# Applying Advanced Tech To Medieval Tech.



## Rojack79 (Nov 18, 2016)

Just a simple question. Could a 15/16th century gun have a silencer equipped to it?


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## Winston (Nov 18, 2016)

The sound noticed by most people is the sonic "crack" at higher FPS (feet per second).
Primitive firearms use a slower-burning powder (with lower velocity projectiles), so theoretically silencing one shouldn't be too difficult.  But the Devil is in the details.

Modern silencers use a series of baffles that absorb the shock waves leaving the barrel.  The problem with black powder is that it burns dirty.  The baffles would get clogged in no time.  Also, black powder residue is corrosive and would chew-up the baffles quickly.  Black powder firearms use a cloth "patch" that may snag in a baffle as well.
But a single use silencer would probably work on an antique firearm (have you web-searched this?).  It is possible to use any combo of rigid barrel shroud and aerated absorbent material to muffle the sound.  I will not go into any additional details, as construction of a silencer without a BATF Tax Stamp is a felony.

Still, remember:  You'd only get one truly silenced shot.  Subsequent shots would get louder 'till by shot 4 or five it lost all effectiveness.  Also, there's a good chance the acoustic absorbent material in the silencer would catch fire (no Fiberglass back then  ).

One additional point.  If your character is some kind of "Ninja", forget it.  Even a silenced black powder weapon would have an external ignition source.  15th / 16th century weapons were mainly match-locks.  That long, burning rope in the back is a dead giveaway.  If your character is a "man of means", then they own a wheel-lock (precursor to the flintlock).  No constantly glowing match, but sparks fly when firing. 

Simple question.  Sorry for the complex answer.  In a word, "yes".  But not the kind of silencer you'd think of.


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## Rojack79 (Nov 18, 2016)

Wow. That was a really good answer. Thanks. You helped me find some more research material.


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## Winston (Nov 18, 2016)

Darn it!  You got me geeking now!
First off, antique weapons (any manufactured prior to 1898 ) are exempt from BATF regs.  So, there are no laws prohibiting discussion, or even manufacturing such a thing. 
Your Renaissance era silencer... can we call it The Michelangelo Brush?  Or The Borgia Broom?

The silencer tube could not be metal.  Metallurgy from that era would produce a silencer casing that weighed as much as the firearm.  That would make it ridiculously front-heavy, and impossible to aim.  I'm thinking a wooden tube like an elongated wine barrel.  Iron or brass straps holding together tapered, heat tempered oak planks.  Cotton was expensive in that era, so the acoustic ablative material should be something like sheep's wool.

All weapons (especially muskets) from that era were very long (slow burning powder needs a long barrel to ensure complete ignition).  The addition of a silencer would make it even longer.  You character would need a "shooting stick".  That is a monopod with a "Y" notch at the top to rest the forward end of the musket.  Or, a frequent occurrence at the time was to rest the weapon on the shoulder of someone standing in front of you.  Serfs up.

Final note: Although the telescope was not invented until the early 17th century, there is evidence of the use of magnifying devices many centuries before that.  If you wanted to mount a "scope" on the weapon, that would be interesting.  Actually, that would be very cool.  Just make it work with the right historical references.

Happy (quiet) shooting!


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## Rojack79 (Nov 19, 2016)

Awesome! Now I have to do research on magnifying technology. Thanks for the post.


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## CyberWar (Nov 24, 2016)

The most logical answer to silenced weapons in a Late Medieval/Early Modern setting would be a crossbow. Simple, reliable, more accurate than the firearms of the day, with longer range and comparable armor penetration (at least for the larger variants), and most importantly, relatively silent. Faster to reload too.

As Winston already pointed out, there are simply too many things that could go wrong with a 15th/16th century firearm for it to be used as a marksman weapon. Asides from the ignition being very visible, it was also very unreliable. Black powder is highly sensitive to moisture, so the results of even a precisely dosed powder charge were unpredictable - the priming might ignite with a delay or not ignite at all, it might ignite but fail to ignite the main charge, the main charge might misfire, either firing with a delay or firing more weakly than expected, etc.

In short, for period accuracy I would recommend your character to stick with the time-tested technology of crossbow. You can still make it interesting by rigging it with some early magnifying device and various exotic arrows, there historically having been rocket-boosted arrows, explosive arrows, noisemaker arrows with whistles, and obviously the ubiquitous incendiary and poison arrows. You can even make it a rapid-firing magazine-loaded crossbow, there also being historical examples of that.


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## Ptolemy (Nov 24, 2016)

I mean as Winston has stated, it is theoretically possible, it is highly illogical to do this because of (as stated corrosion based on black powder (which is highly corrosive))the quintessential silence weapon is a bow and arrow, not a crossbow.

i don't know if you've heard an ancient crossbow be fired but it's less than silent. Modern Crossbows are silent. Medicinal Crossbows are not. They make a loud "clack" when fired and were also very hard to reload without making a sound. You need to pull the drawstring back to even arm it, and that makes a decent sound. Firing it would give it away instantly, not to mention it is one shot only while a bow and arrow gives you more shots. Also it's a seige weapon, that was rarely used in battle due to the use of the highly more efficient bow and arrow. The only advantage a crossbow has on a B&A is punch power, it's like a shotgun bow and arrow.

a bow and arrow shot arrows that were not meant to come out of a human body. Many times doctors cut the arrow stem off and left it in there rather than risking killing the patient. A crossbow bolt is easier to remove since it isn't usually  barbed and triangular like most arrows (note some are barbed but rarely were siege weapons barbed) and it could be slid out (although most died from a crossbow shot due to blood loss)

you could add modern touches to a bow and arrow, but a crossbow is far from a silent weapon in these times.


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## CyberWar (Nov 24, 2016)

The issue with bows is that they require considerably more practice to become proficient with, their aiming time is limited by the archer's upper body strength, and their armor penetration is inferior to crossbows. Modern experiments show that the famed English longbow could not penetrate 15th century plate armor even with bodkin arrows, their dreaded reputation coming from the fact that most knights wore more affordable but easily-penetrated chainmail rather than plate during the battles of that won the English longbow it's lasting fame. Another reason why English longbows prove so effective against French knights was the arrows injuring and killing their horses, reducing cavalry charges to deadly pile-ups.

Crossbows were particularly hated by knights because they enabled common peasants to efficiently kill armored knights with a lifetime of training behind them. Where a longbowman took years of practice to become highly proficient, a crossbowman could achieve the same results in only a few weeks.

Hence I think that crossbow would be the ultimate 15th century assassin's ranged tool. The craftsmen of the day had centuries of practical knowledge about making these weapons, so I'm sure a master-crafted crossbow could be made reasonably silent to make an effective silent assassin's tool, the commonly-encountered variants being noisy simply because no effort was made to make them silent rather than out of a technical inability to silence them.

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In theory, you could actually jump several centuries ahead in time by having your protagonist enlist the aid of an alchemist who would supply him with guncotton. That would solve the corrosion problem, make the gun more powerful and reliable than other period pieces, eliminate the problem of giveaway smoke that would otherwise also hinder the use of optics, and also not stretch plausibility too much, both cotton/cellulose and nitric acid being known and available at the time. An alchemist could quite possibly discover the process of making guncotton through his experiments, and the means of silencing a firearm would also be a plausible discovery through experimentation.


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## Rojack79 (Nov 24, 2016)

Thanks for all the help guys. I should say that the time period is pretty ambiguous at this point. My story is a huge mashup/crossover of all the famous fairy tales. All of the characters live in one shared world so they will bump into one another. The M.C. is the Magical Black Knight who has access to some pretty good tech thanks to the fact that he comes from our world. I'm just trying to come up with a realistic way for him to use gunpowder based weaponry. Or I could go the crossbow route like some of you have said. I like both ideas and will see if I can't incorporate them both into the story. Thanks one again for all the help.


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