Summary: Welcome to Episode 181 of Gun Guy Radio! This is the podcast that shines a positive light on the firearms lifestyle. I’m Your host Ryan Michad and this is your weekly dose of positive firearms talk, without the politics.This week, I’m joined by Nathaniel, a writer & firearms historian for The Firearm Blog to discuss the self loading rifle trials of the 1920’s which ultimately led to the adoption of the M1 Garand!As always, please consider supporting the Firearms Radio Network by shopping Amazon using our Amazon Affiliate Link at firearmsradio.tv/amazon. A portion of your purchase will go towards helping the FRN create awesome pro-gun content!Also check out the Huckleberry Patch from the Patriot Patch Company!Bullpup Shoot 2015SEPTEMBER 19Tth, 2015 9am TO 5pm11311 S. SKUNK HOLLOW ROAD MOUNT CARROLL, ILLINOISGonna shoot some Vintage S&W Revolvers!Main Topic:The Garand vs. Pedersen Selfloading Rifle TrialsRise & Fall of the Light Rifle Part IThe below notes are taken directly from my prep for the tabletop discussion that Ian McCollum and myself were going to film, but didn’t get a chance to. I also have recorded audio of this script:---Today on TFBTV, we're going to take a look at – and shoot – one of the great “might-have-been” rifles of the 20th Century: The Pedersen rifle.The rifle itself we'll get to in a minute – the story of how it came to be cannot really be told without understanding what kind of man John Pedersen was. Those who know of Pedersen probably have already heard of the anecdote from John Browning that Pedersen was “the greatest firearms designer alive”. Lt. Colonel Julian S. Hatcher naturally prodded the humble Browning that surely he was the greatest, but Browning simply replied that he was an old man, and that all his best work was behind him, while Pedersen had a long, bright future ahead.Unlike Browning, Pedersen was known as a tenacious self-promoter and salesman, and some strong evidence of this is in the origin of his military self-loading rifle. By the time Pedersen began work on his rifle in the early 1920s, it had been recognized that designing a suitable, lightweight self loading rifle for the large, high pressure rifle ammunition then in service was a daunting challenge; many in fact believed that such a weapon could not be designed at all. To meet this challenge, Pedersen reasoned that problems facing the self-loading rifle designer could be reduced if a smaller caliber than the standard .30 M1906 were used. In 1923, Pedersen pitched this idea to members of the US Army Ordnance Department, promising that if given proper accommodations and compensation, he could develop a rifle and caliber that together would make the United States the first nation to adopt a self-loading rifle as standard issue. It's a testament to Pedersen's skill in salesmanship that Ordnance, normally a highly conservative organization, accepted his terms. Pedersen was put up in a luxury suite in Springfield, Mass., paid three times the salary for an engineer, and promised a royalty of one dollar for every rifle the Army produced.The rifle Pedersen designed fired a .276 caliber round that was half an inch shorter than the .30 M1906, and that weighed three-quarters as much. Pedersen had promised Ordnance that his rifle would use neither the recoil method of operation, nor gas-operation, both of which at the time had recognized shortcomings. Making good on this, the rifle utilized instead a semi-locked blowback mechanism, acting against the mechanical advantage of a knee joint carefully shaped and situated between the breechblock and the rear of the receiver. When the rifle fired, it would stay properly locked until the pressure reached such a point that the knee could no longer hold it, whereupon the joint would collapse against a spring, and the action would cycle. To make this action possible, Pedersen designed a lubrication process that coated the ammunition with a dry and very durable lubricant that also ac
