What to give a person who is fond of weapons?

Unfortunately, in Russia it is impossible to come and buy a gun as a gift, even a smooth-bore gun cannot be bought and presented as a gift.

Of course, you can always buy a pm pistol mockup as a gift, but mockups are not the same. The layout must be valid!

However, the current layouts are not for sale, but for the production firearms do-it-yourself in Russia there is a criminal article.

You can get around these contradictions by making a souvenir scale copy.

Watch the video below, it shows how to make a firearm musket with your own hands in 1:20 scale.

Not a single examination will accept such a home-made firearm as a weapon. Especially if you use candle stearin or a piece of eraser as a bullet.

Moreover, a large amount of gunpowder or sulfur from matches will simply break the barrel instead of a shot.

However, nevertheless, a souvenir musket is quite capable of hitting paper targets at a distance of a meter. Which is very spear, since real muskets were also fired no further than 20 meters, it is simply impossible to get to a greater distance.

To make a homemade firearm musket in a souvenir version, you will need a thin-walled copper or brass tube, a piece of wood, a small gas-burner(can be replaced with a turbo lighter or a soldering iron) and copper foil 0.5 mm thick.

The foil can be peeled off old board the electronics you are about to throw away.

A screwdriver is also desirable, but you can do without it. But a knife for making a homemade musket will be needed.

To begin with, a musket barrel is made - the end of the tube is heated to red and cools in air, this releases the metal and it becomes very pliable for machining - flaring the end of the muzzle.

In muskets, such a bell served to fill in gunpowder and increase the spread of shells; in those days, 3-5 stones were usually poured into the barrel on top of the wad, which covered the gunpowder.

The excess part of the tube is cut off, an ignition hole is drilled with a thin drill, and the end farthest from the socket is sealed tightly. To improve soldering, it is better to use soldering acid, then the tin will stick well to the tube and the foil plug.

Then the butt is cut out and it will have a smoothed look with a knife and needle files. It will not be superfluous to sand the stock with fine sandpaper and varnish it. If walnut is used, then you can not color the stock with markers.

The barrel is glued with superglue, a piece of foil is placed on the edge of the barrel as a decorative clamp.

It remains only to install a decorative trigger and safety guard. Both parts can be bent from a paperclip.

A couple of match heads are poured into the barrel, pressed (not too tightly) with a paper wad, and then a candle wax bullet is inserted.

A thread impregnated with saltpeter is used as a fuse. If you do not have saltpeter, then you can use a ready-made impregnated thread from small firecrackers.

Observe safety precautions and do not point the musket anywhere but at the target!

Happy shooting! :)

Muzzle-loading weapons of the past - muskets, squeaks, fuzei - did not have high accuracy and rate of fire, but were incredibly deadly, any injury threatened death or injury. Moreover, each major improvement in weapons led to a change in military tactics, and sometimes to a change in the military paradigm.

It is believed that handguns appeared in the 14th century at the same time as artillery. The first samples were essentially the same guns and bombards, only reduced so much that they could be fired from the hands. They were called so - hand cannons. Structurally, these were bronze or iron pipes with a tightly soldered end and an ignition hole near it. Short barrels were stacked on rough stocks, similar to elongated decks. Sometimes, instead of a stock, a long metal pin protruded from the sealed end of the pipe, by which the weapon was held. The shooter pointed it at the target and set fire to the gunpowder with a smoldering wick or a red-hot rod (often two people participated in this process).

The last battle of the Middle Ages

For almost two centuries, handguns offered no advantage. Bulky and inconvenient "hand guns" lost in terms of rate of fire to bows and crossbows - a good archer could shoot up to 12 times in a minute. The firearms operator spent several minutes on just one shot. In terms of penetrating ability, the bullets of the first guns did not exceed crossbow arrows. In the second season of the documentary series Deadliest Warrior, an experiment is shown: a bullet fired from six meters from a modern replica of a Chinese handgun from the Ming Dynasty ricochets off a musketeer's shell, leaving only a dent on it.

Everything changed in the 15th century thanks to large-caliber muskets that fired bullets weighing 50-60 grams - they were guaranteed to hit a knight in armor. By the way, the term "musket" (like most other names for muzzle-loading weapons) is conditional. This was also the name of heavy matchlock guns of the 15th-16th centuries, and guns with a percussion flintlock of the 17th-19th centuries.

No matter how primitive the early firearms were, they made a revolution in military affairs: skillful and strong professional warriors soon turned out to be powerless before the muzzle of a musket. turning point historians consider the 1525 Battle of Pavia between the French and Spanish to be the last battle of the Middle Ages. It was then that firearms showed unconditional superiority over the knightly cavalry. From that time on, the musket became the main weapon of the infantry, its tactics changed, and special musketeer units were created.

The wick guns of the 15th-16th centuries are still slow and cumbersome, but they acquire more or less familiar features, the wick is no longer brought to the ignition hole by hand - it is mounted on a snake-like serpentine lever, actuated by a kind of trigger. The ignition hole is shifted to the side, next to it is a special seed shelf, on which gunpowder is poured.

And muskets and arquebuses are unusually deadly - hitting a heavy and soft bullet almost always leads to death or serious injury - a soldier wounded in an arm or leg, as a rule, lost a limb.

Wheels of Leonardo

But even the most advanced matchlock muskets are too inconvenient - the shooter thought more about how to set fire to the gunpowder, and not about how to aim more correctly. The wick was easily extinguished in bad weather, matches and lighters had not yet been invented, and it was impossible to quickly light the wick with a flint and flint in the event of a sudden alarm. Therefore, the wick of sentries smoldered constantly, hidden in a special wick, wound on the butt of a musket or directly on a musketeer's hat. It is believed that the guards burned out five or six meters of the wick during the night watch.

The state of affairs was slightly improved by the wheel lock, known since the 15th century. In it, a spark to ignite the gunpowder on the seed shelf was cut out using a rotating knurled wheel. Before firing, it was wound up with a key, like a music box, and when the trigger was pressed, it rotated, at the same time, a holder with a fixed piece of pyrite was pressed against it from above. Several engineers claim the authorship of the wheel lock, in particular, drawings of such devices are in the work of Leonardo da Vinci called Codex Atlanticus.

Although the wheel lock outperformed the wick in reliability, it was too capricious, complicated (they were made by watchmakers) and expensive, and therefore could not completely replace the serpentine with a smoldering wick. In addition, almost simultaneously with the wheel lock, a much simpler and more perfect shock-flint lock appeared - it is also called shock, battery, armchair. In it, a trigger with flint hit a metal plate-kresal, striking sparks, and at the same time a shelf with seed gunpowder opened. He flashed and set fire to the main charge in the barrel.

Historians believe that the shock lock was invented in the Middle East. In Europe, the Spaniards were the first to use this scheme, and the French brought it to perfection. In 1610, the gunsmith Marin Le Bourgeois united best features different samples and created the so-called French battery lock, which almost until the middle of the 19th century was the basis of handguns in Europe, the USA, and many countries of the East (not in all, in Japan until the last quarter of the 19th century matchlocks were used). TO XVII century the final shape of the flintlock gun was formed - the total length is about one and a half meters, the barrel is up to 1.2 meters, the caliber is 17-20 millimeters, and the weight is four to five kilograms. Everything is approximate, because there was no unification in production.

In addition to the classic muskets, the military was armed with hand-held mortars for firing grenades and short musketons with thick bell-shaped barrels, from which they fired chopped lead, nails or small pebbles.

Why bite the chuck

Perhaps the most famous flintlock weapon is the 1722 British land-based musket, nicknamed Brown Bess (“Dark Bess”). The wooden stock of the musket was brown, and the barrel was often covered with the so-called "rusty" varnish. "Darkie Bess" was used in Britain itself, in all its colonies, and was in service until the middle of the 19th century. This weapon did not have any outstanding characteristics, but gained its fame due to its wide distribution. The singer of British militarism and colonialism Rudyard Kipling even dedicated one of his poems to the brown musket - it is called Brown Bess. In the British Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue of 1785, the expression "embracing Darkie Bess" means "to serve as a soldier."

Experts call the French musket of 1777 the best flintlock gun. By that time, the engineer and master of fortification, the Marquis Sebastien Le Pretre de Vauban, had improved the flint lock and invented a bayonet tube, which made it possible to shoot with an attached bayonet - before that, the bayonet was inserted into the barrel. With this gun, the French infantry went through all the wars of the Revolution and the Empire. A shotgun with a Vauban lock was almost immediately adopted by all European armies. The Russian musket of the 1808 model was essentially a copy of a French gun with a slightly modified caliber.

The impact lock and the development of the loading algorithm significantly increased the rate of fire of muzzle-loading guns. Historians claim that the Prussian infantry of the 17th century fired up to five rounds per minute with four reloads, and individual riflemen - up to seven shots with six reloads.

To speed up charging, gunpowder, wad and bullet were combined in one paper cartridge. The French manual for loading weapons included 12 commands. In short, the process looked like this: the soldier put the trigger on the safety platoon, opened the lid of the seed shelf, bit the paper cartridge, poured some of the gunpowder onto the shelf, and then closed it. He poured the remnants of gunpowder into the barrel, sent a paper cartridge with a bullet there - the paper served as a wad, nailed the bullet with a ramrod, then put the trigger on the combat platoon. The gun was ready to fire.

By the way, the paper cartridge played a cruel joke with the British - it is believed that it was he who served as the pretext for the uprising of the sepoys of 1857-1859 in India. In February 1857, a rumor went around in the 34th Bengal Native Infantry Regiment that the shell of the new paper cartridges was saturated with either cow or pork fat. The need to bite into such cartridges offended the religious feelings of Hindus and Muslims. One of the native soldiers announced that he would not bite the cartridge, and when the regimental lieutenant arrived to analyze the incident, the native fired at him, wounding his horse.

How demons spun bullets

But even the most advanced musket was not very accurate - hitting a target with an area of ​​​​a meter by a meter from a hundred meters was a very good result. Aimed salvo fire was carried out at distances of 50-100 meters - it was believed that it was impossible to get into the enemy line beyond 200 meters. In most armies, soldiers were allowed three to five practice shots to familiarize themselves with the loading process. Everything else is in combat.

On the other hand, salvo firing techniques were worked out to perfection - to reduce the time intervals between salvos, a system of shooters from several lines was used. The first rank fired a volley, went back to load guns, its place was taken by the second with loaded muskets, after the volley it gave way to the third rank, etc. There were tricks for firing three lines at once: the soldier of the first line became half-turned, the next behind him remained in place, the third took a step to the right.

The first samples of rifled weapons date back to the 15th century - in the arsenal of Turin there is a rifled gun of 1476. Already by the first quarter of the 16th century, high-quality rifled guns were available in different countries Europe, especially in Germany. But these were single samples, available only to the rich.

Early rifle sometimes referred to as a "premature invention", in the sense that the level of technological development of the time precluded its widespread adoption. The first flintlock revolvers are also referred to the same premature inventions - one of the oldest samples dates back to 1597 (the first Colt revolver appeared in 1836), and in the Kremlin Armory there is a 1625 revolver squeaker.

The accuracy of the first rifled gun made such a strong impression on contemporaries that it provoked a religious dispute. In 1522, a Bavarian priest (according to other sources, a warlock) named Moretius explained the accuracy of rifled weapons by the fact that demons swarming in the air cannot stay on rotating bullets, because there are no devils in the rotating heavens, but there are plenty of them on Earth. Moretius's opponents insisted that the demons just like everything spinning, and they probably direct the spinning bullet.

An experiment conducted in the German city of Mainz in 1547 put an end to the dispute. First, at targets from a distance of 200 yards, they shot 20 times with simple lead bullets, then another 20 shots were fired with consecrated silver bullets with crosses inscribed on them. Half of the lead bullets hit the target, but the silver missed. The answer was obvious. The church authorities banned the "devil's weapon", and the frightened townspeople threw their rifles into the fire.

True, those who could afford rifled weapons continued to use them. But more than three hundred years passed before, by the end of the 17th century, a rifled gun was created, suitable for relatively massive infantry weapons. And only in the second half of the 19th century did rifled muzzle-loading rifles supplant classic muskets from the army.

The advent of firearms and combat use would have been impossible without black powder. Shortly after its appearance, the musket was invented - a powerful and heavy weapons, whose predecessor was the arquebus. Thanks to A. Dumas and his famous work about musketeers, many contemporaries mistakenly believe that the French invented muskets. In fact, they had a hand in its improvement, but not in the invention itself. In general, the meaning of the term "musket" may be different depending on the historical period.

The first firearm of the arquebus appeared in the middle of the 16th century and is, in fact, the forerunner of the musket. At first, arquebuses were considered deadly and powerful, but in reality they turned out to be an unreliable weapon. The charges that were used for them were too small in caliber and weight (up to 20 g) to penetrate the armor or chain mail of the enemy. And reloading the arquebus was such a long business that the invention is more effective weapon was only a matter of time.

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of the musket in the history of firearms. His own history remains unknown (there are several versions), but the information closest to reality suggests that the first gun with a long barrel and a wick lock was invented in Spain. Presumably, its creator was a certain Mokketo, who lived in the city of Veletra.

The length of the barrel of the first musket, according to old records, was about one and a half meters. In comparison with arquebuses, the caliber also increased - up to 22 mm, and the weight of the charge for muskets was about 50 g. During the firing process, more gunpowder was used, and therefore the bullet had greater acceleration and flew over a greater distance. This means that its destructive power increased significantly - the charge easily pierced plate armor and other armor that was common among infantry troops in the 16th century.

At first, muskets could be fired only from pre-prepared positions, since the weight of the gun reached 9 kg, and it was very inconvenient to carry them. Loading a musket required skill and dexterity, and the strong recoil made firing much more difficult. Despite all the negative features of muskets, European soldiers (this weapon was common among the armies of Spain, France and Germany) after arming with muskets became a formidable force.

The functioning of the musket-gun is related to the work trigger mechanism. It was the appearance of the castle that served as an impetus for the development of all methods of igniting gunpowder in firearms. Matchlock muskets remained in service with European armies for a very long time, despite the simplicity of design and the fact that this method of putting the gun into action was far from ideal.

With the development and improvement of muskets, during the dominance of the Spanish fleet in the sea, given type weapons began to be used on ships. Handguns created a powerful fire support V naval battles, where the situation, as a rule, was resolved more quickly than in land skirmishes. Rifle and artillery salvos were capable of causing significant damage to the rigging, manpower and the ship itself.

Muskets were especially popular in naval battles, as their heavy bullets easily destroyed wooden ship structures. Accurate and devastating was the close-range shooting that preceded the boarding battle.

Manufacturing technology

It should immediately be noted that the manufacture of a valid firearm is not only a complex, but also a dangerous process. Especially if we are talking O early models, to which the musket belongs.

Even factory-made samples of such weapons often led to injuries, jamming and bursting right in the hands of the shooter, therefore it is better to limit ourselves to creating a layout without going into the intricacies of the functioning of a combat prototype.

Material selection

The best material for making a do-it-yourself musket model is wood. And so that your weapon does not lose its attractive appearance, bent under the influence of moisture, the workpiece should be dried for a year. To do this, you must follow these recommendations:

1. Cut off a branch or trunk.
2. We paint over saw cuts on both sides. To do this, varnish, paint or adhesive composition can be used. A similar approach is necessary so that the tree dries more evenly and internal cracks do not appear in it.
3. Now the workpiece is placed in a dry, dark place where the sun's rays should not penetrate.
4. After a year, the bark can be carefully removed from the workpiece, after which it should dry for about a week.
5. Now you should cut the branch in half, after which you can proceed to the direct creation of the musket.

Model Assembly

Apart from wooden block, to make a model musket, you will need a small piece of pipe and strong wire. It is advisable to choose a not very thick chrome-plated pipe or, on the contrary, covered with rust (this approach will allow you to create a layout with a touch of antiquity).

First we make the handle. To do this, you must follow these steps:

1. We find on the Internet a picture of a musket, which will become our model.
2. Carefully transfer the pen of the product to a sheet of paper. In this case, it is necessary to try to observe all proportions.
3. Cut out the resulting pattern.
4. We attach the pattern to wooden beam and securely fasten it to it.
5. We draw the contours of the future workpiece.
6. Using a clerical knife, we remove the extra layers of wood until we get a handle that matches our pattern.
7. The last step is surface treatment with sandpaper. At this stage, you can hide the small bumps that were made earlier. As a result of such processing, the workpiece should become perfectly smooth.

Advice! To protect the wooden surface from moisture, it is advisable to impregnate it with oil, varnish or paint.

After you have finished with the manufacture of the handle, you should attach a pre-prepared tube to its upper part. In the original muskets, the muzzle is slightly "drowned" in the handle, so a small recess should be made in it to securely fix the elements.

After the parts are fitted to each other, they are fixed to each other by means of a wire. The musket model is ready. Now it can be decorated with patterns by wood burning.

Features of the wick system

If you have a desire to equip your musket with a match system, then you should understand its basic nuances.

Such weapons were loaded from the muzzle of the barrel using a special charger. It was a case with a precisely measured dose of gunpowder necessary for a single shot. In addition to him, in the arsenal of the shooter there should have been a small powder flask, represented by a natruska, from which fine powder was poured onto the seed shelf.

The bullet was sent into the barrel by means of a ramrod. To ignite the charge in such designs, a smoldering wick was used, pressed by the trigger to the powder shelf. A short trigger appeared in such designs only in the 17th century.

The weight of a combat matchlock musket was 7, and sometimes 9 kg. In addition, the recoil of this weapon was so strong that only a person of strong build who had a certain training could withstand it. Therefore, attempts were constantly made to soften the blow - special soft pads were used.

It took an average of two minutes to reload a matchlock musket. True, already at the beginning of the 17th century there were virtuoso shooters who managed to make several aimless shots per minute.

In battle, such high-speed shooting was ineffective, and even dangerous due to the abundance and complexity of loading the musket: for example, sometimes the shooter in a hurry forgot to pull the ramrod out of the barrel, as a result of which he flew away in the direction of enemy battle formations, and the unlucky musketeer was left without ammunition.

In the worst case, in case of careless loading of the musket (an excessively large charge of gunpowder, a loose fit of a bullet on gunpowder, loading with two bullets or two powder charges, and so on), barrel ruptures were not uncommon, leading to injury to the shooter and others.

In practice, the musketeers fired much less frequently than the rate of fire of their weapons allowed, in accordance with the situation on the battlefield and without wasting ammunition, since with such a rate of fire there was usually no chance of a second shot at the same target.

silicon system

German craftsmen also made a significant contribution to the improvement of the musket. They improved the firing mechanism of the musket. Instead of the wick method of firing, the flint method appeared.

The flintlock gun, which replaced the matchlock, was a revolution in the development of weapons in medieval Europe. The lever in the wick mechanism was replaced by a trigger, when pressed, the spring with flint was released, the flint hit the flint, as a result of which a spark was struck and ignited the gunpowder, which, in turn, ejected the bullet from the barrel.

It was much easier to shoot from a flintlock musket than from a matchlock.

The Lego constructor is great option for the manufacture of various models. It allows not only a child, but also an adult to embody a whole range of ideas by creating models, structures, buildings and even mechanisms. Thanks to right choice blocks, you can build anything.

In the case of the Lego constructor, you should not count on creating current model, since it will be very problematic to embed even a mechanism with an elastic band into such a design. However, creating a spectacular layout is quite possible.

To make the final product really attractive, you need to prepare blocks of the designer in three colors:

1. Brown - for the manufacture of the handle.
2. Dark gray or black to create a muzzle.
3. Light gray, from which the trigger will be made.

Naturally, when making your own model, you do not have to adhere to this color scheme at all.

Having prepared everything you need, you can proceed directly to the assembly. To do this, we collect separate parts of our model:

1. Trunk. Since the Lego constructor involves the creation of angular models, in our case the trunk will also have a square section. Assemble the muzzle using dark blocks.
2. Handle. The shape of this element can be arbitrary, but it is better to be guided by photographs of real muskets when assembling. Otherwise, you may end up with an ordinary pistol. The main difference between the musket lies in the handle, which smoothly flows into the body of the weapon, on which the muzzle tube lies.
3. trigger. A small detail that can be represented by a single block. Attaches to the bottom of the handle. The musket model may be devoid of a trigger - in this case, this detail is not mandatory.

In the end, it remains only to fasten the received parts to each other, assembling a one-piece model of the musket.

- tool:
1 . Stationery scissors, which is not a pity (glue that sticks to the blades when cutting adhesive tape is very poorly washed)
2 . Dummy knife (one with a retractable blade, preferably durable)
3 . Pliers (if not, you can do)
4 . Hands from the right place
5 . Vacuum cleaner (optional)
6 . Large flathead screwdriver (optional)

Manufacturing steps:

We hope you find it useful
your revision.