Melvin Johnson's ingenious rifle that should be manufactured toay! "Johnson Auto Carb

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Melvin Johnson's ingenious rifle that should be manufactured toay! "Johnson Auto Carb

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Would love to have an M1941 some day.

Why are the carbine's sights so tall? Cool firearm, reminds me of an FG42.
 
It would be cool, but very costly in view of limited production numbers. This winter I visited the Argentine National Arms Museum in Buenos Aires and saw both a copy of the M1 Garand and the M1941 Johnson in 7.65mm Arg that the Argentinians had reverse engineered with a view to possible domestic production.
 
RMXC51 said:
Why are the carbine's sights so tall? Cool firearm, reminds me of an FG42.
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Because of the recoil spring in the stock - it's straight back, and the stock doesn't 'drop' like it does with most other rifles. So you need higher sights to accomodate cheekweld... kinda like the AR15 and other similar rifles...
 
I always find it interesting that people refer to rifles that have the same multi-lug bolt as in the AR10 and AR15 as a Stoner Bolt, when in fact it was Melvin Johnson who I believe first came up with the bolt design, for the Johnson rifle, but then again it was actually James Sullivan who was responsible for the AR15 design, not Stoner as usually believed (Sullivan also had a large part in the design of the Ruger Mini14 and M77)
 
What cracks me up is the FG-42 trigger mech which the Johnson copied. Actually it was the other way around: FG-42 copied it from the Johnson LMG. Fires closed-bolt on semi-auto, open-bolt on full-auto. Side-mounted straight-line mag of the FG-42 also came from the Johnson.

I don't see how the Johnson would be "insanely expensive" to manufacture. The whole thing was designed for ease and speed of manufacture in any ordinary machine-shop of the late 1930s. That was one of the points that Mel Johnson stressed: it could be manufactured almost ANYWHERE with ORDINARY SHOP TOOLING. Johnson himself didn't even have a factory; his rifles all were made by Cranston Tool and Die in Providence, Rhode Island: home of Howard Phillips Lovecraft and quite possibly of Cthulhu as well. Cranston made a duplicate set of tooling for the M-1944 LMG which was crated in Montreal and shipped to Palestine as "Agricultural Tools". A couple of smart Jews set it up and built the famous DROR machine-gun in both .303 and in 8x57. Looked like hell but it sure WORKED okay..... and that's what it was all about. One small result was that about half of Palestine changed its name... to Israel.... and a Johnson knock-off became the origin of their now-very-good and now-very-modern firearms industry. Can't knock it, that's for sure.

The Johnson is an interesting design. I always wished they were about 20 times as common.
 
smellie said:
What cracks me up is the FG-42 trigger mech which the Johnson copied. Actually it was the other way around: FG-42 copied it from the Johnson LMG. Fires closed-bolt on semi-auto, open-bolt on full-auto. Side-mounted straight-line mag of the FG-42 also came from the Johnson.

I don't see how the Johnson would be "insanely expensive" to manufacture. The whole thing was designed for ease and speed of manufacture in any ordinary machine-shop of the late 1930s. That was one of the points that Mel Johnson stressed: it could be manufactured almost ANYWHERE with ORDINARY SHOP TOOLING. Johnson himself didn't even have a factory; his rifles all were made by Cranston Tool and Die in Providence, Rhode Island: home of Howard Phillips Lovecraft and quite possibly of Cthulhu as well. Cranston made a duplicate set of tooling for the M-1944 LMG which was crated in Montreal and shipped to Palestine as "Agricultural Tools". A couple of smart Jews set it up and built the famous DROR machine-gun in both .303 and in 8x57. Looked like hell but it sure WORKED okay..... and that's what it was all about. One small result was that about half of Palestine changed its name... to Israel.... and a Johnson knock-off became the origin of their now-very-good and now-very-modern firearms industry. Can't knock it, that's for sure.

The Johnson is an interesting design. I always wished they were about 20 times as common.
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I do not have a drawing but the receiver looks like a big chunk of machined steel. I am also assuming the barrels are head spaced into the receiver instead of a barrel extension (Just checked, uses an extension). Both those things are expensive vs modern lightweight design, stampings, etc

PS Just having a quick look at the details and it appears that the stripper clip guide alone takes more machine time that a complete ar15 receiver.
 
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Point to remember: there were a lot more SHAPERS and HORIZONTAL MILLS in shops back then, than there seem to be these days.

Whole front half of the receiver is a chunk of formed sheet-metal, just spot-welded on. Bolt can be made very fast on an ordinary Lathe and a Slotter or Shaper.

Don't rely on drawings. Tear one down, dump the parts on a table and just LOOK at them. This thing was designed for fast, easy production (once you had made up the jigs) in a time in which CNC was still a long way off. There are very few CRITICAL dimensions. Back half of the receiver only has a single CRITICAL internal cut: a milled channel which controls the operation of the Bolt, can be milled at a single pass on a vertical mill.

Drop in for coffee; you can rip mine down and take a look for yourself.

In actual TEST they proved almost amazingly tolerant of swapped parts, headspace variations and tremendous ammunition variations. There was one test the US military did: 100 rounds, 10 each of 35,000 psi through to 78,000 Proof loads, MIXED and shot at random. Johnson took 'em all without a burp, just tossed the Proof casings a little farther. So that was serious underloads through Proof rounds without a bobble. Springfield was expected to handle ONE Proof round without crapping out; Johnson could eat 'em by the Magazine-load.
 
You know, I missed out on one two years ago for my collection. But i had a GOOD look at it before the owner died and his son dealt with the estate (yes the son IS a gun guy) I love my Garands, Springfields, Trench guns and the work, but hot damn, if I had a Johnson and a bag of barrels for it.... man, I could shoot all day long and keep swapping barrels so as not to heat them up to much. Oh, that's 10 rounds down range, swap barrels. Oh, lets try for 15 rounds this time and see how much hotter it is. But, man oh man, slick and smooth, almost like having a semi-auto Krag, just top up as you go.

smellie said:
Point to remember: there were a lot more SHAPERS and HORIZONTAL MILLS in shops back then, than there seem to be these days.

Whole front half of the receiver is a chunk of formed sheet-metal, just spot-welded on. Bolt can be made very fast on an ordinary Lathe and a Slotter or Shaper.

Don't rely on drawings. Tear one down, dump the parts on a table and just LOOK at them. This thing was designed for fast, easy production (once you had made up the jigs) in a time in which CNC was still a long way off. There are very few CRITICAL dimensions. Back half of the receiver only has a single CRITICAL internal cut: a milled channel which controls the operation of the Bolt, can be milled at a single pass on a vertical mill.

Drop in for coffee; you can rip mine down and take a look for yourself.

In actual TEST they proved almost amazingly tolerant of swapped parts, headspace variations and tremendous ammunition variations. There was one test the US military did: 100 rounds, 10 each of 35,000 psi through to 78,000 Proof loads, MIXED and shot at random. Johnson took 'em all without a burp, just tossed the Proof casings a little farther. So that was serious underloads through Proof rounds without a bobble. Springfield was expected to handle ONE Proof round without crapping out; Johnson could eat 'em by the Magazine-load.
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It is a very appealing piece to some folks. It would be interesting to cost out a production run of 20,000 units with most being sold in the US market. No doubt a Norinco clone would some in a lot cheaper than one made in the US or Canada. Shooters tend to be notorious skinflints. Some would be prepared to pay $2000 a copy, but the majority of MILSURP shooters seem to like the $200 SKS clodbuster category, at least based on the huge volumes of cheap Chinese brass that I see at the range.
 
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