Forget what you've seen on TV or read in The Poor Man's James Bond- the facts about sound suppressors will surprise you.
We'll start today's lesson on silencers with a pop quiz. True or false. Adding a silencer to a rifle increases the rifle's accuracy. The answer is true -- if you're talking about a remarkable sound suppressor or "can" from Phil Seberger of OPS Inc.
In a demonstration of Seberger's 3rd Model M24 MBS (Muzzle Break Suppressor), I witnessed a Remington 700PSS in 308 fire two consecutive five-shot groups at 100 yards, using Black Hills excellent 168 gr. moly-coated match ammo, with and without silencer. The suppressed group was .220" tighter.
True or false: Adding a silencer to a rifle increases the muzzle velocity. Again, the answer is true. In another demonstration, two 10-shot strings were fired over an Oehler 35P chronograph, with and without averaged 32 fps higher with the silencer than without.
While these answers may surprise you, it probably won't come as much of a shock to learn that suppressors reduce felt recoil far better than most compensators or muzzle breaks. In fact, a silencer is nothing more than an incredibly efficient muzzle break.
An OPS Inc. silencer works by different principles than most silencers on the market that try to slow or trap the escaping gas. OPS Inc. cans work by capturing the sound waves of a gunshot as they exit the muzzle. Through a series of baffles inside the can the suppressors redirects the sound waves causing them to ricochet back into themselves canceling themselves. It's called the "out of phase" principle of sound reduction.
Seberger, 76, explained the principle this way: "I got the bright idea that if I could go and hold the first sound pulse back in time, and insert it back when the second pulse came along, I'd have sound cancellation and I'd have nothing left but heat. I'd change the sound energy into heat energy. You can't get rid of energy, you know.
"In a gunshot, the first positive pulse occurs as the sine wave goes up then down. It has considerably more amplitude than the negative pulse. We take that pulse and it dissipates a lot of energy as it hits the back of the chamber. What's left will then be out of phase with the negative pulse, so they cancel each other out. They're out of phase."
Realizing that I was a bit glassy eyed from the technical explanation, Seberger translated it into something I could understand: eight ball. "The sound bounces back, just like a billiard ball. Then it is out of phase. It then meets the next wave and it cancels itself out," the retired electrical engineer said.
The Physics Of Silence
Sound is a form of energy. When the propellant in the cartridge case burns from the primer's ignition, the resulting energy propels the bullet down the barrel and causes the rifle to recoil. But there's still some energy left. It takes the form of noise.
The law of the conservation of energy holds that energy can be neither created nor destroyed, only transformed. Thus, the idea of a silencer is to change the sound energy into heat energy Hiram Maxim, who invented the silencer in 1905, utilized this law, although he didn't know it.
Maxim's silencer came about after he watched water flush in a toilet and saw the water swirl. "If I can make sound swirl in a tube, it will make the sound go away," thought the father of the machine gun. His silencer was crude and only marginally effective, but his "swirling water" theory stumbled on the fringe of the most efficient way for a suppressor to work -- sound cancellation.
OPS Inc. silencers work by redirecting sound energy, if you will, in a series of very special baffles and chambers. The sound is bounced around inside the can colliding with itself where it essentially dissolves into nothingness, turning to heat in the process.
A suppressor gets hotter than the barrel after a few rounds. You can actually feel hot spots on a suppressor after only a couple of rounds, feeling where in the can most of the sound-to-heat transfer took place.
The Rolls Royce Of Cans
Seberger, a World War II veteran, manufactures the Rolls Royce of suppressors. Knowledgeable insiders in the most elite areas of the U.S. Special Operations community say that what sets the Seberger can apart from other makes is its incredible durability and performance.
In a government test at an undisclosed location, a Seberger 3rd Model MBS (Muzzle Brake Suppressor) was attached to a belt-fed .308 caliber M-21 HK machine gun. There are 100 rounds in a 7.62mm belt for an HK-21. Belts were linked together in 200-round sets. The military inspectors figured that the 12" long, 28 oz. can might be good for a few belts -- maybe.
Two hundred rounds of .308 through a machine gun is a hell of a test for a suppressor. They set up a special microphone attached to an audiometer to measure the sound. Temperature sensors were placed at various points on the weapon and the suppressor.
Targets were set out to record accuracy before and after the test. The HK-21 is an extremely accurate weapon when fired in semi-auto mode. Seven belts of 200 rounds each were fired as continuous bursts. The weapon was then allowed a cooling time of two minutes before the next belt of 200 rounds was fired.
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