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Old March 31, 2013, 05:34 PM   #17
JohnKSa
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Join Date: February 12, 2001
Location: DFW Area
Posts: 24,986
Quote:
I don't have a Caracal pistol, but it will obey the laws of physics just like any other pistol. While the bullet is moving out the barrel, the recoil, which started at the same time as the bullet, is moving the whole gun, barrel, slide and all.
The Caracal is quite similar to a Glock. It's a conventional 9mm locked breech autopistol--just happened to be the first one I put my hands on when I opened the safe.

The recoil acts directly on the breech. In a locked breech autopistol, the breech is part of the slide, not part of the frame. The slide is coupled to the frame (in terms of the direction of recoil) only via the recoil spring until the slide bottoms out at the end of travel. That means that only minimal recoil force is transferred to the frame (via the recoil spring) before the end of slide travel when the slide hits the frame.

As a consequence, there is no significant muzzle rise until the end of slide travel. Muzzle rise is the effect of the recoil force being applied above the point of resistance and since there is essentially no effective resistance applied to the recoil force until the slide bottoms out, there is no significant muzzle rise until that point.

To confirm this, look at the bore & sight lines in the diagram from the autopistol. There is clearly no significant downward offset to the bore to compensate for muzzle flip as would be absolutely necessary if there were any significant muzzle flip prior to bullet exit.

I did the same measurements and diagrams for 2 additional locked-breech autopistols which are more common, the Ruger P89 and the CZ-75B to eliminate the possibility that the Caracal is somehow unique.

Note that in both cases that the bore line actually angles slightly upward in relation to the sight line. A clear departure from what is plain in the diagram made using the revolver.

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