal, and home-made by a gunsmith with the plans.


Public schools over there teach weapons manufacturing basics?
Irion
"MANUfacturing is never cheap", the problem is with "manual".
I can't actually imagine you would be able to produce cheaper than just buying.
5 Guys working in a factory are probably able to throw out over 1000 rifle a day. You just can't compete with that.
Look at what you paid for a pistol 1950 and what you pay now...
Yerameyahu
Plus, the Sten was *bad*. smile.gif

If you're going by SR4 RAW, I *think* there's a basic guideline that you can assemble things yourself (from the parts!) for 50% cost and full Avail (again, for the parts). If you have no parts, it gets quite sticky, and that 50% number might only come from Hardware anyway.
Modular Man
QUOTE (Irion @ Feb 16 2012, 01:22 PM) *
"MANUfacturing is never cheap", the problem is with "manual".
I can't actually imagine you would be able to produce cheaper than just buying.
5 Guys working in a factory are probably able to throw out over 1000 rifle a day. You just can't compete with that.
Look at what you paid for a pistol 1950 and what you pay now...

That is true, but I don't think this is about selling the guns or competing with major weapon companies: It's about producing weapons with the lowest price possible. Being produced by people who don't demand pay for that.
It will take quite longer than the daily business of a factory, sure.

Yeah, I think the whole thing about "assembling from parts being worth 50%" is from the matrix section of the book, regarding the Hardware skill.
ShadowDragon8685
QUOTE (Chinane @ Feb 16 2012, 06:56 AM) *
Public schools over there teach weapons manufacturing basics?


No, but they do teach the history of the second world war, so the character in question would have the educational background to get the idea to churn out as many dirt-cheap guns to put the maximum volume of fire downrange and put guns into the hands of the most people ready to enact an armed response to an incursion, even if those guns aren't terribly good.


QUOTE (Modular Man @ Feb 16 2012, 08:16 AM) *
That is true, but I don't think this is about selling the guns or competing with major weapon companies: It's about producing weapons with the lowest price possible. Being produced by people who don't demand pay for that.
It will take quite longer than the daily business of a factory, sure.


Yeah, that's basically the whole idea. It doesn't matter if the guns they're making aren't going to be competing with Ares, the whole point of them is to put a fully-automatic slugthrower with a stock into the hands of as many willing defenders as possible. Doesn't matter if it can't take any accessories and can't be rigged to eject its magazine with a thought. It's strictly about empowering the maximum number of people to return fire should trouble come a-calling.

QUOTE
Yeah, I think the whole thing about "assembling from parts being worth 50%" is from the matrix section of the book, regarding the Hardware skill.

It is, but I've always taken it as gospel for building anything. The real rub is how long it would take.
Yerameyahu
Yeah, I usually consider the 50% our only guideline (awful Chemistry rules notwithstanding), though it's only specifically about Hardware; I'd certainly hate to *lower* that figure, for example. My position is just that you either have to get the parts (at least 50% cost, same Avail) and then assemble them, or the GM has to invent a process for making those parts (from… other parts/materials).
Warlordtheft
You could go with the raw materials cost or a scrounging check of somesort for the cost of the metals. You'll then need to make sure the metals are of sufficient quality that the gun won't blow up in your face. Yes lots of weapons can easily be made in a machine shop.

After that is done it comes down to ammo, which requires chemistry, metallurgy, and armorer skills to make the bullets.

Crossbows on the otherhand make better self-made weapons, as the tricky part is the cocking mechanism and the metals/materials used in the arms of the crossbow.
Tymeaus Jalynsfein
QUOTE (Warlordtheft @ Feb 16 2012, 07:48 AM) *
You could go with the raw materials cost or a scrounging check of somesort for the cost of the metals. You'll then need to make sure the metals are of sufficient quality that the gun won't blow up in your face. Yes lots of weapons can easily be made in a machine shop.

After that is done it comes down to ammo, which requires chemistry, metallurgy, and armorer skills to make the bullets.

Crossbows on the otherhand make better self-made weapons, as the tricky part is the cocking mechanism and the metals/materials used in the arms of the crossbow.


Leaf Springs from Trucks... That is what I used. smile.gif
kzt
If you have blueprints, a machine shop (milling machine lather, etc), metal stock and skills you can make guns. However things like heat treating and anodizing are often essential to making them work reliably and they can be a big deal.

Barrels are going to require that you use your machine ship to build the tools to rifle the barrel.

Ammo is also going to be an issue. You can make bullets and, with a lot more work, cases. It's extremely difficult to make primers and smokeless powder.
noonesshowmonkey
I didn't realize that Shadowrun was an economics & business simulator.

Whenever a player comes to me and says 'I want to make [whatever]', I ask them to ponder, even for a moment, how they would actually go about doing that and if their character has the skills required. Then, I remind them that the game is about being professional criminals and that, if they wanted to roll up a character with the knowledge and active skills to build stuff, they are welcome to, but that they would be designing an NPC.

If you and your players are willing to abstract and roll over the immense hurdles that come along with doing any amount of manufacturing on a large scale - much less something as complex as firearms - then by all means, have at it. I am sure you can figure out a set of complex test thresholds and intervals that would make sense to you.

As to the original question of how hard it would be to do, I'd say that it is probably a lot harder than you'd think. Though much of a firearm can be made of stamped, pressed steel, there are still parts - the most important ones, really - that need to be precision machined.

Assembling a firearm is a horse of a different color. If your players were able to get a supplier of parts from a major manufacturer, a cottage industry in the Plastic Jungles could easily crank out the assembled weapons.
Hida Tsuzua
For something like a gun using parts, I would go with either simple or complex which gives a threshold of 4 or 8 with parts being half price. For a vintage firearm, it's definitely simple. I don't know about a more "modern" firearm like an AK-97 or Ares Alpha and could see it varying. Likely I would keep the more "basic" firearms simple and maybe the more advanced/special firearms being complex. I would require a shop and have the interval time be 2 hours. That's the standard time for weapons mods so it seems reasonable enough.

That means an average armorer (armorer 3 + logic 3;DP:6) can assemble 2 AK-47/AK-97s per 8 hour workday on average. An average man (logic 3) defaulting (-1) with AR guides (+2) can make 1 and maybe 2 a day. A great armorer (DP:12+) can crank out 4 a day. That seems about right. It does depend on how you do extended tests however.
Yerameyahu
It seems like vintage guns would be *harder* to assemble.
kzt
QUOTE (noonesshowmonkey @ Feb 16 2012, 02:24 PM) *
As to the original question of how hard it would be to do, I'd say that it is probably a lot harder than you'd think. Though much of a firearm can be made of stamped, pressed steel, there are still parts - the most important ones, really - that need to be precision machined.

Stamped guns are not a good way to make a small number of cheap guns. They are a great way to make a LOT of cheap guns, but the up-front investment is enormous.

People think of stamped firearms as easy to make, but they are not. You need a LOT of precision machining to make the dies and then you need a lot of very large and expensive equipment to do the stamping and heat treating. It's a great way to mass produce inexpensive weapons, but you need a whole lot of tech to do it.

Which is why the USSR used milled receivers in AKs for year, because reliably making stamped receivers required technology they had not mastered. The AKM in 1959 is where the transitioned to stamped and riveted receivers.
Saint Sithney
You can use a couple pieces of pipe to make a 12 gague slam-bang shotgun for ~5 dollars. Can't hit anything past 20m, but it'll throw 00 at a sucker every time. Enough people shooting them will make a nasty swarm of buck.

At that price, the shells will run you more than the weapon.
noonesshowmonkey
QUOTE (kzt @ Feb 16 2012, 06:24 PM) *
Stamped guns are not a good way to make a small number of cheap guns...


And having a Barrens warehouse full of milling machines grinding away to produce receivers isn't much of a better plan, I don't think.

Either way you slice it, this is a problem where, to make anything resembling a decent firearm takes pretty serious investment, training, engineering, general dextrous know how etc. that far outstrips what I'd consider within the realm of a Shadowrun game.

I mean, the Russians basement bunker munitions factories cranking out handmade weapons during the second world war... But I wonder that some of the parts were made in a more traditional factory setting and/or a rag-tag bunch of professional criminals could produce the iron will and esprit de corps that pervaded the Red Army's quartermaster corps.

Making some pipe-guns is one thing, but trying to produce gas-operated, automatic weapons that aren't going to shake themselves apart, have constant failures and be able to hit a target beyond 20 meters is asking the moon.
ShadowDragon8685
Hrm... Yeah, good points. Unless you're willing and able to construct or refurbish a factory with machine tools, producing a lot of guns like that is off the table. And if you are, then that's going to vastly outstrip the needs of 200 farmers. At that point, you're not farmers, you're ironmongers.


Seems like if they want to get the most cash for their bucks, the best way would be to buy kits for cheap guns at half off and assemble them?
kzt
QUOTE (noonesshowmonkey @ Feb 16 2012, 07:29 PM) *
And having a Barrens warehouse full of milling machines grinding away to produce receivers isn't much of a better plan, I don't think.

Either way you slice it, this is a problem where, to make anything resembling a decent firearm takes pretty serious investment, training, engineering, general dextrous know how etc. that far outstrips what I'd consider within the realm of a Shadowrun game.

I mean, the Russians basement bunker munitions factories cranking out handmade weapons during the second world war... But I wonder that some of the parts were made in a more traditional factory setting and/or a rag-tag bunch of professional criminals could produce the iron will and esprit de corps that pervaded the Red Army's quartermaster corps.

Making some pipe-guns is one thing, but trying to produce gas-operated, automatic weapons that aren't going to shake themselves apart, have constant failures and be able to hit a target beyond 20 meters is asking the moon.

The Russians were not building tanks with hammers and files, they picked up the machine tools and moved them a few hundred miles and then ran them, sometimes in what amounted to the open air.

You can build a receiver with a cheap (less than $10,000) CNC milling machine, people do it. But it is a lot easier to buy the bolt, barrel, etc from somewhere else than to make them from scratch. And scale is an issue. If you need 10 you could do it. If you need 1000 next week or next month that's a different matter.

But a "facility" scale machine shop operated by someone with some decent skills should be capable of making a gun from scratch, minus the fancy electronics, if they have the plans or one to copy. They might have to spend a week to make a button rifling rig, but they should be able to do so. They would just need a stock of materials and new cutters. But it would be slow. Particularly if they have to build all the minor parts.
Manunancy
As far as part go, in my opinion one thing you can do is to buy a few crateloads of half-ruined guns as scrap metal, then use that as a basis. Depending on what you get, with a bit of luck you cna canibalize and refabric some parts to get some of the guns into working order (say one in four). Then you can either rebuild more parts when you have time or use the guns as a source of parts and material for simpler designs.
kzt
The few people who might sell guns for scrap metal also know how to ensure they ARE scrap. You might be able to pay off someone to not destroy the guns they are selling as scrap, but otherwise you are going to up with scrap.
Brainpiercing7.62mm
QUOTE (ShadowDragon8685 @ Feb 17 2012, 04:18 AM) *
Hrm... Yeah, good points. Unless you're willing and able to construct or refurbish a factory with machine tools, producing a lot of guns like that is off the table. And if you are, then that's going to vastly outstrip the needs of 200 farmers. At that point, you're not farmers, you're ironmongers.


Seems like if they want to get the most cash for their bucks, the best way would be to buy kits for cheap guns at half off and assemble them?

If your players are so intent on doing this, why not just accomodate them another way? Give them some volume rebate on weapons they buy (whole, but maybe in need of service) from a surplus sale or something.

Manufacturing is only good when you have a workshop and equipment, but can't buy any guns.
Manunancy
QUOTE (kzt @ Feb 17 2012, 09:39 AM) *
The few people who might sell guns for scrap metal also know how to ensure they ARE scrap. You might be able to pay off someone to not destroy the guns they are selling as scrap, but otherwise you are going to up with scrap.


Not all of them would bother - a gun runner who doesn't want to build a repute for selling crap that doesn't work is likely to have 'trash' guns piling into some warehouse corner. And won't care what you're doign with the guns as long it's not rebuilding for for sale. that would cut into his business. Cobbling together guns for peoples who wouldn't be able to afford is working guns in the first place isn't.
Hida Tsuzua
QUOTE (Yerameyahu @ Feb 16 2012, 10:01 PM) *
It seems like vintage guns would be *harder* to assemble.

I was assuming that "modern" firearms in the SR universe are built to tighter standards that current day firearms (which are vintage). For example, assembling the Ares Alpha's gas chamber design might require messing around with some intricate parts. Wiring up the smartgun system seems to be a pain. Considering how hard it is to hook up a smartgun system externally or internally (4 and 8 thresholds respectively), that'll make it harder to assemble. If you go with parts in a socket A into socket B like an Ikea sofa for all firearms, then those details might not matter.
ShadowDragon8685
I haven't gotten any plans from my players as-of yet. But I know that one of them is a very industrious type person; in every game I've ever known him, or known him to tell a story of, he thinks big and impressive. In my Exalted Modern game, he started with a Fortune 500 company and had plans to expand, expand, expand. Even when I threw him a curveball and pressed him into buying (at a firesale price, of course, but still enough to nearly wipe out his organization's liquid capital) the Luxor Las Vegas casino-hotel, he was making plans to not only refurbish and reopen it, but also to use the grounds to host his superhero lair (of course) and a comic book printing/publishing company.

His Pixie Hacker from SR3? Yeah, she snuck into the Renraku ARC after everything went pear-shaped and Deus escaped, after the place got sealed up, and she brought the reactors online to run the manufacturing lines and sell the product wholesale on the black market.

So frankly, this is just what I'm expecting.
Yerameyahu
If that's the stuff you let them do, then yup, you should expect it.

(The general 'you', ShadowDragon. smile.gif )
ShadowDragon8685
That SR3 thing with the pixie hacker wasn't even me.

And yeah, Exalted? That kind of thing is to be expected, it's not even remotely out of the range of possibility.
Sengir
Homemade AT weapons (sticky bombs, primitive rocket launchers/recoilless guns) sound feasible with the level of desktop manufacturing that is seemingly common, they are hard to come by normally, and the broad use of drones means there is a demand for such weapons. But assault rifles? A new AK-97 cost 500 ¥ and has Availability ~4, that makes building one yourself a nice hobbyist project but economically completely unfeasible. Just call 0800-UNCLEIVAN and order a few crates of Chinese knock-offs...
3278
QUOTE (ShadowDragon8685 @ Feb 16 2012, 08:36 AM) *
So, if they do decide to do it like that - put their shop equipment on the truck and haul it to the jungles, download the plans for cheap, simple submachine guns and assault rifles, and get the mechanically-inclined people to start working on assembling them, what would be the likely rate of manufacture for simple guns in the style of an AK-47/Sten/Greasegun?

Give me $20,000 and some stock, and I'll make something a lot less simple than a Sten in my garage. Once everything was up and running and trouble-shot, I see no reason I couldn't produce several a day. In Shadowrun - with its 3d printing and nanotech, and another 60 years of DIY CNC - I'd expect the process to be much cheaper and easier. Whether it's cheaper and easier than buying or stealing someone else's old guns is another matter, and one only you can judge.
Saint Sithney
QUOTE (noonesshowmonkey @ Feb 16 2012, 06:29 PM) *
Making some pipe-guns is one thing, but trying to produce gas-operated, automatic weapons that aren't going to shake themselves apart, have constant failures and be able to hit a target beyond 20 meters is asking the moon.


Slam Bang's still not a bad call even if it's only serving the place of a sidearm.

Would you rather have one guy with a 500 yen AK-97 and a couple mags, or would you rather have 100 guys with 5 yen slam-bangs? Maybe in real life, it'd be the first, but SR rules make cumulative dodge penalties into "automatic" hits after the first handfull of shooters.
KarmaInferno
QUOTE (kzt @ Feb 17 2012, 03:39 AM) *
The few people who might sell guns for scrap metal also know how to ensure they ARE scrap. You might be able to pay off someone to not destroy the guns they are selling as scrap, but otherwise you are going to up with scrap.

Actually, you might be surprised what is entailed in "de-weaponizing" firearms, after which they can be sold to pretty much anyone.

Most of the time, the ATF requires just cutting the lower receiver into 3-4 parts. Most everything else can be left as-is.

A skilled smith can re-forge those pieces back into a lower receiver with a little effort. Or more likely manufacture a new lower receiver and re-use the rest of the parts.

The idea is to make the weapon difficult to be restored to working condition, especially by an average layman, not to completely destroy the gun. It's more or less due to practicality - a few cuts with a torch is easy to do and doesn't take too much time or resources, whereas requiring more complete destruction can quickly make processing a large number of decommissioned weapons expensive and time consuming.


-k
kzt
QUOTE (KarmaInferno @ Feb 17 2012, 06:32 PM) *
Actually, you might be surprised what is entailed in "de-weaponizing" firearms, after which they can be sold to pretty much anyone.

Most of the time, the ATF requires just cutting the lower receiver into 3-4 parts. Most everything else can be left as-is.

A skilled smith can re-forge those pieces back into a lower receiver with a little effort. Or more likely manufacture a new lower receiver and re-use the rest of the parts.

Those rules are for import of non-working guns, they require that the receiver be destroyed by a torch or cut off-wheel, bandsaws are not allowed. The reason is that a torch or cut-off wheel removes enough material that you cannot rebuild the receiver. You have 3 missing 1/4" slots. You would have to build a new one. Which isn't that hard if you have a machine shop and the plans, but not something that anyone without can casually do.

If you only have to make the receiver then it is going to be a lot easier than if you are supposed to make the barrel, bolt, etc.
CanRay
Heh, reminds me of the "Decommissioned" airplane engines after WWI in Canada. The "destruction" of the engines consisted of on sledgehammer blow that always "seemed" to hit the inspection plate, which could be bought legally by civilians.

Civilians and former military pilots would buy the engines as "scrap", replace the inspection plate, and then get an airframe. Bam, milspec engine for a bush plane.

Of course, these birds were essential for Canada at the time, so I'm not surprised it was a wink and a nod deal. wink.gif
KarmaInferno
Then again there's weapons and other gear that disappears by simple expedient of paperwork errors. smile.gif

If it was stuff scheduled to be disposed of anyway, most of the time people won't bother checking.




-k
maine75man
My father had an old gun magazine article where a guy made a submachine gun by hand. The feat was pretty impressive. If I remember correctly he did it from memory. It was made out of scrape metal with hand tools. Stuff like pliers, files, a hammer, and a blow torch. The article did point out that the gun had several flaws. It was a smoothbore, had no safety, no selective fire, and crapped out after they ran only one or two clips through it.

Of course given the proper materials you can make most of the components for a firearm with standard table top machine tools. The big stumbling block is a rifled barrel. Rifling can't be done on the average lathe. You need a specialized machine that is usually really big. I'm pretty sure they have to be more then twice the length of any barrel you want to rifle.

In Shadowrun terms I would say you could make a receiver or even a smooth bore gun with a "Gun-smithing Shop" But you'd need a full "Gun-smithing Facility" to make rifled barrels. Although I agree with other posters. Even if you could do it, this approach would be far more time, money, and labor intensive then buying factory made guns and just smuggling them in. Though 3-D printing could actually make it doable depending on how you interpret that technology.
CanRay
Sten guns were made in toy factories. M3 "Grease Guns" were made in lamp factories.
Rip the Jackker
Why not use scrap metal and scrap wood to make bolt-action rifles? You can pack a harder punch per-shot, and will save money on bullets. Also, the metal requirement is much smaller, and the stock can also be made from composite materials, or, in a pinch, plasticrete.

Should be incredibly cheap, and they don't need much training at all.


EDIT: Not much training as compared to fully automatic rifles, anyway, and if you're going with a large number of people, even 10 semi-accurate shots will be worth 100 inaccurate ones.
Yerameyahu
Okay, so you're handmaking guns (and/or bows) from raw materials, and digging moats, and of course training everyone to use the weapons. … How much time do these guys have before the gangs attack, several weeks? :/
Irion
If you put it like that, it sounds more like month...
ShadowDragon8685
I'm anticipating several different things the group might try. Not necessarily all that they will try, or all that they will try at once.

Besides, defending the Jungles whilst trying to make them self-defensible should be fun times. smile.gif
Yerameyahu
Hehe, still: some of these aren't divisible. Most of the plans mentioned sound like they require both training people *and* making weapons from scrounged raw materials (not assembly from parts).

Despite whatever the farmers want, the best solution is for the runners and the NPC runners to go do what they do. smile.gif
Brainpiercing7.62mm
QUOTE (Rip the Jackker @ Feb 18 2012, 06:16 AM) *
EDIT: Not much training as compared to fully automatic rifles, anyway, and if you're going with a large number of people, even 10 semi-accurate shots will be worth 100 inaccurate ones.


In Shadowrun it's completely different: 100 full-auto inaccurate shots via Suppressive Fire or Wide Bursts are worth double or triple the number of semi-automatic shots, easily from the same DP.

Look, an untrained or barely trained civvy with a bolt-action rifle will throw one bullet downrange per turn without about a DP of 4 dice. (if you train them for a skill of 1) And with his statistical 1.33 successes he endangers 1 ganger per turn.

Those same 4 dice could be used to cover a swath of land with full-auto suppressive fire, letting several gangers hit the dirt at the same time, and slowing their advance. Or put that automatic weapon on a pintle mount or a tripod and you can also engage single targets with wide bursts. At the least you can make a guy go full-def, in which case you've already won, because you might still hurt him.

So if anyone is making bolt-action rifles (or worse) they had better not use up resources and money that could have been used to buy another AK, or even better a full-blown LMG with a tripod.
Stahlseele
Forget about GUNS.
Close-Combat, Thrown and Projectile Weapons are cheap and easy.
These are just chemistry/physics, no metallurgy/math or something like that needed.

Molotow Cocktails, Pipe-Bombs, Fragmentation Bombs/Grenades.
A sharpened piece of metal makes a dirty and cheap blade for a weapon or arrow head.
Ballistae are easy to make from car parts and some scrap metal . .
Combine those with 'splosives and you have something cheap and horrible. effective too.
Smallish catapults or trebuchets . .

Ash - House-Wares < = your BEST FRIEND in this situation!
kzt
QUOTE (maine75man @ Feb 17 2012, 09:19 PM) *
Of course given the proper materials you can make most of the components for a firearm with standard table top machine tools. The big stumbling block is a rifled barrel. Rifling can't be done on the average lathe. You need a specialized machine that is usually really big. I'm pretty sure they have to be more then twice the length of any barrel you want to rifle.

I'm told that it's not complex and any decent machine shop can build a button rifling rig.
Christian Lafay
I skimmed over some of this thread so I might have missed it but I don't think I saw anyone mention semtex. Plastic explosives at home is a classic of the Anarchist Cookbook. And I would think a copy would be easy to find. In my mind a see a bunch of systems rigged together like a battle-net making the world's coolest and deadliest video game for a GUI. When group of Bad Guys C gets too close to charge 139.... BOOM. Remote detonation. While it's not the kind of weapon that this thread is talking about it is still a weapon.
Stahlseele
Yah, 'splosives for the win!
Also, do it yourself thermite.
Christian Lafay
QUOTE (Stahlseele @ Feb 18 2012, 06:47 PM) *
Yah, 'splosives for the win!
Also, do it yourself thermite.

Exactly. If thermite isn't the answer it's cause you didn't make enough. And the recipe is so simple smile.gif
Tanegar
QUOTE (3278 @ Feb 17 2012, 11:20 AM) *
Give me $20,000 and some stock, and I'll make something a lot less simple than a Sten in my garage. Once everything was up and running and trouble-shot, I see no reason I couldn't produce several a day. In Shadowrun - with its 3d printing and nanotech, and another 60 years of DIY CNC - I'd expect the process to be much cheaper and easier. Whether it's cheaper and easier than buying or stealing someone else's old guns is another matter, and one only you can judge.

That's a nifty-looking gun. Bullpup bolt-action, is it? With a Picatinny rail over the barrel, and a grip from a... PSG-1, maybe?
3278
QUOTE (KarmaInferno @ Feb 18 2012, 02:32 AM) *
Actually, you might be surprised what is entailed in "de-weaponizing" firearms, after which they can be sold to pretty much anyone.

This is the problem the UK has faced, with people re-weaponizing de-weaponized firearms, and even weaponizing replicas.

QUOTE (maine75man @ Feb 18 2012, 05:19 AM) *
Of course given the proper materials you can make most of the components for a firearm with standard table top machine tools. The big stumbling block is a rifled barrel. Rifling can't be done on the average lathe. You need a specialized machine that is usually really big. I'm pretty sure they have to be more then twice the length of any barrel you want to rifle.

Yeah, but not a lot bigger than that in the other dimensions. In practical terms, it's pretty similar to any boring machine, mechanically. But it's definitely something that can be done "by-hand" [by which I mean "on-bench"].

QUOTE (Stahlseele @ Feb 18 2012, 04:51 PM) *
Forget about GUNS.

How about not, "Forget about GUNS," but rather, "don't forget about all the awesome non-gun possibilities, too." A lot of crude home-made devices can be quite effective: I'm a huge fan of explosives, gasses, and the ever-popular Molotov for exactly this cost/benefit reason. But there is a reason that firearms have become the go-to personal combat weapon of the present and foreseeable future, and that's because they work real good at killing folk while keeping you from getting killed, most particularly if those folk don't have firearms of their own. If the gangers have assault rifles and the defenders have leaf-spring ballistae and scrap-metal swords, it's not going to end well for the defenders. But a lot of those other possibilities you mention are useful, as well.
AppliedCheese
Best modern comparison would be the Pakistan Federated Tribal Areas, specifically near the Khyber pass. Some of the residents there have become master gunsmiths, and pass the trade on through the family. Due to its remoteness and the market, its become a viable trade for them for some 80 odd years, and many families are now 4th or 5th generation home made gun makers.

The best among them can make any gun in the world provided they have the plans and a down payment, in two-three days using hand tools and renaissance-early industrial revolution technology. The AK-47 is, of course, a favorite, and generally larger guns increase production time and price exponentially, but so long as it works on mechanical, self-powered principles they can make it. Obviously things with power like miniguns or chainguns, are a no go, and optics are ground glass only.

So, I would say pre-smart gun, if your runner for some reason has that skill set, he and his blacksmiths shop of apprentices could presumably make 125-150 AK style weapons a year. Of course, the odds that you happen to have a shadowrunner who is a 5th generation master of using renaissance technology to make firearms is pretty low...but if you had a skilled up artisan (gunsmith) with knowledge skills in DIY gun assembly using hand tools and minor industrial processes, there's your comparison.
Sengir
QUOTE (maine75man @ Feb 18 2012, 05:19 AM) *
The big stumbling block is a rifled barrel. Rifling can't be done on the average lathe.

My thoughts exactly. Take the imagge 3278 linked for example, you will notice that the bolt is just sitting in the open without a barrel around it...milling a block of Al (I'm assuming they didn't use steel) is one thing, making a decent barrel is something else entirely. Which means another set of machines, another set of skills, et cetera.

Furthermore, the kind of machine which drills or grinds a 1 m deep hole without significant deviation is HEAVY, because you don't want to whole thing to be knocked out of alignment easily. So forget about putting it on a truck, unless by "truck" you mean "semi-trailer" wink.gif
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