Post Apoc All with full Story

April 19th 203?
It's been three years since I've come back to my home city.. not that there's anything left of it really, but I've found enough to stay alive for this long, so I should be alright. Even found a few freinds along the way, though Reg got hit by the radiation a little at some point... left arm is useless 'cuz a how puffy it is.
But the important thing about today is it's my birthday, and Reg, Trish and I have finally finished my present. Yes I had to help make my own birthday present, but oh well. You see, out of the 3 of us I'm the best shot, always have been. When I was a kid my dad took me out hunting all the time, then I got a little older and into computers, you don't see those much anymore, but I always kept my love of shooting and it seems to have come in handy now.
We decided I needed something new for hunting, all we had before were a couple of AKs and Reg's M60 that he resurrected from a history museum. But we also had some plans for a pistol that I had drawn up and kept in my wallet as a kid, it was meant to be one of those fancy steam punk weapons, but it seemed like a good start for a new rifle.
We started by making the casing rings that would hold the rounds to a rotating shaft, much like a revolver but the way we made 'em they rounds could slide back just a little to recock the firing pin. The pistol was meant to use a long rotating chain, but something like that would be much harder to keep running now so we just stuck with this.
When I have to reload I pull the top half of the receiver back, lift up on the shaft and pull out to the side, otherwise the scope was in the way. But then I have to put 6 new rounds in by hand, no speed loader.
Fireing it is odd, the first shot always acts like a double action revolver, pulling back the firing pin as the trigger is pulled, but after that the slight recoil makes it a semi-automatic rifle, which rotates the shaft using several gears and the force of the recoil. You see, Trish used to work for her father, an old watchmaker, so she had some idea of what to do.
For the longest time we weren't sure what to do about a grip, eventually we found an old foregrip that was adjustable, so we used that and a sliding mechanism so that the angle of it could be changed, just in case. We pretty much tore apart those AKs we had, using alot of the wood and the receiver of one. We actually found half of a dragunov and used the receiver of that for the bottom half of ours, and welded the scope mount to that, to which the scope is also welded. It's actually sighted a lil left of center, but that's alright. We didn't have a saw or anything so we just had to use the parts on the AK as they were, I don't really like how that vented part looks up front, but it's what we had.
For now I use this rifle to hunt what's left of eatable animals, but passing travelers tell tales of tentacle monsters and mutated beasts migrating this way from California, so I'm sure Reg and I will be fighting these creatures soon enough... I'm unsure yet whether or not I should give a pet tentacle monster to Trish for her next birthday...

Well, after a few tests with my new birthday present we realized there where a few problems with my older design. Being a child leads to that sometimes.
The first thing Reg 'nd I did was change the grip, we found and carved a new rifle grip but we had to screw it into the receiver and and stock.
The second thing we did was create a new holding mechanism for the rounds, there was a constant issue of the slugs not fitting properly into the barrel when shot because there was no cylinder of any kind. So we abandoned the old idea of just having them attached to a chain since pushing them forward would be to complicated.
And just for fun we changed the trigger guard so it would look a little classy.
Luckily I haven't managed to to damage this one yet, but I'm sure it won't be too long now.
I never did find one of those tentacle monsters for Trish yet... Maybe I'll just name the gun after her instead for her birthday...

Well, last week Trish decided that she really liked the old version of the rifle, which I did indeed name Trish, so we sat down and tried to come up with a way of making the old design work. We got lucky one day as a traveler named Foz I believe passed by our camp and had a suggestion; Take an old bolt action bolt that he had in his pocket, hollow it out and cut a groove in the bottom so that it could slide over the bullet. That way it would form a seal with the barrel, and the blowback would force it back so the cylinder could be rotated by Trish's clockwork mech. So far this idea has worked pretty well, we cut a hole in the rear of the receiver for the new bolt to extend through as it's fairly long with all the parts inside it now, and the weight of the rifle has dropped some because the cylinder is lighter. In fact, stopping power has even increased because of the tight seal we get now compared with the other revolver system. And accuracy hasn't dropped in the least!
Reg is wondering if we could build something like this for him to use with a chain, and I don't see why not, we could make it full auto no problem and instead of a rotating cylinder just have it slide a chain through. But with his M60 I don't understand why he would want something like this o.0
We finally came across one of those tentacle monsters yesterday though... definitely not getting one for Trish... Ew...


I may be having a forth installation to this within the month, we'll see.
All images created with a combination of PMG 0.7 and Photoshop.
All concepts and story © Me