Something nerdy about Toggle Actions
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What's his face Henry came up with the first really successful repeating rifle by using a toggle action, Winchester got into guns by manufacturing it and the rest is history...
Maxim received a bruised shoulder from firing a heavy calibre winchester and got to thinking about using recoil to operate the gun. With a telescoping stock and a lever mechanism connecting that to the gun's lever action, he succeeded.
He even got some military sales and Turkey had self loading rifles about the same time as Britain was adopting the Lee Metford and the US was still mostly equiped with trapdoor Springfields.
Maxim went on developing his ideas and developed a belt fed machinegun, with a toggle action...
He also patented all the other known automatic operating systems as well, but it was with the toggle action that he had most success.
Borchardt set about developing an automatic pistol, and appears to have looked to the most successful machineguns of the time for inspiration. His pistol had a toggle action...
George Luger and Hugo Borchardt set about turning the clumsy pistol into something more useable, who exactly did what bits is lost to history, Borchardt certainly got pissed off if anyone called the result a "luger". The important bit here is that the pistol had a toggle action...
What is so special about a toggle action?
Think of the compound linkage on a reloading press, It gives lots of leaverage at the top end of the ram travel, good for heavy sizing and swaging jobs, and fast movement of the ram lower down for quick operation where little leaverage is needed.
In a lever action rifle it does just the same thing, it provides lots of leaverage for primary extraction and provides fast bolt travel further back for fast cycling of the action, plus, when you take the toggle over centre, it works to lock the action, true it makes a long springy lock, not very good for supporting the heads of high pressure cases, but it will lock.
If you don't take the toggle over centre, it can be used as the basis for a delayed blowback action, like the .22 Erma luger look-alike pistols, the experimental Pederson rifle and the hideous Schwartzlose machineguns, which required oiled cartridges and had a recoil spring capable of killing a careless person trying to strip the gun.
A little diversion for a moment. Other designers of recoil operated machineguns for example Browning and Lahti, incorporated accelerators into their actions to harness some of the energy from the recoiling barrel and action and transfer that energy to the bolt to ensure positive extraction and cycling. in machineguns, that is also necessary to help operate belt feed mechanisms as well.
Looking at the operation of the Luger pistol, I forget the travel of the barrel and slide before unlocking commences, but it is sufficient to allow barrel pressure to drop.
Something very interesting happens then. Something that has been lost to most writers, but appears to have been all too obvious to Browning and Lahti.
The cam ramps at the back of the pistol frame ACCELERATE the toggle joint upwards, transfering the energy of the recoiling slide and barrel to the bolt, ensuring positive extraction and cycling.
When Lahti set about creating a more reliable pistol than the Luger for Finnish military use in Finnish winter temperatures, he discarded the Luger's complicated and malfunction prone trigger linkage and striker for a tried and tested conventional enclosed sear and hammer of impressive proportions. He also enclosed the bolt and locking mechanism, but, here is the important bit, he still needed to re-claim all that energy that would otherwise be wasted from the recoiling barrel and slide assembly, so he was forced to adopt a seperate accelerator.
How did other pistols with big slides attached to recoiling barrels manage to work?
I can't comment on the Bergman Bayard, because I don't know, but from looking at cut away sections of the Mauser '96 pistol, it appears to have unlocked after very little slide travel and to have used remaining gas pressure in the barrel to assist operation. This may account for some of the reputed fragility of this pistol and its' Spanish cousins, as unlocking with pressure still in the chamber puts a lot of stress on the locking surfaces (one of the reasons that guns like the MG42 and the G3 use rollers in their respective locking and delay mechanisms, to spread out the wear over a larger surface).
What about Pistols with Browning's slide?
They don't need an accelerator, as the recoiling barrel is very light and not much energy is lost by it just hitting the frame, and the main recoiling mass continues back to complete the full operating cycle. Browning type slides are cheaper to machine than the likes of Lugers, Lahtis and Mausers, so you can make more of them with the same value of machine tools and number of skilled workers.
Browning designs with the swinging link barrel connection, like the 1911, share the Mauser's problem with moving locking surfaces under pressure, and are therefore subject to wearing faster than toggle actioned guns, however later designs like the GP35 "Hi Power" use a fixed cam to allow free travel of the slide and barrel before locking begins and are therefore less subject to this problem.
What if Lahti had used a Browning slide with an enclosed hammer?
I think we'd all have one.
What's his face Henry came up with the first really successful repeating rifle by using a toggle action, Winchester got into guns by manufacturing it and the rest is history...
Maxim received a bruised shoulder from firing a heavy calibre winchester and got to thinking about using recoil to operate the gun. With a telescoping stock and a lever mechanism connecting that to the gun's lever action, he succeeded.
He even got some military sales and Turkey had self loading rifles about the same time as Britain was adopting the Lee Metford and the US was still mostly equiped with trapdoor Springfields.
Maxim went on developing his ideas and developed a belt fed machinegun, with a toggle action...
He also patented all the other known automatic operating systems as well, but it was with the toggle action that he had most success.
Borchardt set about developing an automatic pistol, and appears to have looked to the most successful machineguns of the time for inspiration. His pistol had a toggle action...
George Luger and Hugo Borchardt set about turning the clumsy pistol into something more useable, who exactly did what bits is lost to history, Borchardt certainly got pissed off if anyone called the result a "luger". The important bit here is that the pistol had a toggle action...
What is so special about a toggle action?
Think of the compound linkage on a reloading press, It gives lots of leaverage at the top end of the ram travel, good for heavy sizing and swaging jobs, and fast movement of the ram lower down for quick operation where little leaverage is needed.
In a lever action rifle it does just the same thing, it provides lots of leaverage for primary extraction and provides fast bolt travel further back for fast cycling of the action, plus, when you take the toggle over centre, it works to lock the action, true it makes a long springy lock, not very good for supporting the heads of high pressure cases, but it will lock.
If you don't take the toggle over centre, it can be used as the basis for a delayed blowback action, like the .22 Erma luger look-alike pistols, the experimental Pederson rifle and the hideous Schwartzlose machineguns, which required oiled cartridges and had a recoil spring capable of killing a careless person trying to strip the gun.
A little diversion for a moment. Other designers of recoil operated machineguns for example Browning and Lahti, incorporated accelerators into their actions to harness some of the energy from the recoiling barrel and action and transfer that energy to the bolt to ensure positive extraction and cycling. in machineguns, that is also necessary to help operate belt feed mechanisms as well.
Looking at the operation of the Luger pistol, I forget the travel of the barrel and slide before unlocking commences, but it is sufficient to allow barrel pressure to drop.
Something very interesting happens then. Something that has been lost to most writers, but appears to have been all too obvious to Browning and Lahti.
The cam ramps at the back of the pistol frame ACCELERATE the toggle joint upwards, transfering the energy of the recoiling slide and barrel to the bolt, ensuring positive extraction and cycling.
When Lahti set about creating a more reliable pistol than the Luger for Finnish military use in Finnish winter temperatures, he discarded the Luger's complicated and malfunction prone trigger linkage and striker for a tried and tested conventional enclosed sear and hammer of impressive proportions. He also enclosed the bolt and locking mechanism, but, here is the important bit, he still needed to re-claim all that energy that would otherwise be wasted from the recoiling barrel and slide assembly, so he was forced to adopt a seperate accelerator.
How did other pistols with big slides attached to recoiling barrels manage to work?
I can't comment on the Bergman Bayard, because I don't know, but from looking at cut away sections of the Mauser '96 pistol, it appears to have unlocked after very little slide travel and to have used remaining gas pressure in the barrel to assist operation. This may account for some of the reputed fragility of this pistol and its' Spanish cousins, as unlocking with pressure still in the chamber puts a lot of stress on the locking surfaces (one of the reasons that guns like the MG42 and the G3 use rollers in their respective locking and delay mechanisms, to spread out the wear over a larger surface).
What about Pistols with Browning's slide?
They don't need an accelerator, as the recoiling barrel is very light and not much energy is lost by it just hitting the frame, and the main recoiling mass continues back to complete the full operating cycle. Browning type slides are cheaper to machine than the likes of Lugers, Lahtis and Mausers, so you can make more of them with the same value of machine tools and number of skilled workers.
Browning designs with the swinging link barrel connection, like the 1911, share the Mauser's problem with moving locking surfaces under pressure, and are therefore subject to wearing faster than toggle actioned guns, however later designs like the GP35 "Hi Power" use a fixed cam to allow free travel of the slide and barrel before locking begins and are therefore less subject to this problem.
What if Lahti had used a Browning slide with an enclosed hammer?
I think we'd all have one.
posted by Keith at 7:55 p.m.
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