Practically, the Desert Eagle hand gun design utilizes the explosion of the bullet's propulsion to push back the casing surrounding the barrel to achieve the reloading of the next bullet. Traditionally designed semi-auto, semi hand guns do the opposite. The barrel moves back inside the casing and a seperate mechanism loads the next bullet. Think of it like this:
Traditional gun: The gun is one metal piece and there is a barrel inside the gun through which the bullet shoots out. That barrel moves back with the help of the explosion and the next bullet is moved into the chamber whilst the empty bullet casing is pushed out.
Desert Eagle: The gun is two seperate metal pieces and the barrel does not move at all. The part of the gun that surrounds the barrel moves back with the help of the explosion and loads the next bullet.
" ... The Desert Eagle uses a gas-operated mechanism normally found in rifles, as opposed to the short recoil or blow-back designs most commonly seen in semi-automatic pistols. Unlike most pistols, the barrel does not move during firing. When a round is fired, gases are ported out through | a small hole in the barrel near the breech. These travel forward through a small tube under the barrel, to a cylinder near the front of the barrel. The separate bolt carrier/slide has a small piston on the front that fits into this cylinder; when the gases reach the cylinder they push the piston rearward. The bolt carrier rides rearward on two rails on either side of the barrel, operating the mechanism. Its rotating bolt strongly resembles that of the M16 series of rifles, while the fixed gas cylinder/moving piston resemble those of the Ruger Mini-14 carbine (the original patent used a captive piston similar to the M14 rifle).
An early Desert Eagle chambered in .357 Magnum with a compact disc for scaleThe advantage of the gas-operation is that it allows the use of far more powerful cartridges than traditional semi-automatic pistol designs, and it allows the Desert Eagle to compete in an area that had previously been dominated by magnum revolvers. Downsides of the gas operated mechanism are the large size of the Desert Eagle, and the fact that it discourages the use of unjacketed lead bullets, as lead particles sheared off during firing could clog the gas release tap, preventing proper function..." [Wikipedia] |
