Blowback Gun Design

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Orion's Hammer, 2010-01.

Most high-powered guns have a locking bolt, where locking lugs hold the chamber closed during firing. This includes bolt-action or breakaction rifles, as well as rotating-bolt semiautos like the AK or AR. "Blowback" guns, by contrast, just use the inertia of the bolt to hold the
chamber closed. Here's a schematic view of a blowback gun, from George Chinn's 1955 masterpiece, "The Machine Gun", volume 4, part
X. This is a public-domain government publication, so I'm reproducing the figures here directly.

Blowback guns are actually a lot easier to build in a garage than locking bolt guns, because:
There are no mating or rotating parts; in fact, the only moving part can be the bolt!
You don't need to machine locking lugs into the bolt or chamber.
There is no "headspace", or cartridge slop before the bolt hits the locking lugs.
The force on the bolt face is mostly just compression, instead of the tension at the back of the lugs (see Dan Lilja or Varmint Al for
locking bolt analysis). So you can build working blowback bolts from crappy materials like mild steel (of course, harder steel will
wear better).
Blowback designs are legal in most US states, as long as you use a semiauto hammer or striker. The federal government forbids most use of
open-bolt (fixed firing pin) designs, since they're extremely easy to make fully automatic.

Case Head Separation

So why aren't all guns blowback? Well, blowback guns do have this little tendency to explode if designed incorrectly.
Here's a typical cartridge pressure curve. You can record your own pressure curve with a strain gauge like a Pressure Trace, but traces from
different cartridges and guns are surprisingly similar, and different mostly in peak pressure (from about 10Kpsi to 60Kpsi).

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The tens of thousands of pounds of pressure inside the chamber only last for a millisecond or two, and they're what push the bullet down the
barrel.

Note that the chamber pressure pushes back on the bolt with the same pressure that it pushes the bullet down the barrel. This is bad,
because if the bolt moves back under pressure, then the cartridge tends to stretch out. If it stretches too far, the case head may separate
from the body of the case, and spray hot gas at tens of thousands of PSI in all directions. This "case head separation" can and has killed
people, for example by flinging the bolt at high velocity back through the shooter's eye.
Not good.
You can stop the case head from separating by:
Fluting the chamber, like the HK MP5 or G3, which equalizes the pressure inside and outside the chamber.
Greasing the cartridges, so the cartridge tends to slide out of the chamber instead of sticking to the walls. Chinn says heavy grease is
needed; light oil tends to get squished off the high spots.
Pushing back against the case head with enough force. This force can come from tricky-to-machine locking lugs, but we'd like to just
use bolt inertia.
Note that even a tiny 22 long rifle cartridge pushes on the bolt head with a force of about a thousand pounds, so you can utterly forget about
springs (at least, any spring you could possibly cock by hand!), or friction, or magnets, etc.
That last point bears repeating. From the previously cited Chinn Vol 4, page 15 (underline added by me):
"NOTE: There is one point which requires special clarification at this time. In many descriptions of blowback actions, it is strongly
implied that the driving spring contributes a substantial portion of the resistance which limits acceleration imparted to the bolt by the
powder gases. Actually, this is not so. Although it is true that the driving spring absorbs the kinetic energy of the recoiling bolt and
thus limits the total distance it moves, the resistance of the spring does not have any real effect in the early phase of the cycle of
operation. The bolt acceleration occurs mainly while the powder gas pressures are high and are exerting a force of many thousands of
pounds on the bolt. The driving spring, in order to permit the bolt to open enough to allow feeding, must offer a relatively low
resistance. Although this resistance is sufficient to absorb the bolt energy over the comparatively great distance through which the
bolt moves in recoil, it is not great enough to offer significant opposition to the powder gas pressure until the chamber pressure has
dropped to a relatively low level well after the projectile has left the muzzle."
The myth that "a stronger recoil spring will prevent case head separations" persists on the internet to this day. This is a myth.
In any blowback design, you can reduce the chance of lethal injury after a case head separation by:
Venting the escaping gases out as wide an ejection port as possible.
Making the bolt's front face fairly small, so the escaping gases push on a smaller area.
Putting a very beefy rear trunnion at the end of the bolt's rearward travel to absorb the bolt's extra energy. This is over and above the
normal recoil energy.
Not having loose parts near the chamber (e.g., sights, extractor gizmo) that could get blown off during an explosion.
Putting distance between the user and the chamber area. Forward-magazine pistols are good for this (chamber is well forward of the
operator's hands), bullpup rifles are very bad (chamber is right next to the user's cheek!).

How Fast will the Bolt Move Back?

Here's how to figure out the forces acting on the bolt.

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The same chamber pressure that pushes the bullet down the bore, pushes the bolt backwards. If the bolt weighed the same amount as the
bullet, then it would fly back with bullet velocity, shooting the shooter! So our basic tool to keep the bolt velocity down is mass.
Chinn claims that, ignoring friction:
momentum of bolt = momentum of projectile + momentum of gas (+ momentum of barrel?)
mbolt * vbolt = mbullet * vbullet + mgas * vgas (+ mbarrel * vbarrel?)
For small cartridges like pistols, a typical charge weight is 3-6 grains of powder to push a hundred-something grain bullet, so we can usually
ignore the momentum contribution of the gas. However, chamber pressure in any bottlenecked case pushes the barrel forward quite hard, so
I don't think we can safely ignore the barrel's momentum like Chinn does.
The basic problem here is that though the pressure pushing the bullet and bolt are equal, the areas are not equal. Cartridges are always at
least a little bigger at the back end, and sometimes much bigger. This causes "bolt thrust" issues with the new short fat cartridges like 300
WSM, even at quite reasonable chamber pressures. In fact, unlike Chinn, I'm going to ignore the gas momentum and start out by assuming:
pressure on bolt face = pressure on bullet back
Since pressure = force / area, the forces on the bolt face and bullet will differ by the ratios of their areas.
force on bolt face / area of bolt face = force on bullet base / area of bullet base
or
force on bolt face = force on bullet base * (area of bolt face / area of bullet base)
Now we're getting somewhere! Momentum is the integral of force over time (force is actually defined as the time derivative of momentum),
so if we integrate both sides above by time (that is, integrate the pressure curve), then we get:
momentum of bolt = momentum of bullet * (area of bolt face / area of bullet base)
The area of a circle is of course pi * radius2, or pi/4 * diameter2, so this is equal to:
momentum of bolt = momentum of bullet * (diameter of bolt face / diameter of bullet base)2
We can easily look up the momentum of a fired bullet. If we scale that by the area ratio, we get the bolt's momentum. If we divide by the
bolt weight, we get the bolt's velocity. If we divide by a target bolt velocity, we get the required bolt weight.

Blowback Bolt Weight (FINALLY!)

We really want the gun not to blow up when it fires. To do this, we have to hold the chamber closed until the pressure drops to a reasonable
level. A heavy enough bolt will hold the back of the case on this way. Using the equation for bolt momentum above, given the basic
ballistics (bullet mass and velocity) and caliber information (diameters of various parts), we can solve for the required bolt mass for any bolt
velocity.
Which bolt velocity do we need? Sadly, this depends greatly on the exact design of the cartridge case (thicker and stronger walls are better),
the chamber (more support is better), and the powder used (faster burning is better). A typical semiauto has a bolt travelling about 4m/s
(about 12fps). In the half millisecond that it takes to reach peak chamber pressure, a 4m/s bolt would travel 2mm; the actual travel is
substantially less than this because the bolt is accelerating nonuniformly, and does not reach 4m/s until the bullet is gone.
ASSUMING a 4m/s bolt velocity is safe, then the required bolt mass is:
bolt mass in pounds = 1.09x10-5 * bullet mass in grains * bullet velocity in fps * (diameter of bolt face / diameter of bullet base)2
The conversion constant 1.09x10-5 comes from asking Google to express 1 grain * 1 foot/second / 4 m/s in pounds. Here's the above bolt

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mass figured for some common cartridges:

Cartridge
22lr
32acp
380acp

Bolt weight
Units pounds
0.4
0.8
1.1

Bolt thrust
Kpounds
0.9
1.8
2.4

Bullet
Grains
29
71
90

Velocity
Fps
1240
905
1000

Caliber
Inches
0.223
0.312
0.356

Base
Inches
0.224
0.338
0.374

Proof
KPSI
31.2
26.7
28.0

38special
9x19 Parabellum
7.62x25 Tokarev

1.3
1.7
2.0

2.5
4.6
4.0

110
88
87

945
1500
1390

0.358
0.355
0.312

0.379 28.6
0.391 50.1
0.387 44.5

40s&w
357magnum

2.2
2.2

4.9
5.0

135
125

1324
1450

0.400
0.358

0.424 45.5
0.379 57.2

45acp
9x23winchester
45colt

2.3
2.4
2.4

3.7
5.4
2.9

200
125
185

975
1450
1100

0.452
0.356
0.456

0.476 27.3
0.392 58.5
0.480 20.8

45gap
357sig
10mm

2.5
2.6
2.8

4.1
5.6
5.3

185
125
170

1150
1368
1340

0.452
0.355
0.400

0.476 29.9
0.424 52.0
0.425 48.8

410bore
30 carbine
44magnum

2.8
3.2
3.8

2.4
4.0
5.9

109
100
210

1755
2200
1495

0.410
0.308
0.432

0.478 17.6
0.356 52.0
0.457 46.8

454casull
500s&w
50ae

5.4
5.5
6.0

10.2
11.0
8.1

240
275
300

1916
1650
1579

0.458
0.500
0.500

0.478 74.1
0.530 65.0
0.543 45.5

7.62x39
6.8spc
223 Remington

6.3
6.6
7.0

6.9
8.2
6.9

123
85
80

2350
2900
2869

0.311
0.268
0.224

0.443 58.5
0.421 76.7
0.376 80.6

30-30
7.7arisaka
45-70

7.2
9.9
9.9

6.4
8.3
6.4

150
180
400

2390
2200
1900

0.309
0.311
0.458

0.420 59.8
0.473 61.1
0.504 41.6

308 winchester
8mm Mauser
7.62x54R

11.3
11.8
12.2

10.8
9.9
10.5

168
198
180

2680
2625
2575

0.308
0.324
0.311

0.470 80.6
0.470 74.1
0.485 74.1

7mm Mauser
50alaskan
30-06

12.3
12.6
12.8

10.0
8.3
10.4

154
450
190

2690
2150
2700

0.285
0.500
0.309

0.472 74.1
0.548 45.5
0.470 78.0

375h&h
14.2
300wsm
17.4
300 winchester magnum 17.8

12.8
15.7
13.2

235
150
190

3000
3300
3150

0.375
0.308
0.309

0.513 80.6
0.555 84.5
0.513 83.2

338lapua
300lapua
50bmg

24.4
25.0
54.3

18.4
18.4
27.4

250
220
660

3000
2910
3080

0.338
0.309
0.511

0.587 88.4
0.587 88.4
0.804 70.2

20gauge
16gauge
12gauge

5.5
7.7
9.4

4.6
5.0
7.2

218
350
437

1800
1600
1600

0.615
0.662
0.729

0.699 15.6
0.746 15.0
0.812 18.2

10gauge
Cartridge

12.9
6.3
765
1280
0.775 0.855 14.3
Units pounds
Kpounds Grains Fps
Inches Inches KPSI
Bolt weight Bolt thrust Bullet Velocity Caliber Base Proof

Here's the Excel spreadsheet used above.

As a check, note that the blowback Ruger 10/22 bolt weighs 0.4lbs, exactly as predicted. Typical pistol-caliber submachinegun (SMG) bolts
for 9mm, Tokarev, or 45acp are around 1.4lbs, although open-bolt SMG requires only half as much bolt mass (the chamber pressure has to

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slow down and stop the closing bolt before pushing it open again). Note that most rifle cartridges would require an absurd bolt weighing
over ten pounds, and 50bmg would weigh over 50 lbs. This is of course all ASSUMING the 4m/s bolt velocity is slow enough to prevent the
case from exploding!
The second column gives the peak-pressure force on the bolt, which is shown in thousands of pounds (Kpounds). The pressures used for
figuring bolt thrust are proof loads, 30% over the maximum SAAMI or CIP pressure. These huge forces are the big thing complicating
locking designs--the locking lugs have to be really tough!
Your mileage may vary. If you don't understand the above engineering or physics, stick with factory designs. Like I do, you should STRAP
ANY NEW GUN TO A TREE and fire off dozens of rounds remotely from a safe location, carefully examining both the gun and the fired
cases, BEFORE you fire the gun anywhere near your body!

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