[John in AR]

I'm considering making a suppressor, completely legally on a Form 1, strictly for .22 rimfire.

Has anyone here gone the Form 1 route before, building their own? Mine are all commercially-built ones that I bought, but I shoot so many 22's thru mine that I like the idea of a cheap one strictly for that caliber. Currently I'm using my Mystic-X for .22's and while it works fine, I don't like how dirty & funky it gets that good (rifle-rated) suppressor for rimfire use. A cheap home-built one for rimfires could be made for under $300, including the $200 tax stamp, and would reduce the use & cleaning cycles on the better suppressor.

Curious about the Form 1 process itself; primarily how much of a hassle it is..?

 

[boati]

there's a silencer forum. I've heard that electronic submissions have been reduced to 3-4 months waiting period. Since you've already been checked out, it might be even "faster". There's outfits selling the guts and tube as a "solvent trap". I think that they are all aluminum which is ok for the .22lr.
https://www.google.com/searchq=solv...rome..69i57.9482j0j9&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

http://www.silencertalk.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=127

https://www.google.com/search?q=sil.....69i57j0l3.8316j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

 

[John in AR]

I’m a member of silencertalk.com and form1suppressorboards.com both; just wondering if anyone here had done one before. I’m thinking about one of those ‘fuel filter’ kits with the monocore instead of the stacked baffles. Haven’t decided yet, but since they can be had so cheap it makes it tempting, just to have one to leave pretty much permanently on the rimfire AR pistol.

Don’t know for certain if I’ll pursue it, but it’s tempting.

 

[boati]

Amazon still has my .22 can book, $20, and I see a copy of the mini-14 can-book, now and then, usually for almost $100 a copy. Must be CA and NY people? 'they still sell my .45 can book, too. Silencerco (I think it was) stole my idea for an underchamber. On a fixed barrel, where weight of the can doesn't matter, the sleeve area and underchamber being full of screen wire make the 3.5" can very quiet indeed. Need a slidelock on 22 autos, tho, if you want real suppression. Sub 6" long barrels keep regular "hi-speed" 22lr ammo subsonic. The "fuel filter" and "solvent trap" 22 cans I see are huge, and I"d bet that the 223 variants aint very quiet. That sort of baffling either doesn't last long or it's not very effective.

 

[John in AR]

...The "fuel filter" and "solvent trap" 22 cans I see are huge, and I"d bet that the 223 variants aint very quiet. That sort of baffling either doesn't last long or it's not very effective.

I've seen the solvent trap versions use both types; stacked baffles and monocore. If you mean stacked (M or K) baffles can't be both quiet and durable, it simply depends on how well they're done. If you mean monocore can't be both quiet and durable, they certainly can be. I have both types (an old-school Norrell with stacked M baffles and a very modern Mystic-X monocore) and personally like the simplicity and easy cleaning of a monocore, but the stacked baffle approach is often easier for a DIY approach.

Good, modern (ie, engineered) designs can surprise. My Mystic-X can be used on guns up to .357 caliber and so has near .40-caliber holes. Yet because of the shapes & angles of the chambers milled into the monocore, it's quiet with even much smaller .22-diameter stuff. With the same 223 ammo, it's noticeably quieter than my older M4-2000 with its tighter .223-specific bullet-path.

I'm looking at doing one that is actually substantially oversized anyway, mainly for use on my AR22 pistol with 4.5" barrel. Right now I use the Mystic-X on it, and it's not only overkill, but it would be nice to free up the better silencer. In this particular application, it's not a problem for the .22 silencer to be oversized, since it's partly recessed under the rail anyway and is used for playing and small nuisance-animal use. I'm not humping it around with a pack full of other gear, so size isn't that big a deal, and in this application there's really no real need for it to be maximized for compactness.

 

[boati]

for many years, a maker that i know has wanted to try combining the compressed screen wire baffles with the "k" shape. It would be easy to shape the piston and the stop-washed to allow that sort of experimentation. but I suspect that the weight of the can would go up, since the baffles would have to be more of the interior volume than my normal design calls for. by having a 3/4" ID hole for the 1" thick baffles, alternating with the 5/16" ID hole of the half inch baffles, the gases are allowed to expand in the open space and then they are forced to penetrate the compressed screen wire of the small hole baffles. They can't come back down into the iD holes,due to the pressure of the gases that stayed "online" with the bullet, so to speak. towards the front end of the can, of each small hole baffle, there's a 1/8" thick neoprene washer. It's not a 'wipe", the ID hole in it is too large for it to function as such. The neoprene's job is to stop cold any gases that are "trying' to move forward thru the small hole baffle. The filaments of the wire are of course robbing the gases of heat energy during the entire time, which no solid metal or ceramic baffled can do. With an 11" barreled 223, full charge ammo, between two rows of rental storage, A guy I know fired 3 shots, with houses less than 100m away on a sunny, warm, but winter day and had no concern that anyone would bother him about it. But he didn't exactly hang around forever afterward, either. This was in CO, nearly 20 years ago. The shots were from sitting, a couple of seconds apart, at a mark 30m away. He took the time to note the POI and group size, retreive the steel gong, and was driving his personal vehicle. A lot of guys "think" that what they hear from a not very good can is "sonic crack" or "ejection port noise", when the truth is that the can aint very effective. Especially on 30 calibers. A truly effective can on such rifles is so big and heavy that almost nobody wants it, so they err on the side of having more noise and smaller, lighter cans for such calibers.

 

[John in AR]

There are numerous reasons that suppressor makers quit using rubber washers (wipes or otherwise) decades ago. Can you guess what they are?

 

[Dorobuta]

I’ve considered having a mono core milled out of iconel. I have two designs I’d like to try, but dont have the time to pursue right now.

 

[John in AR]

I’m fortunate in that the particular application I want this one for doesn’t need to really be optimized as far as size efficiency. It would be for use at least 95% of the time on an AR pistol with 4” barrel in 22LR (the gun I usually use for the musical targets). So being somewhat larger than a typical 22 suppressor wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, and could actually be a good thing.

I figure a home-made Form-1 approach using one of the solvent trap or fuel filter kits intended for centerfire pistol use would not only be cheaper, but quicker as well. Supposedly e-filed Form-1’s generally come back in weeks rather than months.

 

[Dorobuta]

for many years, a maker that i know has wanted to try combining the compressed screen wire baffles with the "k" shape. It would be easy to shape the piston and the stop-washed to allow that sort of experimentation. but I suspect that the weight of the can would go up, since the baffles would have to be more of the interior volume than my normal design calls for. by having a 3/4" ID hole for the 1" thick baffles, alternating with the 5/16" ID hole of the half inch baffles, the gases are allowed to expand in the open space and then they are forced to penetrate the compressed screen wire of the small hole baffles. They can't come back down into the iD holes,due to the pressure of the gases that stayed "online" with the bullet, so to speak. towards the front end of the can, of each small hole baffle, there's a 1/8" thick neoprene washer. It's not a 'wipe", the ID hole in it is too large for it to function as such. The neoprene's job is to stop cold any gases that are "trying' to move forward thru the small hole baffle. The filaments of the wire are of course robbing the gases of heat energy during the entire time, which no solid metal or ceramic baffled can do. With an 11" barreled 223, full charge ammo, between two rows of rental storage, A guy I know fired 3 shots, with houses less than 100m away on a sunny, warm, but winter day and had no concern that anyone would bother him about it. But he didn't exactly hang around forever afterward, either. This was in CO, nearly 20 years ago. The shots were from sitting, a couple of seconds apart, at a mark 30m away. He took the time to note the POI and group size, retreive the steel gong, and was driving his personal vehicle. A lot of guys "think" that what they hear from a not very good can is "sonic crack" or "ejection port noise", when the truth is that the can aint very effective. Especially on 30 calibers. A truly effective can on such rifles is so big and heavy that almost nobody wants it, so they err on the side of having more noise and smaller, lighter cans for such calibers.

My 30 cal can is very quiet and very light. It is also made entirely of titanium.

You would be very surprised at how good modern silencers are, and how effective they are at removing heat energy - by making the the gases perform work, you are robbing them of energy. Turbulence inside a modern suppressor is designed to do that very effectively. Baffle design does matter. A lot of time is spent optimizing them.

 

[Dorobuta]

There are numerous reasons that suppressor makers quit using rubber washers (wipes or otherwise) decades ago. Can you guess what they are?

And none that I am aware of use wire screens. They are all using baffle stacks or mono core (which is just a United stack for all practical purposes)

you can get some really intricate baffle patterns with mono core - far more elaborate than with a stack.

there's some very cool designs out there that are very, very quiet.

 

[boati]

yeah, cause they dont want people finding out that you can make baffles yourself, enough for a 22 in 20 minutes, or a 223 in an hour. of course they have to make it look difficult. Once their CNC lathe is set up, it costs them almost nothing to make a set of baffles, other than the materials. My 223 design weighed 12 ozs, You're not going to get much lighter than that and be anything like as quiet. There's class III dealers all around me. I"ve heard their wares and nothing is worth what they charge. Sheesh. If I can get that kind of money, once she's a title II, i"ll get my private bill passed within a couple of years. I'll settle for 1/2 as much and selling lots more of them, paying some high school kids to do most of it. The rubber blockers serve their purpose very well indeed and are very easy to make. the reason guys 'think' that they have to shoot so much thru their silencers is the paid so gd much for them that they have to do so to "justify" the cost. It takes just 3 hours to make a 223 can, now that I know to use the tubing that fits the freeze-plugs. Machining that blast-chamber-baffle was half of the fabrication time.

 

[boati]

In Joe's garage, I once made and mounted and test-fired. 10 .22 cans in 10 hours. We found out that the 22's were piercing a 2x12 header board, endangering the wiring. over head. I'd never have thought that such penetration possible, out of the 3" barrel of a Jennings .22 pistol.

 

[John in AR]

...My 223 design weighed 12 ozs, You're not going to get much lighter than that and be anything like as quiet...

(For anyone new here, "andy" quoted below is "boati"; they're just two of the many of names he's used here.)

You say your .223 suppressor is as follows:

...There are reasons why my can-design for such guns is 8" long, 12 ozs, and has an OD of 1 3/4"...

I've pointed out before that the Mystic-X that I mostly use is 8" long and has an OD of 1 3/8". It's 10.3 oz with the low-profile mount, and 9.7" & 11.2 oz with the larger (higher-volume) mount. It's rated all the way up to .338 win mag and has a measured reduction rating of 33-38 dB. It's a very good, very capable suppressor. (And mine isn't even the titanium version; mine's the heavier, less expensive stainless steel baffle version. The titanium model is three ounces lighter still.)

So comparing to your 'design', which you admit doesn't last for a whole lot of rounds, there are four factors in play here - length, weight, thickness and overall size (volume). So let's compare them...

Length - yours is the same length as this one.
Weight - yours is 16.5% heavier.
Thickness - yours is 27% larger in diameter.

Volume takes a second to figure, but not overly complicated. It’s (Pi x radius x radius x height)

Volume of your 8” x 1.75” unit = 76.97 cubic inches.
Volume of the Mystic-X at 8” x 1.375” = 47.52 cubic inches.
And 76.97 was a buttload bigger than 47.52 when I went to school. And percentage-wise, it’s a massive buttload bigger; 62%

Volume - yours is 62% bigger.

Even if we use the extended, larger mount (which I usually do on a rifle), the volume of the Mystic-X is 54.6 cubic inches. You don't have to use the bigger mount, but it adds longevity, so I do. So even if using the bigger mount on the mystic-x, it's still almost 30% (29.1%) smaller than yours. And not only is it rated up to .338 Winchester Magnum, it's rated for that with a lifetime warranty.

Not saying that your home-made version should be smaller or lighter. I personally couldn't match the performance of modern design and manufacturing if I did one on a DIY basis either, any more than yours does.
I also couldn't build a pickup truck from piles of ore and rubber that would match the quality and cost-efficiency of modern design and manufacturing either. But the trick is to be a grownup and accept that.

 

[Dorobuta]

My .30 cal suppressor is:
Full-auto rated
Sound: 137 dB
Weight: 15.8 ounces including the QD mount
Length: 8.3”

and has a lifetime warranty

 

[John in AR]

...but lacks hand-folded, hammer-pounded window screen donuts inside it, so it therefore must suck.

:nyah:

 

[Dorobuta]

yeah, cause they dont want people finding out that you can make baffles yourself, enough for a 22 in 20 minutes, or a 223 in an hour. of course they have to make it look difficult. Once their CNC lathe is set up, it costs them almost nothing to make a set of baffles, other than the materials.

has nothing to do with making anything look difficult.

Almost nothing to make? sure, except for the machinists time, all the tracking of the inventory parts and the required paperwork. They need to account for every baffle they make. Then there's the cost of the equipment, the cost of the building, insurance, etc, etc. There's a lot more than the cost of the materials in the price.

 

[BigEd]

I don't think Melvin knows what it takes to run a lemonade stand let alone a manufacturing business.

And his can designs are nothing more than field expedient quality.

 

[John in AR]

Fwiw, decided to go ahead and do it, and have decided which solvent trap kit I'll use as the basis for the Form-1 build; a Hawk Innovative Tech AD1/4. Overall length of 8.1", diameter of 1.57" and 0.283" center-hole size. That means it'll be a .22/.223 only thing, and won't be able to use it on anything larger in diameter, but I can live with that in this case. If all goes easy & smooth, I may do a second one for up to .35 or even .45 caliber stuff.

Don't know the weight yet, but it's aluminum so should be fine. With seven baffles, a 1.35" inner diameter, and that tight a spec on the center hole diameters, it should be just insanely quiet with rimfire stuff, which is where I expect it will live 99% of its life. The design itself is almost certainly not going to be as efficient as the more complex monocore Mystic-X, but since the Mystic-X has to allow for larger bullet diameters (up to .358 caliber), its center hole diameter is substantially larger as well; something like 0.41" iirc.

Cost is $192; I can definitely live with that. It's more expensive than the $60-$80 ones I'd originally looked into, but it will also work for .223 rather than just .22 rimfire, and that's worth the extra money imo. Obviously, there's also the $200 tax stamp as well, and definitely doing that. I have no doubt that some people would circumvent that, but not a chance in the world I'm going to do so. Spend $200 to avoid a ten-year prison term (especially at my age), lose my business, house, etc...? No chance I'm going to risk that.

It's likely to be a little bit of a touchy process, since you can't modify it until you have the approved form-1 back, and you can't send in the form-1 without knowing the physical specifications. What I'd prefer to would be to file the form 1 and not even order the unit until approval came back, but I want to have measured, known-correct specifics for filling out the form 1 rather than relying on the mfr's datasheet alone. So I figure I'll open the packaging, measure, weigh (if necessary), etc, so I can fill out the form 1 and then re-seal it & lock it in one of the safes until the form 1 comes back. At that point, with the approved form 1 in hand, get it engraved, drill the end cap, and done. There may be more detail to it, and I'll be obsessively meticulous during the process; but since I've never done one before and haven't started the process on this one yet, I can't speak with any authority on the matter.

Looking forward to doing it, but probably won't be real quick with it. We're crazy busy at work right now and it may be a little time before I can back off some to look into things really well; which I want to do to make sure I don't make some error along the way. I don't want some stupid newbie mistake potentially causing me all kinds of grief after the fact.

 

[Dorobuta]

Fwiw, decided to go ahead and do it, and have decided which solvent trap kit I'll use as the basis for the Form-1 build; a Hawk Innovative Tech AD1/4. Overall length of 8.1", diameter of 1.57" and 0.283" center-hole size. That means it'll be a .22/.223 only thing, and won't be able to use it on anything larger in diameter, but I can live with that in this case. If all goes easy & smooth, I may do a second one for up to .35 or even .45 caliber stuff.

Don't know the weight yet, but it's aluminum so should be fine. With seven baffles, a 1.35" inner diameter, and that tight a spec on the center hole diameters, it should be just insanely quiet with rimfire stuff, which is where I expect it will live 99% of its life. The design itself is almost certainly not going to be as efficient as the more complex monocore Mystic-X, but since the Mystic-X has to allow for larger bullet diameters (up to .358 caliber), its center hole diameter is substantially larger as well; something like 0.41" iirc.

Cost is $192; I can definitely live with that. It's more expensive than the $60-$80 ones I'd originally looked into, but it will also work for .223 rather than just .22 rimfire, and that's worth the extra money imo. Obviously, there's also the $200 tax stamp as well, and definitely doing that. I have no doubt that some people would circumvent that, but not a chance in the world I'm going to do so. Spend $200 to avoid a ten-year prison term (especially at my age), lose my business, house, etc...? No chance I'm going to risk that.

It's likely to be a little bit of a touchy process, since you can't modify it until you have the approved form-1 back, and you can't send in the form-1 without knowing the physical specifications. What I'd prefer to would be to file the form 1 and not even order the unit until approval came back, but I want to have measured, known-correct specifics for filling out the form 1 rather than relying on the mfr's datasheet alone. So I figure I'll open the packaging, measure, weigh (if necessary), etc, so I can fill out the form 1 and then re-seal it & lock it in one of the safes until the form 1 comes back. At that point, with the approved form 1 in hand, get it engraved, drill the end cap, and done. There may be more detail to it, and I'll be obsessively meticulous during the process; but since I've never done one before and haven't started the process on this one yet, I can't speak with any authority on the matter.

Looking forward to doing it, but probably won't be real quick with it. We're crazy busy at work right now and it may be a little time before I can back off some to look into things really well; which I want to do to make sure I don't make some error along the way. I don't want some stupid newbie mistake potentially causing me all kinds of grief after the fact.

It's over kill, but put a copy of the form one in the bag with the parts when you lock it away in the safe. Makes it hard to cry intent, when a copy of the paperwork is there with the components.