03-08-2014, 02:17 AM
montana Wrote:These were outstanding riveted firearms
: FN MAG machine gun
: Browning 1919 30 caliber machine gun
: MG 42
: M2 Browning 50 caliber machine gun
I have to agree with you there. They did quality riveting with those designs though, with very high-end rivet components that hold machined receiver halves together on the M1919, M2, and MAG58. The MG42 uses high quality sheet steel, quite thick, and a great recoil compensation mechanism. The rivet heads on it are very large.
The MAG58's feed tray cover is probably the best evolution of the MG42's feed tray mechanism. We somehow took good German designs and made them not work with the M60, which is a hybrid between the FG42 Paratroop Rifle and the MG42.
I know that M240's run like raped apes, having been a weapons squad leader, and comparing them to my experiences over the years with the M60. The MAG58 can really be attributed to much of the design work of John Moses Browning, especially looking at the M1918 BAR. The BAR receiver design is heavily influenced by lever gun receivers of the 1800's in the contouring, and his first gas-operated firearm was a converted lever gun with a pivoting trap that replaced the magazine tube band. It was very enlightening to see where the inspiration came from in his designs when my wife took my by surprise one Saturday up to the Browning Museum in Ogden. I highly recommend it for those who are big into firearms design history.
The SAW has a miniature MAG58 feed tray mechanism, but has welds on critical spots on the receiver. It's a piece of garbage in terms of reliability, and used an inverted AK operating mechanism.
I guess who does the riveting and who is behind the design are greater factors, but the riveted box design brings a lot of weight with it, which usually means a long-lasting self-loader. I should have exempted my experiences with the M240 and M2 from my statement really.
I have suspected that the AKM's biggest problem is the sheet steel, the holes for the rivets, and induced wear in those areas. Those were significant engineering challenges for the Russians when they went to mass-produce the AK, since the original prototypes were actually sheet steel, but they couldn't get the process right for production, so they went with a billet steel receiver on the Avtomat Kalashnikov, 7.62mm rifle, introduced in 1947.
They spent the next several years working on not only the sheet metal fabrication and heat treating, but the furniture, developing a laminate wood set for the Modernizirovanniy version of the AK. The rivet arrangement on the AK series does not give me a warm and fuzzy, and when you watch high speed camera of the AK firing, it looks like a rattle trap about to come apart. All that whip probably exacerbates the wear of the rivet holes, and excess tolerance stack, which would be expedited in extreme cold weather or high volume shooting.
The Russians don't make pretty things often, but they will work for a reasonable time period for their needs. Black market economy there has been a way of life for ages, and dollars still speak more than Euros, at least in 2008-2009 they did.