A whole book, eh? Now, I recall there being a bloke on TH-cam who is into old poorly-remembered weapons, and whom has shown some endeavour in writing books in the past. Can't recall his name offhand, but...
"Today on Forgotten Weapons, your chance to win this gun, which is kinda bad but really interesting" Sometimes I feel like Ian really really understands his audience! lol
@@klasandersson7522 If we didn't have to do a transfer fee, I'd pick one up for $20. Unwanted guns need homes just like dogs need homes, I'd adopt them all if I could, but, while space in my house being the limiting factor for dogs, having to do background checks and transfer fees unfortunately just drives the value of a lot of guns to absolute zero realistically, knowing it isn't worth that much of my time and money, and wouldn't be to anyone else either, meaning, you're stuck with it forever.
The phenomenon of a company being bankrupted by announcing a new version too early is often called ‘The Osborne Effect’ after a computer company that suffered this failure.
Obviously the thing with the Liberator was it had to be *cheap* , but I've always wondered.... Liberators cost $2.10, a Mk II Sten cost $11. M3 "Grease Gun" $20. Obviously as a resistance fighter/ guerrilla, you'd trade 20 Liberators for 1 Sten/M3 all day long.. But perhaps the Americans were thinking, 'we want to arm these people...but not too well'. End up with Germans and Japanese shooting captured M3's back at them for one thing. Or even end up fighing communist insurgents down the line well armed with US made guns.
@@Ryan.90I think it was more along the lines of it being harder to airdrop/have resistance fighters be able to conceal a full sized SMG compared to a pocket pistol.
@@Ryan.90 Why drop war weapons that the enemy might find and confiscate before the resistance gets them? Far better to drop a bunch of guns that have no value to the enemy, but the resistance might use to take war effective arms from enemy soldiers or police.
@@Zach-td5mb That'd make sense, but then the whole enterprise was pretty much nonsense? They reckon they made 1,000,000+ Of which 25,000 actually got behind enemy lines. That's 2.5%! Certainly on the Western front it's also pretty much understood now the French resistance has little to no impact on the course of the war. Chairman Moa's principles.... Basically to wage a successful insurgency you need to be contiguous with friendly territory. Like with the Viet Cong in Vietnam.
I remember in engineering school it was drummed into our heads that fully half of an engineer's job is to narrowly define the problem that your design is trying to solve. It was also drummed into us that most designs that "fail" do so not because they're bad designs per se, but because the designers didn't have a clear enough understanding of what their design needed to do. In the forty years or so since I graduated and went into industry I feel those lessons are being increasingly forgotten.
Keep It Simple Stupid, and "design for ease of manufacture" were drummed into mine. I also like "design it only as strong as it needs to be, then double it!" Heard it credited to Kelly Johnson.
@@pb68slab18 Now for automotive design I think the main rule is "Make it as cheap as possible yet strong enough 80% or so will outlast the warranty." That is the only way I could see things like oil pump belts that require the removal of the engine to change becoming common place.
Shiny new pistol: addresses an actual market void, features competent engineering and execution of design goals at a reasonable cost with a high level of craftsmanship. Owner of shiny new pistol: Why does gun hit low and left?
Right handed poorly trained shooter usually the cause of that. The real question as with a Grendel P11 .380 I bought back in the ‘90s, was that the firing pin that hit downrange after it was dry fired. Why yes it was.
@@martinswiney2192 my brother took an old and worn Carpati to the range, not the best pistol to begin with, and when he shot it, it cycled fine until the end, but the recoil popped the triggerguard into disassembly position. *The ENTIRE SLIDE AND BARREL* flew down range, *WITH A ROUND CHAMBERED!* Quality is important, folks.
@ try blowing up a Glock 21 because some idiot (me) shot reloads using bullets for a 45 Colt instead of 45 ACP bullets. .454 diameter vs .451 diameter. That third round was a catastrophic explosion. Not a simple mistake but thats how I roll. It took me years of shooting to quit flinching. Gave me PTBD. Traumatic ballistic disorder. Lol.
The H9 situation is so funny , cus the exact same thing happened to an old computer company. The Osborn 1 was a pretty good computer that was gonna launch to thousands of store preorders. Then they decided to announce they were gonna launch a better version of it at the same price later. Everyone canceled their preorders and the company went out of business immediately.
That wasn’t just a bad design, that design destroyed what should have been a successful business. All for a really stupid CEO/owner. There will always be a demand for SAA pistols. The ZIP22 - no sane person wants that POS
Even as failures, the stories behind them are fascinating. Ranging from "Dang, wished this got a better chance," to "How, on God's green and fertile Earth, do you fumble the ball THAT badly?"
@@christopherreed4723 That is the common wisdom, but eventually, you realize that viewing things through alternative lenses sometimes brings many different things into perfect focus that were once confusingly obscure, and eventually the ineptness and incompetence become harder to believe that corruption to the degree of being willfully bad for america.
That's because a video examining something that could have a ton of "don't do this type of thing" lessons in it will always be better than "this is why the Colt M1911 is still used to this day!" content. :P
Some designs were born losers from the outset, but got made in large numbers anyway because a war was going on and nothing better was available. The Chauchat machine gun and Japanese Type 94 pistol are especially good examples.
My favorite part about the zip 22 is that they made the basic act of firing and chambering a round difficult and potentially dangerous for the user. It takes a real genius to pull that off.
@@plantain.1739 "Guys, guys, hear me out: we're gonna design a new gun and the goal is that it will pick up the nickname 'widowmaker' in the shortest possible time. Cool?"
@@plantain.1739 Rumor is there is a name attached to that level of "genius" it goes by "Douglas Donnelly" owner of the company that was the last firearms maker in the Colt's Armory Complex. Well that seems rather fitting.
As soon as I saw the title, I knew the poor old Zip was going to cop a spray. Oddly enough, for a pistol he besmirches on a regular basis, he's still got the bloody thing!!!!
I own a USFA ZIP-22 and it’s genuinely my favorite piece that I own. It’s so goofy and looking at the patents you can kinda see what they intended to make (not really) and the execution was just not there. Bonus: I took it to the range once with a 110rd drum mag and timed myself on how long it would take to empty the mag. 47 minutes and 2 out of battery discharges later, I got my answer
What Ian says about how _context_ is important when it comes to determining if a gun is good/successful or not reminded me of italian tanks during WW 2. From a nowadays perspective, they are the laughingstock for many, who compare them with the Sherman, the T 34 or german tanks. From the perspective of italian engineers, those tanks made a lot of sense and were actually not bad in the context they were _supposed_ to be used. It's not the fault of the tank when it was designed with combat in mountain terrain in mind, with the ability to climb very well and to hide in small dips and meant to serve as mobile cover and fire support against infantry - but is then used in the african desert to brawl with MBTs. The Liberator pistol is such a great example for this.
There's been so many foldable guns that manufacturers has tried to sell towards secret service people or hired bodyguard stuff it's almost laughable. Each and every single time they fail because "So I can either just carry a regular pistol which is ready to fire the second I grip it, or I can carry around a gun which needs to be assembled before I can fire it." And that Hudson H9 shares the EXACT SAME failure as the Osborne 1 portable computer from back in 1981. Announcing the improved and better version before you've even started to properly sell the first version. It's even called the Osborne effect.
To fail : 1. - Hire Douglas Donnelly of USFA. 2. - let nature take its' course ... For extra credit, hire some Jaguar executives as design and advertising consultants ... lol
@@BenCarpenterWrites Nah, if no one buys that hideous new car they unveiled, it's still a total failure. As artists say, "You can't buy groceries with exposure."
@@josephknaak9034just hire the 400 unskilled temps that worked at Illion! 😂. Then try and have them operate the antique equipment that Marlin’s skilled workforce was building rifles on!
The Hudson H9 is part of forgotten weapons lore at this point. And i think Ian (and Carl) have learned a lot from it too. Especially how viewers perceive their videos when talking about products. For some viewers the H9 videos were literally an endorsement for a purchase.
I can’t imagine that *anyone* thought the H9 was *the* end all beat all pistol to have. Especially if you could only have 1 pistol. It was and remains an interesting design exercise and a neat thing to have.
@@randymagnum143 i knew several dudes who thought that unfortunately. Its the same mentality as car guys obsessed with “the best car” but have no parameters for what its even being used for just a vague “best”
Note that most of the advances in the last 80 years have been in manufacturing, NOT firearm design. Even the much-vaunted Glock was a combination of a Browning tilting-barrel lockup system, the Roth-Steyr trigger/striker...and Gaston Glock's expertise with plastics, which let them make a frame that was lighter and cheaper than anything else on the market.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Polymers have been used to make stocks and other parts since the '50s. And it was HK who debuted the polymer frame pistol, in 1970. Gaston Glock wasn't an innovator or inventor by any stretch of the imagination. The Glock is just a hodgepodge of already existing features he threw together. Sort of the same process as Kurt Cobain inventing the Jag-Stang guitar :P The M9 is really just a modernized variant of the Walther P-38. That doesn't detract from the fact it is an excellent pistol. Both Beretta and Glock deserve some points for execution. There is nothing new in firearms design. At this point, there is no need for further development unless a radical new technology is discovered. The US Military replacing their service sidearm is really just an exercise in wasting money. Same goes for replacing the AR platform, which can be easily modified to fire more powerful cartridges for a lot less money. If you want an example of a NATO country that NEEDS a new service rifle, it is the UK. The L85 is a complete piece of shite that definitely can't be retrofitted safely to fire 6.8mm.
"Today on Forgotten Weapons, your chance to win this gun, which is kind bad but really interesting" "I don't want it because it's not chambered in .32 French Longue." -Ian McCollum probably.
For the Mamba, the main problem was it's main feature. "all stainless steel". Stainless steel being subject to galling is the reason the Randall 1911 (1983) was marketed as the first reliable all-stainless-steel semiauto (not the first to be made, but the earlier attempts were special series and "Gucci pistols", not really destined to hard use). The designers of the Mamba (1976) passed to production without having solved the problem they should have first.
The AMT corporation made a good stainless 1911 but for some reason decided to make things like the trigger frame cutout and a few other things enough out of spec that they wouldn't take a lot of aftermarket parts. Qc was iffy. I actually saw one that had no rifling on one side of the barrel . I had one of their AMT backup 45acps that functioned well, but the bullets tumbled out of the barrel making it lethal but inaccurate 😊
I think Ian made a very apt point, guy who knew a lot about shooting handguns but not a lot about making them.. Suppose the question to ask would have been *why* aren't more guns made in stainless, (it was invented in 1913). I had a similar thought with cars, luckily now we have the internet to answer these questions.... Turns out stainless wears the dies super fast compared to stamping mild steel. Hence why the famous stainless cars, (DMC DeLorean and Tesla Cybertruck basically) are so angular.
It is all a matter of using the right alloy. Martensitic alloys tend to be best for making guns and austenitic alloys tend to be OK too. Again, the specific alloy needs to be carefully considered. The real problem is if you try to use a ferritic stainless steel to make a gun, which is what I suspect they were using. Other potential problems could include impurities in the alloy and poor heat treatment. 416 (martensitic) is the gold standard these days for making firearms.
@ReboyGTR the combination of those characteristics were unique at the time. A collapsible AR you could shoot folded that was essentially otherwise still an AR
This is a small thing to add to a video, but I genuinely really appreciate how you handle your handguns and where you point them. It definitely makes you seem more professional and makes watching you more pleasant than some of the firearm-TH-camrs pointing them just slightly off the camera with no trigger discipline.
In video gamer world..if they ask you to "pre order first" or ask for "donations" first you should walk away asap. It's going to end up like most games...dead game.
@@SCH292Different thing The Osborne effect is the prospect of a future better product cannibalizing your current sales. Preorders are just shit for the consumer since you pay before you can get reliable information on a working product.
Stainless on stainless has a huge tendency to fall in general. It really requires folks with really good knowledge of the material and firearms to pick the right combination of alloys and treatment to minimize the issue.
Yeah, sliding similar stainless steels over each other is asking for galling, which is a form of repeated cold welding and tearing. Dissimilar stainlesses are generally less prone to this but one or other may be less machinable or not able to be cast for instance.
It's not too much of a problem if you use martensitic stainless, heat treat everything nice and hard, and lubricate appropriately. The common austenitic types however, are another matter. Can't be hardened by heat treatment, and will gall easily even with good lubrication. There are some special grades like Nitronic 60 that are highly galling resistant, but you can bet they are a lot more expensive.
Hudson didn't have a marketing problem, their marketing was supernaturally perfect. The problem was manufacturing defects from subcontractors, which led to mass returns of guns, which led to cash flow problems, which led to not paying new vendors, which led to shortage, which led to cannibalizing returned guns to fix/make fewer guns, which led to bankruptcy, which led to disassembling all returned customer guns & tossing the parts into a bin in order to write down the cost of assets in court. Perfect example of a company putting marketing before product.
Yes, this. I like mine but don't shoot it because when the striker breaks there's no way to get a replacement. It would be nice if Daniel Defense would make key replacement parts for the "legacy Hudsons."
There are a lot of details that go into producing anything especially firearms and it's hard to get them all right. They were a husband and wife team from what I recall and had the best intentions. I personally like mine a lot even though I haven't had a lot of rounds through it. I bought it more as a collectible than a carry gun though. Sometimes things don't work out, but they gave it their all and I'm glad they created it.
It wasn't subcontractors. It was an engineering and design failure, and lack of quality control with respect to checking those outsourced components for failure modes. The subcontractors made the parts exactly to Hudson blueprints and specifications. Hudson quality control used their customers to see if the guns held up. That's not how you do it and remain successful.
Going to take a few guesses at some of the ways commercial handguns fail - Targeting too niche a market - Too expensive for the market it's aimed at - Ergonomic and/or mechanical issues (Zip22 comes to mind for this) - Little to no differentiating factors in a mature, saturated market
Forgetting guns are machines and need refinement. Tons of guns fail for that reason. Even when they try to just copy an existing popular or famous design. Just making things the right shape is easy. Not knowing where you can cut corners. Not knowing which tolerances can be loose or tight. Not knowing what the best material is to make something out of rather than something that just kinda sorta works. These are all major issues in the design of any machine people often gloss over.
Don't toy with me. I'm out 1500 bucks for the Military and Police model with the .45 conversion and about 10 magazines. 1500 in the mid 80's was a lot of money. I ended up carrying a Detonics Scoremaster, another oddball, but a great gun.
@@oldesertguy9616 Had it only did what it was supposed to. It was revolutionary and the concept ten steps forward instead of one. It looked awesome and had one of the biggest names behind it but... I think it was Elmer Keith who said only accurate guns are interesting, but to me only reliable guns matter.
Man when the Mamba came out, I thought I just had to have one. Of course I never had an opportunity to get one. I had a buddy who subscribed to Soldier of Fortune magazine and the Mamba had the inside back cover slick add. It looked great and man my eye teeth hurt I wanted one so much. I settled for a M1911A1 because they were very available for a reasonable price and I knew the M1911 from my days as a soldier humping a radio through the jungle of Vietnam with a M1911A1 on my hip. It was the only gun I actually fired in Nam, not all that sure if I hit anything but there were blood trails coming from the ambush point where the VC had tried to take our my wire party as we lay landline wire from an OP back to the base to catch some S4 yard thieves. Ah the 70's with hippies smoking pot and young men fleeing to Canada to avoid the draft, free love, flower children who would bed down with you for a smoke.
Next Up on Forgotten Weapons: Failed Calibers such as 30 SC, 45 GAP, 327 Fed Mag and 357 Sig. Working title: "How to fail making a caliber the market said "Meh" to.
I feel like the .327 was a great idea, but was never put in guns people wanted. I don't want a 2 5/8" 6 shot J frame , but I would have bought a 5" 10 shot N frame in a heartbeat! .30 Supercarry has only been put in turd guns. If USPSA would drop the minimum caliber requirement from .354" to .312" (it meets Minor Powerfactor), they would have sold a bunch more.
10:33 This is a lovely example of the osborne effect. Shortest version of the name is that in the 80's a computer company called osborne did the same thing, hyped up a product that was nowhere near being done, touting how it would make the at the time current model useless, causing no sales, causing insolvency.
And even then, only in a context where the opposition doesn't use X-ray scanners. Because on that screen, it may not look exactly like a pistol, but it'll look enough like one to get booted to secondary inspection. And then you're an *ex* smuggler. My problem with the fold-a-Glock isn't so much that deploying it takes longer than you'll probably have, but that the necessary changes to the trigger guard mean it won't fit *any* available holster. So you *have* to carry it folded up in your cargo pocket, or hollowed-out book, or the oversized hip flask with the false bottom.
I think it was more about eliminating the silhouette of a handgun than it was making the gun smaller. If you drop the folded gun into a khaki cargo pocket, its more rectangular profile would resemble a large phone or maybe a tool of some kind, not the typical L shape of a pistol. That said, I remember it being stupidly expensive compared to a normal Glock handgun and it solves an issue most of us don't have, so it was still borderline pointless.
IIRC the marketing hype of the folding Glock, it was to create an outline that doesn't scream "gun." They demo'd it on a hip holster that looked more like a cell phone case, and with a square outline, it was more like a cellphone with a chunky case (or in insulin pump), which no one would ever bat an eye at nowadays. You'd wear it on your belt, and with a cover garment, it didn't matter that you printed, because it was a square outline that didn't look like a gun, and more like a cell phone. To draw, you could flick the grip up and lock it and draw like normal, with the magazine already in the gun from the flip process.
The Bren Ten definitely counts among these failed pistols at well. It got killed by logistics and supply issues. They didn't have an adequate and reliable supplier of magazines.
@@danielwatters1203I read that the magazine supply issue was related to the original design being intended to work with both 45 and 10mm but not working well with either, so D&D had to order a new batch of 10mm only magazines but it was after deposits had been made and customers wanted their guns now and the new mags hadn't shown up yet.
I would include borchardt and luger into this list aswell. "My pistol is the best, no need to improve!" fast forward few years and someone improved it a tiny bit into a beyond amazing product for the time period
@@dbmail545 We called the Parabellums "Parade Pistols" as they are neat looking and shoot well while clean with proper ammunition. While crawling in mud, snow and dirt one would rather have something like an FN High Power though. Doesn't even crack if one is forced to use those hot 9mm SMG rounds in it.
Stainless steel is notorious for Galling. I remember reading an article about the challenges S&W ran into with their 600 series of pistols. (639-659) Galling was so bad, they almost gave up. They ended up using 2 very different alloys of Stainless. One for slides, and one for frames. You can be a great designer, or machinist,, but no matter how good you are, you're not going to get 2 sheets of sand paper to easily slide across each other. 😊
To be fair a lot of supposed innovation is reintroducing ideas that someone did before. Case in point. The toggle-linked action of the C93 Borsharct and the Luger are considered the first striker fired handguns. And the Glock 17 wasn’t the first polymer framed handgun. The H&K VP-70 (probably most famous these days as that gun from Aliens) did it first but failed due to the end of the Cold War and questionable design decision like no slide-lock and a staple gun trigger.
Your videos are very, very educational Ian. I shoot only occasionally, but love manufacture and design details. That said, one omission from this vid is, "What is Success?" Make them for 5 years, profitably?, Get a military/police contract? , Sell 5 thousand- sell 10 thousand- etc?, Most shooters remember it fondly? , Price increases in the re-sale market? I honestly don't know. And you are the greatest source of weapons knowledge I can name.
The thing Hudson did, making an ill-timed statement of "Hey, we're going to bring out an _even better_ version of our super-cool product!" only to have everyone decide to wait for it and stop buying the already super-cool product and thus kill off the company that made said super-cool product, that's happened before in several fields.
Ian, as a retired senior engineering lecturer, everything that you are saying is formally taught in Universities, in a product design module. Its called the design process, and usually it is as follows: from market research, a product brief is formulated, from that, and with other technology /feasibility studies, and other requirements, a formal Design Specification for the gun is produced. Once an agreed Design Specification or Technical Specification for the gun is produced, this is known as the target specification. From now on Concepts generation and feasibility / calculations etc are performed to validate each separate gun concept sketched out. Then its choosing the best overall concept that meets the Technical Specification of the gun. This is to meet performance , cost, manufacturability etc. With the best chosen gun concept, then starts the layout design of the chosen gun concept, where everything is, which obviously entails the ergonomics of the gun to the user, ie, balance, recoils, fit to hand etc. After the layout of the gun is established, the detail design of the parts of the gun are then done, usually by now, the design of the gun would use some sort of 3D solid modelling package, like Solidworks, or Catia. After that comes the rapid prototype of the gun, via 3D printing, after that another review, and a big decision to commit to a few off metal manufactured test prototypes. Once they have been tested , and you are happy with the gun, its just technical drawings , further prototypes etc , and then the fun really begins! The biggest question will be; does the gun that you have designed meet the technical specification , and all it's requirements, if so , you have a product, but now go try and sell it! Oh I forgot, unless your gun brings something new, or a distinct advantage over other guns, , you might not be able to flog them! Even if its a great gun! I am sure I have forgotten some stages of the design process, but its essentially what is needed to ensure even a small possibility of success!
Ian makes a good point that, while I might personally dislike them, the P365 really changed the game like crazy on carry pistols. 6+1 used to be plenty, now 10-12+1 is the expectation for a pistol that is even smaller than yesterday’s staples and absolutely crushed the 5-shot .38 revolver crowd. As someone who hates the Sig for how it shoots, it’s really crazy to see how every other gun company has chased that design (much to my chagrin).
@10:40 IIRC the R51 was actually initially an AAC internal project for a full size integrally suppressed handgun similar to the Maxim 9. Thats why they went with the Pedersen system from the Model 51, as the rear locking fixed barrel made it simpler to suppress in theory. Then they got devoured by Cerburus & the whole project was redirected to Remington & pushed toward the then marketing hotness of single stack 9s, which to be fair was more in line with the historical Remington gun anyway. What killed pretty much all of Remington under Cerburus was their entire strategy was built around nostalgia marketing, & lowest possible cost combined with lowest common denominator engineering. They deliberately designed guns & QC around the market research of 'most buyers shoot less than 50 rounds a year through a gun, if they shoot it all' and absolutely lowest possible cost of production while sticking to the magical 'at or around $300' price point. They were making guns designed to be worse than a HiPoint, but cost 2x as much, but LOOK like well manufactured $500 guns. I remember an engineer that used to work at Remington in this period had a (now defunct) blog writing about this (vaguely but apparent as to what he was referring to) the R9 & R45 & it's design specks handed down directly from marketing to the engineers. From an engineering perspective it made perfect sense,for a clean sheet design, use as many currently production critical components as possible, to lower costs, design everything else around ease of production first, to lower costs, use use the same dimensions for everything for both calibers, to reduce cost, has to be high capacity in both 45 & 9 for marketing reasons, striker fired, for cost & marketing, but we can also cheap out on building it because the soec only calls for a 500 round lifespan since based on research most users won't hit that in 5 years. Also cut QC because its cheaper to swap guns until you give them a good one or they give up than make it right first or fix it, also most won't even put a full mag through it anyway so they'll never notice. They met their design spec perfect, just marketing really didn't understand the market at all, which doesn't see even their toys as 'toys' but life saving equipment, & selling deliberately shitty guns to the lower end of the market as essentially a scam. HiPoint gets a pass as they dont pretend to be anything but a shitty brick that only mostly works. Remington was shitty wearing the skin suit of quality & pushing guns that looked & were marketed as 'real' guns but built like disposable toys. Wish I could find that blog post, it was enlightening.
HiPoint gets a pass because they met the requirement that Remington failed - the "it has to shoot" requirement. HiPoint's engineering requirements were different - they wanted to make the absolute cheapest gun that would still cycle properly. And they nailed it. You can make an argument that it "only mostly works" because there are a lot of other things that obviously weren't requirements - like carrying it, enjoying shooting it, being proud to own it, etc. But the fact that it does the most basic thing it's supposed to do is the whole reason why HiPoint is still around for longer than the lifespan of every other "Saturday Night Special" company throughout history. It actually *can* be used as lifesaving equipment. I mean most people don't want to, but the fact that they *can* is the main reason they're solvent.
I met a guy who had one as an EDC while I was a welder in a sketchy shop. He had no teeth and had the waist line of someone in a German summer camp as well as some white powder under his nose.
The Zip22 would have ABSOLUTELY succeeded with some minor design tweaks. Like a metal bolt. Maybe a proven rotary magazine. I guess a longer barrel, threaded and with rifling, wouldn't hurt. then it would be front heavy, so you'd need to add a lightweight polymer stock. Some relatively inexpensive irons. A good trigger. Maybe make the receiver and barrel lift out with the push of a button at the back? And call it something completely different. Minor tweaks, to be honest.
But who actually wants a weird brick shaped .22 that doesn't fit a human hand? It doesn't do anything. It's just weird. Weird doesn't drive interest until it's out of production. That's a bad way to make money as the manufacturer.
@@ColburnFreml Unless you attach a big hype machine to it, at least. Spend a ton on marketing and attach a big media personality to it, and you can have the gun equivalent of the Cybertruck (which has actually had some okay sales, despite what it is.)
There is an exception. Militaries that design weapons for specific proprietary ammunition tend to be better off as that ammo is guaranteed to exist for the customers. In fact that is how we got the major handgun calibers we have today.
@@davidjernigan8161 Not necessarily, but my standards are a heck of a lot lower for something that was kludged together in an hour than for a professionally-manufactured piece of machinery.
I like this video. I’m not a professional logistician or engineer or anything, but decisions made during concept/production/distribution of weapons is always fascinating to me. And honestly, I don’t think you were rambling at all. You listed decisions across a good portion of the production processes that ruined certain pistol designs and gave examples of why mistakes at each step made bad weapons or otherwise hurt the company.
A former remington engineer works at where I do now and I had the opportunity to ask him just what the hell happened to the remington pistols. He claimed he designed the parts that actually worked, and he said it was budget and time constraints for the issues overall.
When I saw the title, I immediately thought of the Mamba! I worked in a gun shop in Durban SA, in the late 70's and I remember Joe Hale coming in to promote the Mamba. There was great excitement in the trade and Mamba apparel was being advertised. The first CZ75's started to arrive at the same time (sanctions? what sanctions?) and the Mamba was soon forgotten when its flaws became apparent.
Like; one shot and one gets something like an MP40. Great value indeed. IIRC a large majority of the Liberators ever produced went straight to furnaces in the U.S.A., never firing a shot...
The other purpose of the Liberator was to hurt German morale. For the occupation soldiers to never feel safe, because every civilian might have a tiny gun in their pocket.
That was great. I really like videos where you talk about some general concepts and technological solutions instead of describing a particular gun model.
Wow! I think this topic is probably one of the most interesting out there that nobody else seems to talk about. Your description of how and why things fail to make it in the market fits almost everything that you could put out there. Not just firearms. Very enlightening Ian thanks.
To be fair with the JoloAr It was successful in Spain, it found a good market in the spanish army and police and just died after the civil war to more modern designs. Of course it was never sold in massive numbers, neither to other countries like for example the Ruby or Astra 1921 series, but it was never intended for it, it was designed for a limited market and for a very limited production (almost a literal workshop). Considering all of that, it isnt unreliable and has decent features but it is just targeted at a more niche public just like the folding Glock. Remember guys that not all products out there are designed to be super successful and market-breaking, sometimes doing a certain job is more than enough and some people will be interested in that. PS: I want a JoloAr
Car manufacturers face the "H9 dilemma" every single year. If the improvements to a model are too good, and buyers hear about them too soon, sales of the previous model suffer.
Ian has been face to face with some of the creators of those guns and in one instance (the folding gun) tried as politely as he could to tell him the idea was gonna fail but he just wouldn't listen to criticism XD
What you should see as a strategy is as you’re getting closer to actually producing the new model (while keeping it secret) offer a rebate on the old model to clear out inventory. Then announce the new model as it’s hitting production. Kel-tec does this
Sometimes the failure isn't in the design of the gun or even the building of the gun. It's in some manager deciding to take the gun to market. If the intended purpose of a gun is for the designer to figure out if a thing can be done and if doing it is worthwhile, even failures can be successes. But it's rarely the designer alone making the decision about whether to order a hundred thousand of them to try to sell to the public...
As a non-gun engineer, my take-away is this: two parts are supposed to fly off when you pull the trigger, the rest is not supposed to do that. The key to a good gun is making sure it's the right two parts that fly downrange and out the ejector respectively.
Same here, non-gun engineer. I want a pistol to work when I use it. I don't want to "tinker" with fixing or tuning it. I don't want it to be pretty. I just want it to be boring, simple, and ultra-reliable. I don't even have to tell you what gun I prefer, because you know exactly what it is.
A great video Ian, and you have amazing trigger authority. When I went shooting the first thing I was taught was to only put your finger inside the trigger guard if you intend to dischage the weapon.
Those things are gonna be so valuable in a few decades. Ian has single-handedly made it a meme. Now I need to find one of those double-barreled .22 revolvers...
I love the parade of shame, each time Ian brings up a pistol to exhibit the particular way to fail at making a pistol. The Hudson H9 was the immediate example I thought of.
Today, Ian says no one wants the one hand cocking gun. Tomorrow, Ian lost his left hand and now carries that one hand cocking gun. No. Joking. Stay healthy Ian.
Sounds like another fancy book: "Expensive Paperweights: Fanciful solutions to make believe problems." There are so many interesting and creative designs that failed due to numerous reasons. Some of those show genious levels of thought to find a solution to a problem that didnt really exist. High grade photos and high levels of background would be pretty cool, just like the chinese mystery pistols.
Anyone who's shot an R51 knows that Remington was onto something great, but just couldn't execute since their company was burning down. The R51 capacity is a non issue, it predates Hellcats/etc and was competing with the single stack Glock, if anything.
I got a Gen 2 for really cheap, and love the gun. I've shot it for several years now, and the only trouble I've ever had with it was when using specialty ammo that didn't always feed smoothly. On the down side, they REALLY cheaped out on the trigger design (plastic) and finding fiber optic sights for it now is very difficult. It's one of my primary carry pieces.
@@Bad_spark a compact gun that shoots +P 9mm comfortably with little muzzle flip, low bore axis, and a light slide with a light spring? Yeah, Hesitation Lock is brilliant. The original gun is why Browning said Pedersen was the greatest living gun designer (which was overly humble, but he did admire the design a lot)
Or as I found out 20 or so years ago You make a lower cost 380 ACP pistol That looks decent But you mess up the sear engagement and it tends to double Or it drops the hammer as the slide goes forward and just slightly dent the primer If I remember right , the gun shop where I bought mine Had Company's salesman try 2 or 3 of the pistols Then get them all returned and sent back with a full refund
I own an R51, and I think one of the worst issues with them was QC. Mine is flawless. It shoots VERY accurately, I’ve never once experienced a malfunction, and it’s a pleasure. I have met a number of folks who agree that theirs is good. But there’s enough who have had major problems that they can’t be relied upon.
I bought my first R51, it is the 2nd Generation re-release, and runs flawlessly. I liked it so much I bought a second example, and am currently looking for one of the versions in the Smoke frame color. It was too little, too late for Remington, especially after the failures of the 1st Generation R51s.
The R51 was so close. It's a compact little 9mm that's far more pleasant to shoot than other 9mm pistols its size. Yeah, the single stack magazine is a severe limitation today, after the explosion of the "micro nine" market that started with the P365, but at the time its capacity was comparable to other ultra-compact carry pistols. The main problem seemed to be the magazines. Besides the one I own, I've shot two others, and all of them have the same problem: if you load the magazine to capacity, it will jam every time. If you down-load the mags by one round, they will function flawlessly. If they could have spent just a little more time tweaking the mags and/or feed ramp, the pistol could have been a success. Certainly I'd be carrying mine if they could have solved it.
Part of that failure was the hatchet job TH-cam reviewers did on it and other Remington guns. The R51 had problems, but the rm380 and rp9 were reliable. Remington also failed to offer a threaded barrel. With its fixed barrel, the r51 is an exceptional gun to suppress.
I’ve been working on a recoilless design. It fires two rounds at once from the same barrel but in opposite directions. Aiming is done through a side mounted optic. Still working out a few kinks.
There's a similar gun in a SF novel I read years ago (On the Rim of the Mandala), it's called a "horto". The ray it generates can pierce almost anything, but is must be generated in both opposite directions.
I had a R51. I loved the design. That was the only cool aspect. The trigger was garbage. Take down wasn’t bad; getting it back together was ludicrously difficult.
I had the same problem with an old timey alarm clock I took apart as a child. Crazy easy for a 5 yo with a screwdriver to get apart. No way its going back together. Granny whooped me for that one. 😂. Fond memory really.
Smith and Wesson has been doing amazingly well in the pistol department. Shield in 30 Super Carry and the 5.7 with the Tempo gas system are two good examples of their design mastery.
I'd like to add that _even if_ you have a proper design, come up with something innovative and genuinely improving on things, can manufacture it, it works, your QC is good and your marketing is fine... You can still fail. Ian mentioned one such gun (a collector's gem I happen to be a proud owner of): the Steyr GB. IMO still the king of gas-delayed blow-back designs, with its ingeniously reduced component set, stamped sheet-metal frame (!), no problem with over-heating (which these designs often suffer from). I think Steyr basically thought they had the army contract in the bag---and there came the bloody Glock, who up until then only made knives... ;-)
That's a blanket statement that doesn't reflect the realities of metallurgy. There are three types of stainless steel, ferritic, austenitic and martensitic. And within each of those categories are many, many different alloys. It isn't about advances in metallurgy; 416, which is the gold standard in firearms manufacturing for stainless has been around a very long time. The problems shown here are the result of things like choosing the wrong type of steel, having impurities in the steel, not properly heat treating the steel. I suspect the problem here is more specifically ignorance combined with greed. When you select the right alloy and properly heat treat it, it just works. Select the wrong alloy and/or don't properly heat treat it, you have problems. There are people out there who could screw up making a gun from 416. 416, and martensitic stainless steels in general, are far more wear resistant than carbon steel. And stronger. And, while not the most corrosion resistant of steels, if you're in the habit of taking care of your guns, it doesn't matter. And still far more corrosion resistant than blued carbon steel.
Hands up everyone who was introduced to the channel via Ian's hilarious "Why is the Zip 22?" videos. o/ I still laugh out loud every time I see it. Just so goofy and awkward looking. It's adorable.
The Kel Tec pm30 comes to mind. The Miroku factory in Japan had to redo their copies of the 1892 and 1894 Winchesters even though they had all of the browning blueprints and specs . They were too tight, the Japanese doing precision machining, and wouldn't function. Things had to have just a little more slop in some places to function properly.
This topic was very interesting, it's worthy of having a documentary of its own. There are guns that despite all of their flaws they are very popular with gun collectors and then there are those like the Zip 22 that only belong in the trash.
I think this topic deserves a whole book. A compilation of notoriously bad designs with deconstruction of the reasons for the failures
Agreed. These sound so fascinating in ways of "How'd you fumble up this badly?"
You could call it a pistol autopsy compendium
It's not always bad design though
Unless you take guns whose designers have all passed already, I suspect you might just make a bunch of people unhappy with you.
A whole book, eh? Now, I recall there being a bloke on TH-cam who is into old poorly-remembered weapons, and whom has shown some endeavour in writing books in the past. Can't recall his name offhand, but...
"Today on Forgotten Weapons, your chance to win this gun, which is kinda bad but really interesting" Sometimes I feel like Ian really really understands his audience! lol
Ian understands the viewers of his channel unlike those at USFA who conjured up the ZiP 22.
fanathem got lucky with Ian thats for sure.
@@paleoph6168 But I want to have a ZIP 22, because it is such a spectacular flop and crappy design! 😄
@@klasandersson7522 If we didn't have to do a transfer fee, I'd pick one up for $20. Unwanted guns need homes just like dogs need homes, I'd adopt them all if I could, but, while space in my house being the limiting factor for dogs, having to do background checks and transfer fees unfortunately just drives the value of a lot of guns to absolute zero realistically, knowing it isn't worth that much of my time and money, and wouldn't be to anyone else either, meaning, you're stuck with it forever.
@@klasandersson7522I mean the designer wanted it enough to destroy an amazingly valuable business with a great reputation
The phenomenon of a company being bankrupted by announcing a new version too early is often called ‘The Osborne Effect’ after a computer company that suffered this failure.
I came here to say the same thing about the Osborne Effect, but you beat me to it!
Note to self: do not announce new product until ready to release
Good history 👏
Makes you wonder why elon musk still has a pot to piss in and a window to throw it out of.
Yeah, was what my brain hopped to. Like this is something they teach in marketing classes now, and yet apparently sometimes it doesn't sink in.
The Liberator was considered "a good gun to get a better gun with"
Obviously the thing with the Liberator was it had to be *cheap* ,
but I've always wondered....
Liberators cost $2.10,
a Mk II Sten cost $11.
M3 "Grease Gun" $20.
Obviously as a resistance fighter/
guerrilla, you'd trade 20 Liberators for 1 Sten/M3 all day long..
But perhaps the Americans were thinking, 'we want to arm these people...but not too well'.
End up with Germans and Japanese shooting captured M3's back at them for one thing.
Or even end up fighing communist insurgents down the line well armed with US made guns.
@@Ryan.90I think it was more along the lines of it being harder to airdrop/have resistance fighters be able to conceal a full sized SMG compared to a pocket pistol.
@@Ryan.90 Why drop war weapons that the enemy might find and confiscate before the resistance gets them? Far better to drop a bunch of guns that have no value to the enemy, but the resistance might use to take war effective arms from enemy soldiers or police.
@@Zach-td5mb That'd make sense, but then the whole enterprise was pretty much nonsense?
They reckon they made 1,000,000+
Of which 25,000 actually got behind enemy lines. That's 2.5%!
Certainly on the Western front it's also pretty much understood now the French resistance has little to no impact on the course of the war.
Chairman Moa's principles....
Basically to wage a successful insurgency you need to be contiguous with friendly territory.
Like with the Viet Cong in Vietnam.
@@blshouse That's very true, although like I said, it's funny how all this thought and effort went into them, get a tiny fraction actually got used...
I remember in engineering school it was drummed into our heads that fully half of an engineer's job is to narrowly define the problem that your design is trying to solve. It was also drummed into us that most designs that "fail" do so not because they're bad designs per se, but because the designers didn't have a clear enough understanding of what their design needed to do. In the forty years or so since I graduated and went into industry I feel those lessons are being increasingly forgotten.
Except for automobile engineers,it seems like their main rule is, don't let the anyone fix it without dismantling half the car.
Keep It Simple Stupid, and "design for ease of manufacture" were drummed into mine.
I also like "design it only as strong as it needs to be, then double it!" Heard it credited to Kelly Johnson.
@@pb68slab18 Now for automotive design I think the main rule is "Make it as cheap as possible yet strong enough 80% or so will outlast the warranty."
That is the only way I could see things like oil pump belts that require the removal of the engine to change becoming common place.
Those lessons are being increasingly forgotten: you've come to the right place, here at Forgotten Weapons!
It's not forgotten, the suits simply don't care and want money without effort.
Shiny new pistol: addresses an actual market void, features competent engineering and execution of design goals at a reasonable cost with a high level of craftsmanship. Owner of shiny new pistol: Why does gun hit low and left?
Right handed poorly trained shooter usually the cause of that. The real question as with a Grendel P11 .380 I bought back in the ‘90s, was that the firing pin that hit downrange after it was dry fired. Why yes it was.
@@martinswiney2192😳
I trained to not blink during firing and that fixed the low left issue for me, I think it's a flinch response
@@martinswiney2192 my brother took an old and worn Carpati to the range, not the best pistol to begin with, and when he shot it, it cycled fine until the end, but the recoil popped the triggerguard into disassembly position. *The ENTIRE SLIDE AND BARREL* flew down range, *WITH A ROUND CHAMBERED!*
Quality is important, folks.
@ try blowing up a Glock 21 because some idiot (me) shot reloads using bullets for a 45 Colt instead of 45 ACP bullets. .454 diameter vs .451 diameter. That third round was a catastrophic explosion. Not a simple mistake but thats how I roll. It took me years of shooting to quit flinching. Gave me PTBD. Traumatic ballistic disorder. Lol.
The H9 situation is so funny , cus the exact same thing happened to an old computer company. The Osborn 1 was a pretty good computer that was gonna launch to thousands of store preorders. Then they decided to announce they were gonna launch a better version of it at the same price later. Everyone canceled their preorders and the company went out of business immediately.
I thought of the same thing. The Osborne even got a phenomenon named for it, the "Osborne Effect".
Loose lips sink ships.
Good is a relative term. It was a portable computer at a time when none were. It was also 25 pounds with a screen the size of a modern smart phone.
The ZIP 22 does have one positive associated with it: it's what got me into gun tube in general and forgotten weapons in specific in the first place
Yeah, one of the guns everybody laughs at, and you want to see how bad it is.
That wasn’t just a bad design, that design destroyed what should have been a successful business. All for a really stupid CEO/owner. There will always be a demand for SAA pistols. The ZIP22 - no sane person wants that POS
@@jonquinn11And their SAAs were apparently pretty damn good.
Same that video and the shotgun home defense where Ian just gets increasingly annoyed at crap shotguns were the ones to hook me 😂
The ZIP 22: the walkie-talkie cleverly disguised 🥸 as a firearm.
I'll see myself out now.😊
Even as failures, the stories behind them are fascinating. Ranging from "Dang, wished this got a better chance," to "How, on God's green and fertile Earth, do you fumble the ball THAT badly?"
To our current gov, which is, how do you fumble that badly... it has to have been on purpose...
@@davidgreenwood6029 Never underestimate the degree to which incompetence, stupidity, greed, and wilful blindness influence world events.
@@christopherreed4723 That is the common wisdom, but eventually, you realize that viewing things through alternative lenses sometimes brings many different things into perfect focus that were once confusingly obscure, and eventually the ineptness and incompetence become harder to believe that corruption to the degree of being willfully bad for america.
Even legendary designer like browning and kalashnikov have failures
It's just that most company only have one or two chances to fail before bankruptcy
And in the case of the Zip: How? And why? And...just...WTF?
Honestly some of the best Forgotten Weapons videos are on failed designs. They’re fascinating.
Oh yeah, there are thousands of TH-cam videos on Glock 17's but I want one about a 'lip fire' revolver..😅
That's because a video examining something that could have a ton of "don't do this type of thing" lessons in it will always be better than "this is why the Colt M1911 is still used to this day!" content. :P
failures make good stories.
Some designs were born losers from the outset, but got made in large numbers anyway because a war was going on and nothing better was available. The Chauchat machine gun and Japanese Type 94 pistol are especially good examples.
I Never get tired of Ian absolutely flaming the ZIP .22.
My favorite part about the zip 22 is that they made the basic act of firing and chambering a round difficult and potentially dangerous for the user.
It takes a real genius to pull that off.
@@plantain.1739 A lot like the semi auto shotgun that was cocked/loaded by using the barrel.
@@plantain.1739 "Guys, guys, hear me out: we're gonna design a new gun and the goal is that it will pick up the nickname 'widowmaker' in the shortest possible time. Cool?"
@@plantain.1739 Rumor is there is a name attached to that level of "genius" it goes by "Douglas Donnelly" owner of the company that was the last firearms maker in the Colt's Armory Complex. Well that seems rather fitting.
As soon as I saw the title, I knew the poor old Zip was going to cop a spray.
Oddly enough, for a pistol he besmirches on a regular basis, he's still got the bloody thing!!!!
I own a USFA ZIP-22 and it’s genuinely my favorite piece that I own. It’s so goofy and looking at the patents you can kinda see what they intended to make (not really) and the execution was just not there.
Bonus: I took it to the range once with a 110rd drum mag and timed myself on how long it would take to empty the mag. 47 minutes and 2 out of battery discharges later, I got my answer
You're a braver dude than I am...
What Ian says about how _context_ is important when it comes to determining if a gun is good/successful or not reminded me of italian tanks during WW 2. From a nowadays perspective, they are the laughingstock for many, who compare them with the Sherman, the T 34 or german tanks. From the perspective of italian engineers, those tanks made a lot of sense and were actually not bad in the context they were _supposed_ to be used.
It's not the fault of the tank when it was designed with combat in mountain terrain in mind, with the ability to climb very well and to hide in small dips and meant to serve as mobile cover and fire support against infantry - but is then used in the african desert to brawl with MBTs. The Liberator pistol is such a great example for this.
There's been so many foldable guns that manufacturers has tried to sell towards secret service people or hired bodyguard stuff it's almost laughable.
Each and every single time they fail because "So I can either just carry a regular pistol which is ready to fire the second I grip it, or I can carry around a gun which needs to be assembled before I can fire it."
And that Hudson H9 shares the EXACT SAME failure as the Osborne 1 portable computer from back in 1981. Announcing the improved and better version before you've even started to properly sell the first version. It's even called the Osborne effect.
Came here to write that. The foldable gun is not ready to go, which in a fight situation is a lethal (literally) shortcoming.
To fail : 1. - Hire Douglas Donnelly of USFA. 2. - let nature take its' course ... For extra credit, hire some Jaguar executives as design and advertising consultants ... lol
Jaguar rebrand making it into Forgotten Weapons comments equals a success I believe 😂
Maybe add some QC folks from the old Remington Arms
@@BenCarpenterWrites Nah, if no one buys that hideous new car they unveiled, it's still a total failure. As artists say, "You can't buy groceries with exposure."
@@josephknaak9034just hire the 400 unskilled temps that worked at Illion! 😂. Then try and have them operate the antique equipment that Marlin’s skilled workforce was building rifles on!
Hahaha two genders two world wars 😤 read it & sweep liberals
The Hudson H9 is part of forgotten weapons lore at this point. And i think Ian (and Carl) have learned a lot from it too. Especially how viewers perceive their videos when talking about products. For some viewers the H9 videos were literally an endorsement for a purchase.
Perfect example of design bureaus not understanding “if the juice isnt worth the squeeze nobody will by it”
I can’t imagine that *anyone* thought the H9 was *the* end all beat all pistol to have. Especially if you could only have 1 pistol.
It was and remains an interesting design exercise and a neat thing to have.
And is back on the market with new owners.
Dd
@@linkmasterspitz who have somehow made it worse
@@randymagnum143 i knew several dudes who thought that unfortunately. Its the same mentality as car guys obsessed with “the best car” but have no parameters for what its even being used for just a vague “best”
Note that most of the advances in the last 80 years have been in manufacturing, NOT firearm design. Even the much-vaunted Glock was a combination of a Browning tilting-barrel lockup system, the Roth-Steyr trigger/striker...and Gaston Glock's expertise with plastics, which let them make a frame that was lighter and cheaper than anything else on the market.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Polymers have been used to make stocks and other parts since the '50s. And it was HK who debuted the polymer frame pistol, in 1970. Gaston Glock wasn't an innovator or inventor by any stretch of the imagination. The Glock is just a hodgepodge of already existing features he threw together. Sort of the same process as Kurt Cobain inventing the Jag-Stang guitar :P
The M9 is really just a modernized variant of the Walther P-38. That doesn't detract from the fact it is an excellent pistol. Both Beretta and Glock deserve some points for execution.
There is nothing new in firearms design. At this point, there is no need for further development unless a radical new technology is discovered. The US Military replacing their service sidearm is really just an exercise in wasting money. Same goes for replacing the AR platform, which can be easily modified to fire more powerful cartridges for a lot less money.
If you want an example of a NATO country that NEEDS a new service rifle, it is the UK. The L85 is a complete piece of shite that definitely can't be retrofitted safely to fire 6.8mm.
Hudson H9, another example of why marketing people should never be allowed to call the shots
and why companies are really concerned about info about a new products leaking before they are ready for it
"Today on Forgotten Weapons, your chance to win this gun, which is kind bad but really interesting"
"I don't want it because it's not chambered in .32 French Longue." -Ian McCollum probably.
For the Mamba, the main problem was it's main feature. "all stainless steel". Stainless steel being subject to galling is the reason the Randall 1911 (1983) was marketed as the first reliable all-stainless-steel semiauto (not the first to be made, but the earlier attempts were special series and "Gucci pistols", not really destined to hard use). The designers of the Mamba (1976) passed to production without having solved the problem they should have first.
The AMT corporation made a good stainless 1911 but for some reason decided to make things like the trigger frame cutout and a few other things enough out of spec that they wouldn't take a lot of aftermarket parts. Qc was iffy. I actually saw one that had no rifling on one side of the barrel . I had one of their AMT backup 45acps that functioned well, but the bullets tumbled out of the barrel making it lethal but inaccurate 😊
I think Ian made a very apt point, guy who knew a lot about shooting handguns but not a lot about making them..
Suppose the question to ask would have been *why* aren't more guns made in stainless, (it was invented in 1913).
I had a similar thought with cars, luckily now we have the internet to answer these questions....
Turns out stainless wears the dies super fast compared to stamping mild steel.
Hence why the famous stainless cars, (DMC DeLorean and Tesla Cybertruck basically) are so angular.
@@neutronalchemist3241
Privately made South African weapons tended to be second rate.
The stuff made by Armscor and LEW was way better.
@@greybone777 half rifling? haha. that would be actually interesting if someone had taken some high speed videos of what effect that had.
It is all a matter of using the right alloy. Martensitic alloys tend to be best for making guns and austenitic alloys tend to be OK too. Again, the specific alloy needs to be carefully considered. The real problem is if you try to use a ferritic stainless steel to make a gun, which is what I suspect they were using. Other potential problems could include impurities in the alloy and poor heat treatment.
416 (martensitic) is the gold standard these days for making firearms.
*”Does it take Glock mags?”*
*”Does it take AR mags?”*
*”AR controls or GTFO!”*
…
*”Hey guys, where did all the fun and unique guns go?”*
Yeah gun people are often their own worst enemies, and not just with the whole "muh MSR" fuddlore BS.
A gun can easily be unique and take Stanags... Case in point, the MCX when it came out
@@jugo1944 AR controls. AR mags. Short stroke gas piston.
Look, i’m all for ”if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” but unique it is not.
@ReboyGTR the combination of those characteristics were unique at the time. A collapsible AR you could shoot folded that was essentially otherwise still an AR
@@jugo1944that doesn't sound unique even in the slightest
"This is a serious contender for a paperwieght..." Hillarious!🤣
3:20 A lot of the unconventional designs such as one handed pistol cocking or thumb triggers are very accommodating to those with a disability.
This is a small thing to add to a video, but I genuinely really appreciate how you handle your handguns and where you point them. It definitely makes you seem more professional and makes watching you more pleasant than some of the firearm-TH-camrs pointing them just slightly off the camera with no trigger discipline.
The Hudson H9 suffered from what in the computer industry is called the Osborne Effect.
In video gamer world..if they ask you to "pre order first" or ask for "donations" first you should walk away asap. It's going to end up like most games...dead game.
@@SCH292Different thing
The Osborne effect is the prospect of a future better product cannibalizing your current sales.
Preorders are just shit for the consumer since you pay before you can get reliable information on a working product.
Stainless on stainless has a huge tendency to fall in general. It really requires folks with really good knowledge of the material and firearms to pick the right combination of alloys and treatment to minimize the issue.
Yeah, sliding similar stainless steels over each other is asking for galling, which is a form of repeated cold welding and tearing. Dissimilar stainlesses are generally less prone to this but one or other may be less machinable or not able to be cast for instance.
@@amendable5401 if that is the most illuminating comment that comes to your mind, well I don't need to say any more.
@@joetaylor486 Wasn't Randall the first firearms manufacturer to really address the galling issue by using different stainless alloys?
@Rocketsong Oooh I don't know to be honest. As a Brit I don't have much experience with handguns but I studied material science for a while.
It's not too much of a problem if you use martensitic stainless, heat treat everything nice and hard, and lubricate appropriately.
The common austenitic types however, are another matter. Can't be hardened by heat treatment, and will gall easily even with good lubrication. There are some special grades like Nitronic 60 that are highly galling resistant, but you can bet they are a lot more expensive.
Hudson didn't have a marketing problem, their marketing was supernaturally perfect. The problem was manufacturing defects from subcontractors, which led to mass returns of guns, which led to cash flow problems, which led to not paying new vendors, which led to shortage, which led to cannibalizing returned guns to fix/make fewer guns, which led to bankruptcy, which led to disassembling all returned customer guns & tossing the parts into a bin in order to write down the cost of assets in court. Perfect example of a company putting marketing before product.
Yes, this. I like mine but don't shoot it because when the striker breaks there's no way to get a replacement. It would be nice if Daniel Defense would make key replacement parts for the "legacy Hudsons."
Sounds an awful lot like Sig for the first part.
No it's a perfect example of why to never subcontract.
There are a lot of details that go into producing anything especially firearms and it's hard to get them all right. They were a husband and wife team from what I recall and had the best intentions. I personally like mine a lot even though I haven't had a lot of rounds through it. I bought it more as a collectible than a carry gun though.
Sometimes things don't work out, but they gave it their all and I'm glad they created it.
It wasn't subcontractors. It was an engineering and design failure, and lack of quality control with respect to checking those outsourced components for failure modes. The subcontractors made the parts exactly to Hudson blueprints and specifications. Hudson quality control used their customers to see if the guns held up. That's not how you do it and remain successful.
Going to take a few guesses at some of the ways commercial handguns fail
- Targeting too niche a market
- Too expensive for the market it's aimed at
- Ergonomic and/or mechanical issues (Zip22 comes to mind for this)
- Little to no differentiating factors in a mature, saturated market
Forgetting guns are machines and need refinement. Tons of guns fail for that reason. Even when they try to just copy an existing popular or famous design.
Just making things the right shape is easy. Not knowing where you can cut corners. Not knowing which tolerances can be loose or tight. Not knowing what the best material is to make something out of rather than something that just kinda sorta works.
These are all major issues in the design of any machine people often gloss over.
Timing as well... Benelli b76 is a great example.
Enter the folks wanting to make reproduction Merwin & Hulberts.
If I win the Lottery, I'll relaunch the Bren Ten.
Well, I'm bringing back the Furby.
edit: They still make it?!?
Don't toy with me. I'm out 1500 bucks for the Military and Police model with the .45 conversion and about 10 magazines. 1500 in the mid 80's was a lot of money. I ended up carrying a Detonics Scoremaster, another oddball, but a great gun.
Bren 11.43mm and the Mamba #10mm
@@oldesertguy9616 Had it only did what it was supposed to. It was revolutionary and the concept ten steps forward instead of one. It looked awesome and had one of the biggest names behind it but...
I think it was Elmer Keith who said only accurate guns are interesting, but to me only reliable guns matter.
Don’t forget to have a shitload of magazines available. In fact, just go ahead and ship each gun with five or six:
Is that Mamba... Number 5?
What a groaner. 😂
No, he's black
Get out.
Oh you're so punny :P
Man when the Mamba came out, I thought I just had to have one. Of course I never had an opportunity to get one. I had a buddy who subscribed to Soldier of Fortune magazine and the Mamba had the inside back cover slick add. It looked great and man my eye teeth hurt I wanted one so much. I settled for a M1911A1 because they were very available for a reasonable price and I knew the M1911 from my days as a soldier humping a radio through the jungle of Vietnam with a M1911A1 on my hip. It was the only gun I actually fired in Nam, not all that sure if I hit anything but there were blood trails coming from the ambush point where the VC had tried to take our my wire party as we lay landline wire from an OP back to the base to catch some S4 yard thieves. Ah the 70's with hippies smoking pot and young men fleeing to Canada to avoid the draft, free love, flower children who would bed down with you for a smoke.
Next Up on Forgotten Weapons: Failed Calibers such as 30 SC, 45 GAP, 327 Fed Mag and 357 Sig.
Working title: "How to fail making a caliber the market said "Meh" to.
I feel like the .327 was a great idea, but was never put in guns people wanted. I don't want a 2 5/8" 6 shot J frame , but I would have bought a 5" 10 shot N frame in a heartbeat!
.30 Supercarry has only been put in turd guns. If USPSA would drop the minimum caliber requirement from .354" to .312" (it meets Minor Powerfactor), they would have sold a bunch more.
Good list.
It's even better when the "new hotness" is essentially the same thing as an existing caliber.
"Why would I want X when I already have Y?" is the fundamental question that it seems nobody in ammo design has ever thought to ask themselves.
327 mag was just 30 years too late
10:33 This is a lovely example of the osborne effect. Shortest version of the name is that in the 80's a computer company called osborne did the same thing, hyped up a product that was nowhere near being done, touting how it would make the at the time current model useless, causing no sales, causing insolvency.
We need the complete history of the Elbonian Mamba.
The folding glock isn't really any smaller. It just doesn't make sense.
It'd take forever to draw and make ready to fire. That design is more appropriate for smuggling, not carry.
@@daveh7720 It's for prison wallet carry. The forbidden holster.
And even then, only in a context where the opposition doesn't use X-ray scanners. Because on that screen, it may not look exactly like a pistol, but it'll look enough like one to get booted to secondary inspection. And then you're an *ex* smuggler.
My problem with the fold-a-Glock isn't so much that deploying it takes longer than you'll probably have, but that the necessary changes to the trigger guard mean it won't fit *any* available holster. So you *have* to carry it folded up in your cargo pocket, or hollowed-out book, or the oversized hip flask with the false bottom.
I think it was more about eliminating the silhouette of a handgun than it was making the gun smaller. If you drop the folded gun into a khaki cargo pocket, its more rectangular profile would resemble a large phone or maybe a tool of some kind, not the typical L shape of a pistol. That said, I remember it being stupidly expensive compared to a normal Glock handgun and it solves an issue most of us don't have, so it was still borderline pointless.
IIRC the marketing hype of the folding Glock, it was to create an outline that doesn't scream "gun." They demo'd it on a hip holster that looked more like a cell phone case, and with a square outline, it was more like a cellphone with a chunky case (or in insulin pump), which no one would ever bat an eye at nowadays. You'd wear it on your belt, and with a cover garment, it didn't matter that you printed, because it was a square outline that didn't look like a gun, and more like a cell phone. To draw, you could flick the grip up and lock it and draw like normal, with the magazine already in the gun from the flip process.
i panicked a little cause i thought he'd interviewed my parents
🤣🤣🤣
🤣
1:44 product development 101. Start with requirements directly from your customers, and validate you’ve met them through the development process
The Bren Ten definitely counts among these failed pistols at well. It got killed by logistics and supply issues. They didn't have an adequate and reliable supplier of magazines.
When you ship a new pistol with a magazine voucher instead of a magazine, you have a serious problem.
I got three mags with mine. But, I also got one of the first 100 made.
Oddly enough, their original magazine vendor was Mec-Gar. For reasons unknown, Mec-Gar didn't heat treat the magazine tubes.
@@danielwatters1203I read that the magazine supply issue was related to the original design being intended to work with both 45 and 10mm but not working well with either, so D&D had to order a new batch of 10mm only magazines but it was after deposits had been made and customers wanted their guns now and the new mags hadn't shown up yet.
Zip 22: What is my purpose, Creator?
USFA: To be made fun of by internet for the next 15 years.
Zip 22: Oh my God.
in retaliation, it bankrupted the company
The irony being that it's the antithesis of the kind of gun Rick would invent
@@tannerwood902 Gotta say, at least the butter robot passed butter. The Zip 22 barely even properly feeds and ejects most of the time.
I would include borchardt and luger into this list aswell. "My pistol is the best, no need to improve!" fast forward few years and someone improved it a tiny bit into a beyond amazing product for the time period
The guy who made the Mars Automatic also refused to improve his arguably flawed design iirc
The only problem with the Luger was the expense of manufacturing.
@@dbmail545 We called the Parabellums "Parade Pistols" as they are neat looking and shoot well while clean with proper ammunition. While crawling in mud, snow and dirt one would rather have something like an FN High Power though. Doesn't even crack if one is forced to use those hot 9mm SMG rounds in it.
@@dbmail545Yeah but that is common for the time. Most handguns needed handfitted parts.
@@void_creature I would not say "flawed" per se, because it worked, but t was fairly unsuitable in regards of power and size for a pistol.
Pure ForgottenWeapons energy. If I had to show someone what this channel is about, I'd send this video.
Stainless steel is notorious for Galling. I remember reading an article about the challenges S&W ran into with their 600 series of pistols. (639-659) Galling was so bad, they almost gave up.
They ended up using 2 very different alloys of Stainless. One for slides, and one for frames. You can be a great designer, or machinist,, but no matter how good you are, you're not going to get 2 sheets of sand paper to easily slide across each other. 😊
Until restrictions on silencers go away making an easy to carry integrally suppressed pistol feasible I don’t see huge developments coming.
To be fair a lot of supposed innovation is reintroducing ideas that someone did before. Case in point. The toggle-linked action of the C93 Borsharct and the Luger are considered the first striker fired handguns. And the Glock 17 wasn’t the first polymer framed handgun. The H&K VP-70 (probably most famous these days as that gun from Aliens) did it first but failed due to the end of the Cold War and questionable design decision like no slide-lock and a staple gun trigger.
@@emberfist8347 calling it a staple gun trigger is being very charitable
@ It is the first thing to come to mind when I saw the video Ian did on the gun.
Your videos are very, very educational Ian. I shoot only occasionally, but love manufacture and design details. That said, one omission from this vid is, "What is Success?" Make them for 5 years, profitably?, Get a military/police contract? , Sell 5 thousand- sell 10 thousand- etc?, Most shooters remember it fondly? , Price increases in the re-sale market?
I honestly don't know. And you are the greatest source of weapons knowledge I can name.
The thing Hudson did, making an ill-timed statement of "Hey, we're going to bring out an _even better_ version of our super-cool product!" only to have everyone decide to wait for it and stop buying the already super-cool product and thus kill off the company that made said super-cool product, that's happened before in several fields.
Ian, as a retired senior engineering lecturer, everything that you are saying is formally taught in Universities, in a product design module. Its called the design process, and usually it is as follows: from market research, a product brief is formulated, from that, and with other technology /feasibility studies, and other requirements, a formal Design Specification for the gun is produced. Once an agreed Design Specification or Technical Specification for the gun is produced, this is known as the target specification. From now on Concepts generation and feasibility / calculations etc are performed to validate each separate gun concept sketched out. Then its choosing the best overall concept that meets the Technical Specification of the gun. This is to meet performance , cost, manufacturability etc. With the best chosen gun concept, then starts the layout design of the chosen gun concept, where everything is, which obviously entails the ergonomics of the gun to the user, ie, balance, recoils, fit to hand etc. After the layout of the gun is established, the detail design of the parts of the gun are then done, usually by now, the design of the gun would use some sort of 3D solid modelling package, like Solidworks, or Catia.
After that comes the rapid prototype of the gun, via 3D printing, after that another review, and a big decision to commit to a few off metal manufactured test prototypes. Once they have been tested , and you are happy with the gun, its just technical drawings , further prototypes etc , and then the fun really begins! The biggest question will be; does the gun that you have designed meet the technical specification , and all it's requirements, if so , you have a product, but now go try and sell it! Oh I forgot, unless your gun brings something new, or a distinct advantage over other guns, , you might not be able to flog them! Even if its a great gun! I am sure I have forgotten some stages of the design process, but its essentially what is needed to ensure even a small possibility of success!
Week 1 of GCSE Design and Technology class at Rugby.
And all the guns are owned by Ian i guess.
Ian's wife: can you clear the drawer next to the fireplace:
Ian: oh i forgott about those. Lets make video😂
IIIIAANNN!! For the hundredth time, please put your used guns in the gun hamper and don't let them lying around everywhere!
Ian makes a good point that, while I might personally dislike them, the P365 really changed the game like crazy on carry pistols. 6+1 used to be plenty, now 10-12+1 is the expectation for a pistol that is even smaller than yesterday’s staples and absolutely crushed the 5-shot .38 revolver crowd.
As someone who hates the Sig for how it shoots, it’s really crazy to see how every other gun company has chased that design (much to my chagrin).
This sound quality feels like what every TH-cam channel should strive to have. You sound like you're in my room and talking to me
@10:40 IIRC the R51 was actually initially an AAC internal project for a full size integrally suppressed handgun similar to the Maxim 9. Thats why they went with the Pedersen system from the Model 51, as the rear locking fixed barrel made it simpler to suppress in theory. Then they got devoured by Cerburus & the whole project was redirected to Remington & pushed toward the then marketing hotness of single stack 9s, which to be fair was more in line with the historical Remington gun anyway.
What killed pretty much all of Remington under Cerburus was their entire strategy was built around nostalgia marketing, & lowest possible cost combined with lowest common denominator engineering.
They deliberately designed guns & QC around the market research of 'most buyers shoot less than 50 rounds a year through a gun, if they shoot it all' and absolutely lowest possible cost of production while sticking to the magical 'at or around $300' price point.
They were making guns designed to be worse than a HiPoint, but cost 2x as much, but LOOK like well manufactured $500 guns.
I remember an engineer that used to work at Remington in this period had a (now defunct) blog writing about this (vaguely but apparent as to what he was referring to) the R9 & R45 & it's design specks handed down directly from marketing to the engineers.
From an engineering perspective it made perfect sense,for a clean sheet design, use as many currently production critical components as possible, to lower costs, design everything else around ease of production first, to lower costs, use use the same dimensions for everything for both calibers, to reduce cost, has to be high capacity in both 45 & 9 for marketing reasons, striker fired, for cost & marketing, but we can also cheap out on building it because the soec only calls for a 500 round lifespan since based on research most users won't hit that in 5 years. Also cut QC because its cheaper to swap guns until you give them a good one or they give up than make it right first or fix it, also most won't even put a full mag through it anyway so they'll never notice.
They met their design spec perfect, just marketing really didn't understand the market at all, which doesn't see even their toys as 'toys' but life saving equipment, & selling deliberately shitty guns to the lower end of the market as essentially a scam. HiPoint gets a pass as they dont pretend to be anything but a shitty brick that only mostly works.
Remington was shitty wearing the skin suit of quality & pushing guns that looked & were marketed as 'real' guns but built like disposable toys.
Wish I could find that blog post, it was enlightening.
HiPoint gets a pass because they met the requirement that Remington failed - the "it has to shoot" requirement. HiPoint's engineering requirements were different - they wanted to make the absolute cheapest gun that would still cycle properly. And they nailed it. You can make an argument that it "only mostly works" because there are a lot of other things that obviously weren't requirements - like carrying it, enjoying shooting it, being proud to own it, etc. But the fact that it does the most basic thing it's supposed to do is the whole reason why HiPoint is still around for longer than the lifespan of every other "Saturday Night Special" company throughout history. It actually *can* be used as lifesaving equipment. I mean most people don't want to, but the fact that they *can* is the main reason they're solvent.
Lest we forget…the Taurus Curve
I met a guy who had one as an EDC while I was a welder in a sketchy shop. He had no teeth and had the waist line of someone in a German summer camp as well as some white powder under his nose.
Like it but too $
In the immortal words of Ian McCollum after throwing the curve in the trash: YEET ME
Or how about the Gyro-jet or the Dardick "revolver?"
The Zip22 would have ABSOLUTELY succeeded with some minor design tweaks. Like a metal bolt. Maybe a proven rotary magazine. I guess a longer barrel, threaded and with rifling, wouldn't hurt. then it would be front heavy, so you'd need to add a lightweight polymer stock. Some relatively inexpensive irons. A good trigger. Maybe make the receiver and barrel lift out with the push of a button at the back? And call it something completely different. Minor tweaks, to be honest.
Did you just describe a Kel-tec?
But who actually wants a weird brick shaped .22 that doesn't fit a human hand? It doesn't do anything. It's just weird. Weird doesn't drive interest until it's out of production. That's a bad way to make money as the manufacturer.
What about the absolutely brain dead decision to have the charging handle being in front of the barrel that you have to push in dangerous close to it?
at end of the day you had a gun that appeals to no one. its entire concept is flawed cause who wants a .22 finger-risk?
@@ColburnFreml Unless you attach a big hype machine to it, at least. Spend a ton on marketing and attach a big media personality to it, and you can have the gun equivalent of the Cybertruck (which has actually had some okay sales, despite what it is.)
A gun that needs specific ammo (or worse, proprietary ammo) is also severely handicaped. The bullpup 9 and electronic primed guns.
There is an exception. Militaries that design weapons for specific proprietary ammunition tend to be better off as that ammo is guaranteed to exist for the customers. In fact that is how we got the major handgun calibers we have today.
@emberfist8347 yes but Ian was talking about guns sold on the civilian market.
The Zipgun ruined USFA and I'll never forgive it.
Zip gun?
I know what you were intending there, but the ZiP 22 is *far* from being an improvised gun.
@@paleoph6168 Right, because an improvised gun would be way more reliable and effective.
@@davidjernigan8161 Not necessarily, but my standards are a heck of a lot lower for something that was kludged together in an hour than for a professionally-manufactured piece of machinery.
@@davidjernigan8161sounds ironic, but very true!
I like this video. I’m not a professional logistician or engineer or anything, but decisions made during concept/production/distribution of weapons is always fascinating to me.
And honestly, I don’t think you were rambling at all. You listed decisions across a good portion of the production processes that ruined certain pistol designs and gave examples of why mistakes at each step made bad weapons or otherwise hurt the company.
A former remington engineer works at where I do now and I had the opportunity to ask him just what the hell happened to the remington pistols.
He claimed he designed the parts that actually worked, and he said it was budget and time constraints for the issues overall.
When I saw the title, I immediately thought of the Mamba! I worked in a gun shop in Durban SA, in the late 70's and I remember Joe Hale coming in to promote the Mamba. There was great excitement in the trade and Mamba apparel was being advertised. The first CZ75's started to arrive at the same time (sanctions? what sanctions?) and the Mamba was soon forgotten when its flaws became apparent.
For a gun designed to be used (presumably) once and thrown away for a better gun the Liberator was an amazing success.
Like; one shot and one gets something like an MP40. Great value indeed.
IIRC a large majority of the Liberators ever produced went straight to furnaces in the U.S.A., never firing a shot...
@@Ba_Yegu They could have came in handy against communists, slavers and pro-sharia types...........
The other purpose of the Liberator was to hurt German morale. For the occupation soldiers to never feel safe, because every civilian might have a tiny gun in their pocket.
That was great. I really like videos where you talk about some general concepts and technological solutions instead of describing a particular gun model.
Me, quickly scrolling through the video: "Why is the Beretta 93R a failed pistol?...Oh."
Wow! I think this topic is probably one of the most interesting out there that nobody else seems to talk about. Your description of how and why things fail to make it in the market fits almost everything that you could put out there. Not just firearms. Very enlightening Ian thanks.
To be fair with the JoloAr
It was successful in Spain, it found a good market in the spanish army and police and just died after the civil war to more modern designs. Of course it was never sold in massive numbers, neither to other countries like for example the Ruby or Astra 1921 series, but it was never intended for it, it was designed for a limited market and for a very limited production (almost a literal workshop).
Considering all of that, it isnt unreliable and has decent features but it is just targeted at a more niche public just like the folding Glock.
Remember guys that not all products out there are designed to be super successful and market-breaking, sometimes doing a certain job is more than enough and some people will be interested in that.
PS: I want a JoloAr
Car manufacturers face the "H9 dilemma" every single year. If the improvements to a model are too good, and buyers hear about them too soon, sales of the previous model suffer.
Ian has been face to face with some of the creators of those guns and in one instance (the folding gun) tried as politely as he could to tell him the idea was gonna fail but he just wouldn't listen to criticism XD
Very entertaining and informative Ian. The sprinkling of humor was a nice touch, and the video duration was perfect.
11:47 funny, Caracal is the specie of cat the celebrity animal, Big Floppa, is a part of.
I have a feeling your oddball type guns in your collection rivals most firearms museums. No wonder I live this channel so much
Hudson fell prey to the Osborne effect. Osborne had a popular computer in the 80s and preemptively announced a new model and died
The lesson is don't announce tell your ready to do something.
What you should see as a strategy is as you’re getting closer to actually producing the new model (while keeping it secret) offer a rebate on the old model to clear out inventory. Then announce the new model as it’s hitting production. Kel-tec does this
Ian, I really enjoy your videos about failures. You're teaching style is impeccable!
Methinks that Ian was just approached by the one too many budding entrepreneurs who broke his camel's back.
Sometimes the failure isn't in the design of the gun or even the building of the gun. It's in some manager deciding to take the gun to market.
If the intended purpose of a gun is for the designer to figure out if a thing can be done and if doing it is worthwhile, even failures can be successes. But it's rarely the designer alone making the decision about whether to order a hundred thousand of them to try to sell to the public...
As a non-gun engineer, my take-away is this: two parts are supposed to fly off when you pull the trigger, the rest is not supposed to do that. The key to a good gun is making sure it's the right two parts that fly downrange and out the ejector respectively.
Same here, non-gun engineer. I want a pistol to work when I use it. I don't want to "tinker" with fixing or tuning it. I don't want it to be pretty. I just want it to be boring, simple, and ultra-reliable. I don't even have to tell you what gun I prefer, because you know exactly what it is.
@@DM-kl4emyou carry a sword as well? Greetings fellow swordsman! Lmao
Unless it's caseless ammo, in that case only one thing goes out
@@BerzekGamerbut what if it's a flechette gun
@@manender1020 or any shotgun!
A great video Ian, and you have amazing trigger authority. When I went shooting the first thing I was taught was to only put your finger inside the trigger guard if you intend to dischage the weapon.
I was in one of our local pawn shops this weekend, and spotted a Zip22 on the shelf. Pretty surprising, it's the only one I've ever seen.
I would've bought it for the novelty
Just out of interest, how much did they want for it?
@@Screwpaulrose I can’t remember the exact price, $350 comes to mind.
Those things are gonna be so valuable in a few decades. Ian has single-handedly made it a meme.
Now I need to find one of those double-barreled .22 revolvers...
I love the parade of shame, each time Ian brings up a pistol to exhibit the particular way to fail at making a pistol. The Hudson H9 was the immediate example I thought of.
Today, Ian says no one wants the one hand cocking gun. Tomorrow, Ian lost his left hand and now carries that one hand cocking gun. No. Joking. Stay healthy Ian.
Making personas really help with the "who am I selling this to" bit. I wonder who the hell they think would buy the zip 22?
Interested to see what this is about. Can’t lie, first thought was the H&K CC9.
That’s not saying that it’s a bad gun, just that there’s so many other things H&K could’ve done.
It's VERY much one of those guns that released like a decade too late.
I can hear the design team at Elbonia Arms furiously taking notes.
Well as I like to say “It’s hard to remake a concept or design.That’s someone’s already done.”
Sounds like another fancy book: "Expensive Paperweights: Fanciful solutions to make believe problems." There are so many interesting and creative designs that failed due to numerous reasons. Some of those show genious levels of thought to find a solution to a problem that didnt really exist. High grade photos and high levels of background would be pretty cool, just like the chinese mystery pistols.
Anyone who's shot an R51 knows that Remington was onto something great, but just couldn't execute since their company was burning down. The R51 capacity is a non issue, it predates Hellcats/etc and was competing with the single stack Glock, if anything.
There are no words to express how much of an idiot you are.
Did the hesitation lock ever do anything? The original gun was in such a weak caliber that it didn't really need a functional lockup.
I got a Gen 2 for really cheap, and love the gun. I've shot it for several years now, and the only trouble I've ever had with it was when using specialty ammo that didn't always feed smoothly. On the down side, they REALLY cheaped out on the trigger design (plastic) and finding fiber optic sights for it now is very difficult. It's one of my primary carry pieces.
I think it was a nice gun. Although now everything seems to be a capacity race.
@@Bad_spark a compact gun that shoots +P 9mm comfortably with little muzzle flip, low bore axis, and a light slide with a light spring? Yeah, Hesitation Lock is brilliant. The original gun is why Browning said Pedersen was the greatest living gun designer (which was overly humble, but he did admire the design a lot)
< Elbonian MOD takes note for future service pistol orders >
That Mamba there looks like a gorgeous crossbreed of a 5906 and a P229/226. Had an urge to comment on that, gonna keep watching now 🙂
Great video, but thankfully I had all but forgotten about that craptastic Zip 22 thing. Now it's fresh in my mind again. Thanks Ian.
Or as I found out 20 or so years ago
You make a lower cost 380 ACP pistol
That looks decent
But you mess up the sear engagement and it tends to double
Or it drops the hammer as the slide goes forward and just slightly dent the primer
If I remember right , the gun shop where I bought mine
Had Company's salesman try 2 or 3 of the pistols
Then get them all returned and sent back with a full refund
Always love your enthusiasm for guns. Makes me and a lot of people want to learn more about them.
I own an R51, and I think one of the worst issues with them was QC. Mine is flawless. It shoots VERY accurately, I’ve never once experienced a malfunction, and it’s a pleasure. I have met a number of folks who agree that theirs is good. But there’s enough who have had major problems that they can’t be relied upon.
I bought my first R51, it is the 2nd Generation re-release, and runs flawlessly. I liked it so much I bought a second example, and am currently looking for one of the versions in the Smoke frame color. It was too little, too late for Remington, especially after the failures of the 1st Generation R51s.
The R51 was so close. It's a compact little 9mm that's far more pleasant to shoot than other 9mm pistols its size. Yeah, the single stack magazine is a severe limitation today, after the explosion of the "micro nine" market that started with the P365, but at the time its capacity was comparable to other ultra-compact carry pistols.
The main problem seemed to be the magazines. Besides the one I own, I've shot two others, and all of them have the same problem: if you load the magazine to capacity, it will jam every time. If you down-load the mags by one round, they will function flawlessly.
If they could have spent just a little more time tweaking the mags and/or feed ramp, the pistol could have been a success. Certainly I'd be carrying mine if they could have solved it.
@@SEO122 I’m with you there. I’d LOVE to get a smoke frame. I’m not usually a 2 tome, but that’s nice.
@@kennmikos9120 it’s not always understood how critical and difficult mag fit is
Part of that failure was the hatchet job TH-cam reviewers did on it and other Remington guns. The R51 had problems, but the rm380 and rp9 were reliable. Remington also failed to offer a threaded barrel. With its fixed barrel, the r51 is an exceptional gun to suppress.
I’ve been working on a recoilless design. It fires two rounds at once from the same barrel but in opposite directions. Aiming is done through a side mounted optic. Still working out a few kinks.
I suppose if you were completely surrounded by an enemy it would kinda work. Right?
@@steveleisner6029
It’s a murder suicide gun for unhappy couples. Huge market potential.
There's a similar gun in a SF novel I read years ago (On the Rim of the Mandala), it's called a "horto". The ray it generates can pierce almost anything, but is must be generated in both opposite directions.
I had a R51. I loved the design. That was the only cool aspect. The trigger was garbage. Take down wasn’t bad; getting it back together was ludicrously difficult.
I had the same problem with an old timey alarm clock I took apart as a child. Crazy easy for a 5 yo with a screwdriver to get apart. No way its going back together. Granny whooped me for that one. 😂. Fond memory really.
Smith and Wesson has been doing amazingly well in the pistol department. Shield in 30 Super Carry and the 5.7 with the Tempo gas system are two good examples of their design mastery.
I'd like to add that _even if_ you have a proper design, come up with something innovative and genuinely improving on things, can manufacture it, it works, your QC is good and your marketing is fine... You can still fail. Ian mentioned one such gun (a collector's gem I happen to be a proud owner of): the Steyr GB. IMO still the king of gas-delayed blow-back designs, with its ingeniously reduced component set, stamped sheet-metal frame (!), no problem with over-heating (which these designs often suffer from). I think Steyr basically thought they had the army contract in the bag---and there came the bloody Glock, who up until then only made knives... ;-)
"I just think its neat" - Ian on that folding glock
Advances in metallurgy have allowed stainless guns to work. The friction from stainless to stainless is so much more than carbon steel
That's a blanket statement that doesn't reflect the realities of metallurgy. There are three types of stainless steel, ferritic, austenitic and martensitic. And within each of those categories are many, many different alloys.
It isn't about advances in metallurgy; 416, which is the gold standard in firearms manufacturing for stainless has been around a very long time. The problems shown here are the result of things like choosing the wrong type of steel, having impurities in the steel, not properly heat treating the steel. I suspect the problem here is more specifically ignorance combined with greed.
When you select the right alloy and properly heat treat it, it just works. Select the wrong alloy and/or don't properly heat treat it, you have problems. There are people out there who could screw up making a gun from 416. 416, and martensitic stainless steels in general, are far more wear resistant than carbon steel. And stronger. And, while not the most corrosion resistant of steels, if you're in the habit of taking care of your guns, it doesn't matter. And still far more corrosion resistant than blued carbon steel.
It perfectly reflects it jackass
Hands up everyone who was introduced to the channel via Ian's hilarious "Why is the Zip 22?" videos. o/
I still laugh out loud every time I see it. Just so goofy and awkward looking. It's adorable.
@0:18 "What it takes to make a successful failure"
because a failed failure is simply mid.
The Kel Tec pm30 comes to mind. The Miroku factory in Japan had to redo their copies of the 1892 and 1894 Winchesters even though they had all of the browning blueprints and specs . They were too tight, the Japanese doing precision machining, and wouldn't function. Things had to have just a little more slop in some places to function properly.
5:40 I kinda want that
This topic was very interesting, it's worthy of having a documentary of its own. There are guns that despite all of their flaws they are very popular with gun collectors and then there are those like the Zip 22 that only belong in the trash.
Unfortunately in 2024 we've gotten to a point that if your design isn't a tilting barrel, striker fired pistol that takes Glocks mags it will fail.
It's a race for cheaper manufacture.