Hey, anyone know about the phillipino homemade guns.

Here's some articles about them:
http://www.dausa.org/article.php?story=20020705162212692
http://www.pcij.org/imag/Dispatches/danao.html
http://illegaleconomy.com/firearms/faithful_replicas_of_guns_and_rifles_produced.php

Revolvers run like 20-30 bucks a pop. Armscor is also a phillipino company. Has anyone ever seen one of their AK-22s or M1600 .22 m16 copy? They also make 1911s. Well, those guns sell for much cheaper there. The .22 m16 copy is only around 30 dollars.

Anyway, does anyone have anymore info on these guns than what those articles tell us. There's a few more articles, but they don't go into much on how the construction is done, ect. I'm really wanting to know how they make the barrel. In one of the articles, he said the gun he bought in the early 80s couldn't hit the broadside of a barn, then he said the new ones are just as accurate as the real thing, implying that they used to not be rifled but now are.

Also, there's gotta be an easy way to rifle we in US don't know about. How could the pioneer people in the 1700s rifle a barrel?

Revolvers run like 20-30 bucks a pop. Armscor is also a phillipino company. Has anyone ever seen one of their AK-22s or M1600 .22 m16 copy? They also make 1911s. Well, those guns sell for much cheaper there. The .22 m16 copy is only around 30 dollars.

Filipino made guns are a joke….
There is a place there in central Philippines in the island of Cebu called Danao where gun making is considered a cottage industry and its already considered a legal gun manufacturing facility by the government. The guns are labeled Paltik or fakes so its cheaper…You can even buy a 45 caliber pistol for two dollars if you buy it direct from the manufacturer.
An M-16 lookalike can be bought for 10 bucks!
Back in the early days when I was traveling to the Philippines these guns are worse than they were today where at least their craftsmanship has improved.…It can injure the users more than the target.
I have seen these guns drop the bullet in front of the firer .. In some cases the barrel just exploded injuring the user and those around him.

Its "deterrent" part in having those things is the” fear factor”…anybody carrying a firearm there is considered dangerous although its not yet known if that person carrying it really knows how to use it..
Besides ammo is expensive there so its difficult to get improve your shooting skills.

Carrying guns is considered macho in that culture…but is a magnet for trouble. The cops can even arrest or kill you if you are known to carry a gun.
Some years back the Japanese Yakuza were the big customer for those guns.

I have seen a specimen of a special revolver that fires 0.223 ammunition( or ammo for M-16). As it can carry 6 bullets. They moment you fired all you can't hold the guns as metal part of the revolver is so hot..

They use primitive machineries before and don't even have any quality standards...If tje finished gun can fire one shot then it pass their standards...

They can copy any firearm but the performance is remains questionable mostly unreliable.
Yes they are cheap but I doubt if you really want to have it in your home to protect yourself as it has a sinister reputation of injuring the owner.
If you really like quality ,,better stick with the originals…..its better to spend more money yet safe to use than risk with cheaper guns where there is a likelihood of injuring your self .

BTW the one made by Armscor is satisfactory but regarding robustness it cannot compare with the US made version.
These Filipino made guns in particular the local M -16 are known to spit the ammo after just two to three magazines….and their accuracy at 300 yards is still not as good as the originals...

Also, there's gotta be an easy way to rifle we in US don't know about. How could the pioneer people in the 1700s rifle a barrel?

Well back in the day, most muskets were smooth-bore weapons using ball-shaped ammunition fired at relatively low velocity. Musket balls were loose fitting in the barrel, and upon firing, the ball bounced off the sides of the barrel; so the final direction on leaving the muzzle was unpredictable. In the late 1800's the term rifled musket was used to distinguish the difference between smoothbore & rifled long arms.


Assuming you have the required tools & Machinery to be making firearms & Barrels, which require the use of a machine shop in most cases; then making a barrel & rifling it should be feasible with proper knowledge. Some good books on the topic are the series by Hoffman, which are located on the FTP & in the Links section of the site's Forums.

Still it is much easier to buy a pre-made barrel, from a barrel maker. Most of these companies specialize in making barrels only. These barrels can be purchased at a relatively low cost for the amount of work needed to make your own.


There are various ways to rifle a barrel. The old way was to cut rifling one groove at a time on a rifling machine. A more modern way is to pull a gang of broaches through the barrel, which cuts all the grooves into the bore simultaneously. Another way is to insert a very hard mandrel, which bears the reverse of the intended rifling pattern, into the bore, then the outside of the barrel is hammer forged (beaten) to impress the rifling into the bore. A fourth method is to pull a very hot rifling "Button" through the bore, turning it as it progresses, which iron melts the rifling into the barrel. All of these methods are satisfactory if done properly.


Here is a link that describes the methods used in barrel rifling. Also most of the books mentioned in this article are located on our FTP & or in the Forums links page.

REAMING THE HOLE.

"When two or three barrel makers gather together, the conversation turns to the difficulties and problems of reaming a good hole." Observations of a barrel maker.

Every barrel maker I can think of who cut rifles or button rifles their barrels will ream prior to rifling. Makers of hammer forged barrels require a very fine surface finish in the bore and they invariably hone their barrels to get the required finish.

The reamer is mounted on the end of a long tube through which the coolant oil is pumped, but at far lower pressures than are used in the Gun Drill. Now it is the reamer that is rotated, at about 200 rpm and the barrel is pulled over the reamer at about one inch a minute.

Harold Hoffman's books on barrel making give descriptions and drawings of bore reamers which will be very familiar to readers of "Gunsmithing" by Roy Dunlap published in 1950, and even more familiar to readers of "Advanced Gunsmithing" by W.F.Vickery published in 1939! Would-be barrel makers who read these hallowed texts can be forgiven for thinking that reaming technology has not advanced much in sixty years and has reached level of perfection where improvement is difficult. Nothing can be further from the truth. Over the past few years there has been a quiet revolution in reamer technology and these days most bore reamers are made of Tungsten Carbide instead of High Speed Steel.

Reamers made from Carbide last at least ten times longer than HSS ones and generally leave a superior surface finish. They can also be run at much higher feeds and speeds - 500 R.P.M and 10 inches a minute is not uncommon! Reamer shape has also changed. Reamers have become shorter and shorter over the past ten years and do not have pilots on them as reamers of old.

Reaming a good hole is still something of an art though. Several barrel makers I know refuse to buy bore reamers claiming that you cannot buy a good bore reamer and I have to say there is something to that. Barrel makers who do buy their bore reamers get them from the reamer makers who advertise in this magazine, (Precision Shooting), but generally the reamer needs some hand honing to get it to "run right" and leave a good finish. In my experience, the only reamer maker whose reamers do not require attention before using them is Dan Green of Forgreens. Dan is a really great reamer maker and his chamber reamers are also quite outstanding - I only wish he would make reamers in Carbide!

After reaming, the resultant hole has a good finish and has good dimensional uniformity along its length. The barrel is now ready for rifling.

CUT RIFLING.

"Cut rifling is a real hard way to go. I can't think why anyone should go that route." I forget the name of the Australian reloading tool maker who made this observation, but there have been times when I have hartily agreed with him!

There are currently three main methods by which rifling is put into the barrel. By far the oldest method, invented in Nuremberg in around 1492, is the cut rifling technique. Cut rifling creates spiral grooves in the barrel by removing steel using some form of cutter.

In its traditional form, cut rifling may be described as a single point broaching system using a "hook" cutter. The cutter rests in the cutter box, a hardened steel cylinder made so it will just fit the reamed barrel blank and which also contains the cutter raising mechanism.

The cutter box is mounted on a long steel tube, through which coolant oil is pumped, and which pulls the cutter box through the barrel to cut the groove. As it is pulled through it is also rotated at a predetermined rate to give the necessary rifling twist. A passing cut is made down each groove sequentially and each cut removes only about one ten thousandth of an inch from the groove depth.

After each passing cut the barrel is indexed around so that the next groove is presented for its passing cut. After each index cycle the cutter is raised incrementally to cut a ten thousandth deeper on the next cycle, this process being continued until the desired groove diameter is reached. It takes upwards of an hour to finish rifling a barrel by this method.

The rifling machines found in custom barrel shops are invariably Pratt & Whitney machines. For the first world war some thousands of "Sine Bar" riflers, so called because a sine bar is used to determine the rate of twist, were built to satisfy the demand for barrels at that time. These belt driven single spindle machines weighed about a ton and were suitable for the wooden floored workshops of that era. After WW1 many of these machines became available quite cheaply on the surplus market and so in the inter-war years these were the standard rifling machine in barrel shops across the World.

At the start of World War Two, Pratt & Whitney developed a new, "B" series of hydraulically powered rifling machines, which were in fact two machines on the same bed. They weighed in at three tons and required the concrete floors now generally seen in workshops by this time. About two thousand were built to satisfy the new demand for rifle barrels, but many were broken up after the war or sold to emerging third world countries building up their own arms industry.

Very few of these hydraulic machines subsequently became available on the surplus market and now it is these machines which are sought after and used by barrel makers like John Krieger and "Boots" Obermeyer. In fact, there are probably less of be "B" series hydraulic riflers around today than of the older "Sine Bar" universal riflers.

During World War Two several other methods of rifling barrels were developed which greatly speeded up and simplified the process. So the Pratt & Whitney "B" series of Hydraulic riflers remain the last word in cut rifling machine technology.

Due to the very limited availability of these machines there are several barrel makers who have made their own machines. But, as will be appreciated from the description of the process above, these machines are complex and expensive to build.

The techniques of cut rifling has not stood still since the end of the war though. Largely due to the efforts of Boots Obermeyer the design, manufacture and maintenance of the hook cutter and the cutter box has been refined and developed so that barrels of superb accuracy have come from his shop. Cut rifled barrel makers like John Krieger (Krieger Barrels), Mark Chanlyn (Rocky Mountain Rifle Works) and Cliff Labounty (Labounty Precision Reboring) who are fast growing in prominence for the quality and accuracy of their barrels, learned much of their art from Boots Obermeyer, as did I.

In Europe, Shultz & Larson in Denmark were the outstanding protagonists of the cut rifling method and were making 8000 barrels a year. But adherence to workshop methods more suited to the beginning of this century, rather than its end, allowed competitors with newer technology to take their markets. They closed their doors just a few years ago. (However, I am happy to report that the business is now under new ownership and under the guiding hand of Jurgen Neilsen, Shultz & Larson are once again making fine rifle barrels.)

Grunig & Elminger in Switzerland cut rifle their barrels, and Furlac in Austria still make their larger calibre hunting barrels by cut rifling. Tikka, the Finnish hunting rifle makers used to cut rifle some of their barrels, but now that Sako have taken them over, their barrels are made by Sako whose barrels are hammered.

BUTTON RIFLING.

"Any fool can pull a button through a barrel!" Boots Obermeyer.

Up until WW2 rifling was the most time consuming operation in making a rifle barrel and so a lot of effort was put into finding a way to speed up this process. Button rifling is a process that has been flirted with on and off by various large ordinance factories since the end of the 19th century. Today, button rifling is a cold forming process in which a Tungsten Carbide former, which is ground to have the rifling form in high relief upon it, is pulled through the drilled and reamed barrel blank. The lands on the button engrave grooves in the barrel as it is pulled through.

The machinery is quite simple. The button is mounted on a long rod of high tensile steel which is passed through the barrel blank and attached to a large hydraulic ram. The button is mounted in a "rifling head" that rotates the button at the desired pitch or twist as the button is pulled through the barrel. The process takes about a minute to complete.

Breaking the pull-rod or pulling the button off the pull rod is a constant danger in "pull" button rifling, so there are several manufacturers like Hart, for example, who prefer to push the button through the barrel. In this version of the method the button is not attached to the rod, which simply pushes the button up the barrel under the influence of a large hydraulic ram. The trick here is to support the push-rod as it enters the barrel to stop it buckling from the huge forces involved.

There is much opinion that "pull" button rifling is best because the button is kept straight and true as it is pulled through, whereas when pushing the button though the barrel there is an inevitable tendency for the button to tip and yaw so leading to variable bore dimensions. Push-buttoning protagonists deny that this is a problem however - as of course, they would!

Whilst the process is simple, the technology required to get good results is quite advanced which is why it was not until the middle of this century that it became a generally used technique. It was perfected in the late 1940's at the Remington factory at Ilion largely due to the efforts of Mike Walker, who used the workshop of Clyde Hart in nearby Lafayette for some of the experimental work. The button must be very hard and also tough enough not the break up under the stresses involved as it is pulled through the barrel. The lubricants used to keep the button from getting stuck in the barrel must not break down under the very high pressures involved - it takes around 10,000 pounds of force to pull a button down a barrel. The sort of lubricants used in the press moulding business are what button barrel makers pick through to see what suits, though most makers of button rifled barrels are very secretive about lubricant they use!

Button rifling in its common form is an American development and the overwhelming majority of barrels made in the US are rifled this way. Custom shops such as Hart, Lilja, Shilen and the large high production barrel makers like Douglas and Wilson Arms use the buttoning method to rifle their barrels. The technology has spread and there are a few other small custom barrel makers around the world who do button rifling. Neville Madden (Maddco) and Dennis Tobler in Australia. Anshutz in Germany, better known for their .22 target rifles but also a large producer of hunting rifles also button their barrels.

In Europe, where larger more centralised armament factories predominate, the cold forging method of making "hammered" barrels is generally preferred.

HAMMER RIFLING.

The technique of hammer forging rifle barrels was developed by Germany before WW2 because the MG42 machine gun, with 1200 rounds per minute rate of fire, positively ate barrels. The first hammer rifling machine was built in Erfurt in 1939. At the end of the war it was shipped down to Austria ahead of the advancing Russian army, where American technicians were able to get a good look at it.

In this process the barrel blank is usually somewhat shorter than the finished barrel. It is drilled and honed to a diameter large enough to allow a Tungsten Carbide mandrel, which has the rifling in high relief on it, to pass down the blank. The blank is then progressively hammered around the mandrel by opposing hammers using a process called rotary forging. The hammered blank is squeezed off the mandrel like tooth paste and finishes up 30% or so longer than it started.

Today, barrel hammering machines are built by Gesellschaft Fur Fertigungstechnik und Maschinenbau (GFM) in Steyr, Austria. They cost about a half a million dollars and can spit out a barrel every three minutes. These machines have reached a very high degree of development and are so sophisticated that they will not only hammer the rifling into the barrel, but it is also possible to chamber it and profile the outside of the barrel all in the one operation. Only large scale arms manufacturers and ordinance factories have pockets deep enough and barrel requirements insatiable enough that they can afford to buy and run such a machine.

Hammered barrels have never achieved much favour in target shooting. Whilst their proponents laud the virtues of the mirror finish of the bore and its work hardened surface, which gives long life, the barrels tend to be very variable in the uniformity of their dimensions down their length. Also, because the metal is worked completely throughout the barrel there are considerable radial stresses induced which are difficult to remove completely by the usual stress relieving methods. Stainless steels tend to work harden to a much higher degree than Chrome Molybdenum steels and so do not remain malleable enough to hammer forge. Because of this, it is difficult to make stainless barrels this way. Stainless barrels are being hammer forged, but using type 410 steel which has a lower chrome content than the regular 416 steel usually used for making barrels by other methods.

Most of the big hunting rifle makers in Europe hammer forge their barrels. Sako and Tikka in Finland, Heckler & Koch, Steyr and Sauer in Austria. Now, Ruger in the US has started making barrels using this method.

http://www.border-barrels.com/articles/bmart.htm

A mathematician from Emanuel College named George Greenhill developed the formual for calculating twist rates for a given bullet.

Twist = C * D2 / L
(The D2 shoud be D Squared but I am unsure how to accomplish this on the computer.) :rolleyes:

The original value of C was 150, which yields a twist rate in turns per inch, when given the diameter D & the length L of the bullet in inches. The Previous value of C only works to velocities of 1800 F/s above these velocities the value of C should be 180.

Common Rifle Barrel Twist Rates but are not limited to these.
.22 Short = 1 in 24"
.22 Long Rifle = 1 in 16"
.223 Remington = 1 in 12"
.22-250 Remington = 1 in 14"
.243 Winchester = 1 in 10"
6mm Remington = 1 in 9"
.25-06 Remington = 1 in 10"
.257 Wby. Mag. = 1 in 10"
6.5x55 Swedish Mauser = 1 in 7.5"
.260 Remington = 1 in 9"
.270 Winchester = 1 in 10"
.270 WSM = 1 in 10"
7mm-08 Remington = 1 in 9.25"
7mm Rem. SAUM = 1 in 9.25"
7mm Rem. Mag. = 1 in 9.25"
.30 Carbine = 1 in 16"
.30-30 Winchester = 1 in 12"
.308 Winchester = 1 in 12"
.30-06 Springfield = 1 in 10"
.300 WSM = 1 in 10"
.300 Win. Mag. = 1 in 10"
.300 Wby. Mag. = 1 in 10"
.303 British = 1 in 10"
.32 Win. Spec. = 1 in 16"
.338-57 O'Connor = 1 in 10"
.338 Win. Mag. = 1 in 10"
.35 Remington = 1 in 16"
.350 Rem. Mag. = 1 in 16"
.375 H&H Mag. = 1 in 12"
.416 Rem. Mag. = 1 in 14"
.444 Marlin = 1 in 38"
.45-70 Govt. (Marlin and Ruger rifles) = 1 in 20"
.450 Marlin = 1 in 20"
.458 Win. Mag. = 1 in 14"

good day! actually, i am a chemist from armscor and yes, we make cheap .22 rifles. you can visit our website at www.armscor.com.ph - unfortunately some southerners from our country are pirating our products, thud making our reputation scratched. any questions from you will be accomodated immediately.

++++++++

Maybe true, but your english grammar is terrible. :( NBK

In addition to the methods pointed out above, some shops are now using electrical discharge machining (EDM) to rifle barrels.

I think that this shows some promise in the making of improvised barrels. Simply attach the working electrode in place of the cutting head of a hand pull rifling bench. Fit with a slow advance feed, and a tank for the working fluid.

It is slow, but can be done quietly in a comparatively small shop, attracting little notice.

I already have a (crude) homemade EDM sinker machine, and I intend to experiment with such a rifling machine. I will post my results here.
-BW

There was an article in the January 1989 issue of now defunct magazine, 'Firepower' on a Filipino gunsmith and his range of experimental rimfire submachine guns.

These Filipino made guns in particular the local M -16 are known to spit the ammo after just two to three magazines….and their accuracy at 300 yards is still not as good as the originals...[/QUOTE]

If you are referring to the ELISCO variant which is a licensed copy of the COLT M-16 then this is untrue. On my personal gun I have personally fired off in one session five magazines non stop, with nary a hint of it spitting bullets and I was hitting the rifle plate i was shooting at 100 meters. Of course, because I was trying to hit it with bursts of two and three some of the rounds didn't connect.

This is one of the most common misconceptions surrounding this M16 variant in the Philippines, That these rifles when fired through with a lot of rounds and the barrel heats up,it tends to dribble bullets. The ELISCO made M-16 being the most prolific long arm here. Being the owner of a Bushmaster M-4, a Colt M-16, A GM Hydra-matic M-16 and the above mentioned ELISCO M655, I find that the latter three has the same performance all around.

But to be honest, I have not fired any of the four at ranges past 200 meters...

But If you are mentioning one of those illegally manufactured M-16's that
are coming out of Danao, Cebu then I would say it could be the case.
Because of the M-16/M-4 craze among gun owners here in the Philippines they are starting to make lower receivers (reinforced, M-4 type no less ) and uppers...with sometimes bad outcomes.

On a side note not everything from the Philippines is terrible. Rock Island Armory makes some excellent reproductions of the 1911.

As for the threading of a barrel. I know a engineer who threaded his own barrels for homemade muskets, at his house. He said it was a homemade system, but he got rid of it after it broke.