.45 ACP Broomhandle/Shanxi Type 17

[sheepherder]

Originally Posted by alvin

It's a little bit misunderstanding. Communist arsenal did not have steel importing channel, so they took railroad rails as raw material to make grenade and some gun parts. There was another big benefit for them doing that -- railroads were controlled by their enemies, damaging railroads could delay enemy's movement. That's a common tactic in guerrilla warfare at that time.

But warlords and nationalist arsenals did not use rails to make guns. They imported raw steel from Europe. The production volume was limited by how much steel they had.

There was a feature on Science Channel/How It's Made today on rail steel. Quite interesting and prompted me to look for the chemical composition of the RR rail steel. Here's an interesting thread from BladeForums on this subject, and likens RR steel to 1084 steel...

http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/sh...oad-rail-steel

These guys are more interested in heat treating & tempering than in impact resistance but it still seems like rail steel would be good for handgun parts...Especially if you've just ripped up a couple lengths of it to derail the train going over the river Kwai...