Resources for silencer design information

[dakota.potts]

As I've said here before, I'm going to be going to school soon for machine tool technology and taking gunsmithing courses while I'm there. I have a little experience on machines (mostly just mills and surface grinders) and I hope to be picking up a lot more experience, so this is something I've been thinking about lately.

I think it would be a really rewarding project to put a silencer on a Form 1 and design one for my own rifles. The purpose would be for learning, potential resume building, curiosity, and the urge to legally own a suppressor. I was thinking either a simple .22 LR silencer for my CZ 452, or maybe something along the lines of a .30 caliber.

I understand the detailed implications of the question I am asking, and it's not a project I'll be able to take on for at least a couple of years because of a laundry list of reasons (time, money, tooling, experience, living on my own to go to college, etc.) but it is something I'd like to start researching since the type of design I'm interested in is SOT type stuff.

The problem is that all of the resources I'm finding are either grey hat sites that teach you how to make unregistered silencers (for information purposes only, of course), have great pictures but not very much background (cncgunsmithing, for example), or assume you know a lot about the process such as the construction of different baffle types. I'm looking for somewhere I can go where I can start to piece together the engineering, physics, design, and general construction as a whole. Does anybody know any places I can start reading into something like that?

[Lark]

There are many drawings and some photos on www.silencertalk.com . Some of the hobbyists and professionals that post there are more than happy to hand out advice.

I've made a few cans including 223, 308, 22lr and am working on one for a 375 Whelen. Using 60 degree cones and K's will result in a decent silencer. .020" tubing for 22lr, .035" for 223 and .065 for .308 to 50 bmg will get the job done.

Here are some Youtube videos;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmhxJnaZ_0o and others by NoiseLess Club

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZ16clziJaE and others by Jim McPherson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYrlxPCmbmU and others by ranb40

[zukiphile]

I hope you don't mind if I piggy back on your question.

Would a practical course of action be to register and build the exterior tube, attachment and endcap (I may be misusing terms of art), and then experiment with dropping in different sorts of baffles to see which are most satisfactory?

[Lark]

You can do that, but since each part is by itself a silencer you would have pay another $200 tax each time you replace the baffle stack. It would be a better idea to make a new silencer each time or obtain an FFL and pay the SOT ($500-1000 a year) and the ITAR ($2250 year) to make any number you want without the making tax.

[dakota.potts]

I don't mind at all if you piggy back.

Say you design a suppressor and it doesn't work. You misalign the hole or mess up the last crucial thread and have a useless piece of junk; or it doesn't work well and you want to re design it.

I have been told you can permanently destroy and disable the first one made and recreate the same one with the same serial number if you are the maker. Is this true? Or something close to it?

[barnbwt]

If said bad silencer was never completed, it never existed, so you haven't built it yet. You aren't registering the billet you start with, but the functional suppressor you end up with. Now, you should shred the failed attempt if it could be reworked into a suppressor after a fashion, but your burden can't be more than that.

I don't even know if there is an offficial or unofficial time limit for completing the thing after approval (If they ask and you haven't made it, you'll likely lose the stamp though)

TCB