Products I’m Looking For: 2015 Edition

Here’s my annual gift to entrepreneurs: If you want to make money, bring any one of these items to market and I guarantee you success!

More heavy subsonic .22LR ammunition. The market above 40gr is still limited to the Aguila 60gr load!

Gapless revolvers. The Nagant 1895 Revolver goes into battery when cocked to seal the cylinder gap. Revolver manufacturers pride themselves on their lockwork but the biggest innovation in revolvers in the 120 years since the Nagant went into service has probably been the shift of the barrel to the bottom of the cylinder with the Chiappa Rhino line. How about a revolver that is normally in battery and only cams out of battery to open or rotate the cylinder? Eliminating that loud, dangerous gap would be very cool, and doing it with a nice trigger pull would be a worthy achievement for a revolver engineer.

3-mode single/autoloaders. Historically automatic rifles have had a three-mode selector that toggles between Safe, Semi-automatic (one shot per trigger pull), and Automatic (typically either a 3-round burst or continuous fire while the trigger is depressed). For the civilian market that third mode has been eliminated. But there is another mode that would not be restricted that I would appreciate having in its place: Call it Manual, which would fire a loaded round but not cycle the action. The biggest benefit would be found shooting suppressed, where the option of keeping the action locked up would result in quieter shots and less fouling. The Manual mode would also be a useful tool for training. Granted, it is possible to run some piston guns in manual mode: the Ruger SR-556 and the XCR have gas selectors that can close the gas system completely. But they aren’t designed to be easily toggled the way fire control switches are.

Faster, cheaper, higher-resolution video cameras. As of now there is a gap between the $5500 Edgertronic, which can shoot 720p at 700fps and lower resolutions up to 18kfps, and (of all things) the $900 iPhone 6 which maxes out at 240fps in 720p. No camera in the consumer price range offers sustained video above 240fps!

4 thoughts on “Products I’m Looking For: 2015 Edition

  1. federalist

    Looks like the high-speed video niche is getting filled: the fps1000 is supposed to ship in the next few months with a $1500 option that shoots 720p at 550fps and 480p at 1500fps.

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  2. Cymond

    “Gapless revolvers.”
    It doesn’t matter whether it’s open by default or closed by default. Either way, the rest of the cycle must be completed by the firing mechanism, which means a worse trigger pull. However, yes, I’m sure somebody could design something another and more elegant than the Nagant, but it would be expensive and offer minimal benefit.

    “3-mode single/autoloaders”
    Of course, by now, we’ve seen a couple of ‘binary triggers’that use the third position to fire a shot on trigger release.
    However, preventing the bolt from cycling would be difficult for the fire control group. How is the selector supposed to cut off the gas flow?
    A separate selector could activate the bolt catch after every shot, but that wouldn’t help suppressor users.
    Maybe some kind of bolt stop could block the bolt (I’ve seen it done on blowback 22s), but the forces on a centerfire cartridge are too much. It would basically mean a second set of bolt lugs.
    Simply put, the best way to do it is with a gasblock that can be completely shut off, but we already have those and they’re not part of the selector switch.

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