Quote:
Originally Posted by kalos72
Targan - You seem to know alot about the physical aspects of the weapons, could you make an M16 out of recycled/smelted steel given a good machine shop and skill?
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In theory you could but it would be pretty difficult. You'd need one or more gunsmiths who would not only need to be highly skilled at their trade but also intimately familiar with every tiny aspect of the M-16. Trying to perfectly replicate every component would be a nightmare. Some components would need very specific types of materials (particular grades of hardened steel for instance). The receiver of an M16 is made from aluminium alloy so you can forget about producing those, you'd have to fabricate steel versions instead. That would change a number of characteristics of the weapon (cooling, weight etc).
Seriously, if you have an expert gunsmith and a really well equipped machine shop you'd be much better off choosing a much simpler weapon to copy and produce (I'm thinking one of the many WWII SMGs that were produced using stamped components for instance).
A major factor in what weapon to choose to manufacture would be what ammo do you have the most of (or what ammo can you reload/produce yourself). If you can't practically reload or manufacture sufficient quantities of decent quality, modern, smokeless powder ammo your only choice would be to produce black powder weapons. On the plus side a skilled weaponsmith with a good machine shop could really churn out large numbers of black powder weapons in a short period of time.
I admit that producing good quality brass cases might be a problem but take a look at these weapons (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winchester_Model_1873 ) (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winchester_Model_1892 ) as examples of black powder firearms. That's a big fat 44-40 Winchester bullet and assuming you can hit your target its going to do some real damage even at quite long ranges. Older weapons used other materials including cardboard to make black powder cartridges. If you want to go for a really simple weapon you could even produce muskets. Unfortunately though they are slow to load and not very accurate. If you've reached that point you'd may as well produce some kick-arse heavy crossbows using flat truck springs for the arms.