The vast majority of silencers are designed to never ever EVER come apart. The reason is that they’re designed for higher pressure cartridges, so making them permanently sealed lowers the probability of the cans coming apart under pressure. It’s also easier and cheaper to produce. But Huntertown Arms, a silencer manufacturing company little more than a year old, has done something I’ve never seen done for the 5.56 round: they’ve made a silencer that you can take apart and clean . . .
That may not seem like such a breakthrough, since 5.56 ammunition doesn’t dirty up a silencer all that much. On the other hand, .22 long rifle is dirty as all get-out.
Silencers are often used to quiet multiple calibers, and thanks to being able to use the same barrel for both 5.56 and .22lr, shooters can also use the same can to quiet both. The issue is that 22 ammo tends to leave tons of residue behind, whether in the form of unburnt powder or just nasty carbon build-up. If not cleaned out every once in a while, the gunk will eventually make the silencer useless.
Huntertown Arms’ solution is to build a scaled-up stacked baffle can, a design typically used only for rimfire these days. That means the silencer can be cleaned and put back together, and it also allows the shooter to rotate the baffles. The rearmost baffle will receive the most punishment thanks to the muzzle blast, and rotating the baffles will extend the lifetime of the parts.
It’s a nifty design, and hopefully I’ll get my hands on one to test out for more than ten seconds at some point in the future.
OK, so if one of the stacked baffle cans wears out, I can order a replacement without paying another $200 fed tax? or is each part considered a “new” silencer?
You should be able to order a replacement without paying for another $200 tax stamp. As long as the part of the silencer with the serial number engraved remains intact, even a complete swap of the internals that completely changes the design of the can will not require another tax stamp.
Persons other than qualified manufacturers may repair silencers, but replacement parts are “silencers” as defined in 18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(24) that must be registered and transferred in accordance with the NFA and GCA.
This may help address the reliability issue, which is one of the biggest not-legal-related barriers to widespread suppressor ownership. We require our guns to function safely and properly right out of the box with essentially any SAAMI-compliant ammunition (and we’re right to demand this) but suppressors are much more delicate in their preferences. The idea of my Ruger 9mm shooting itself with a slightly errant bullet is so unlikely as to be almost unimaginable, but ‘baffle strikes’ are the bane of many suppressor shooters’ existence.
Particularly for semi-automatics, setting up a can to run just right can be a tedious process of range time, gun adjustment/modification, ammo experimentation, and (occasionally) dreaded trips back to the manufacturer. The fact that most gunsmith’s aren’t allowed to handle NFA items doesn’t make this any simpler.
The industry is helping people get over their justifiable NFA anxiety, with outreach efforts like the Silencers Are Legal shoot. Making cans more rugged and user-friendly would be a good next step, even if the resulting product is a little noisier than some current suppressors.
SilencerCo already did it with the Saker5.56, like all their cans, it can be taken down and cleaned at the user level. The Saker5.56 was released last SHOT show. SilencerCo makes very very good suppressors that have gotten high praise from even their competitors. Check out their pistol cans if you get a couple free minutes to scan their catalog and tell me you don’t want one.
Also, according some of the folks at AAC that post on the SilencerTalk forums, AAC doesn’t void warrenties anymore if the user disassembles their cans and the tool to do so can be purchased, though you have to get through the locktite to do it.
So it has ‘bin dun befoe’.
The cool thing (that I saw on a video on these) is that they are COMPLETELY interchangeable. You can take the 5.56 version, buy new baffles, a new endcap with AK threads on it, and put it on an AK. So the one registered casing can work with TONS of rifles! 😀
The Saker is not user serviceable. The Sparrow is, the Saker is not.
Met the owner of Huntertown Arms out there, great guy to talk to and kind enough to let us fire his guns. The idea of ‘the greatest db reduction per dollar spent’ idea is pretty appealing, I have to admit. Really looking forward to whatever he comes up with next.
HTG have been making user servicible centerfire rifle cans since forever. virtually ALL of their silencers are user servicible. no idea why huntertown arms gets an article about this “amazing” feature.
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