Читать книгу Gun Digest 2011 онлайн
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Certainly any gun can jam if enough debris accumulates in the wrong place. However, one of the 59s that I examined for this piece had quite a bit of crud lying within the bottom of the receiver. When questioned, the owner stated that he couldn’t remember the gun ever jamming. The U. S. Treasury Department, however, found a definite problem with the floating chamber. Shortly after the Model 50 was introduced, they discovered that the gun could be fired without the barrel attached. As such the gun could be used as a sawed off shotgun. To prevent this, Winchester was required to recall their initial production and modify them so that they couldn’t shoot without the barrel attached.
The right side of the gun. It seems ordinary enough until you pick it up.
The floating chamber system was also used in some other firearms. It was used in the Colt Ace, a .22 rimfire adaption of the Colt 1911. In that gun, the floating chamber was utilized to increase the recoil of the .22 cartridge, allowing it operate the heavy slide of the gun. In the Remington Model 550 autoloading rifle, the floating chamber selectively boosted the recoil of the .22 Short cartridge, allowing .22 Short, Long and Long Rifle cartridges to be used interchangeably. These guns, as well as the floating chamber itself, were the brainchildren of the legendary Marsh “Carbine” Williams. He is, however, best remembered for having developed the short stroke gas piston used in the M-1 carbine of World War II. He was a genius at understanding the momentum dynamics of autoloading guns and went on to perfect the short recoil system of operation. Surprisingly, he wasn’t a formally trained engineer. In fact he had little formal education at all. However he managed to work out the principles of operation of those guns while serving out his prison sentence at the Caledonia Road Camp in North Carolina! Even more amazing is the fact that the warden allowed him to build and modify the guns needed to prove their system of operation.