As well designed internally as this thing is, I can't get over the fact that this looks like it was made by an insane engineer. 1920s were wild times indeed.
I can see why it was never seriously considered for adoption. The disassembly sequence with all the small parts that could be dropped and lost was a nightmare when you think about being in the hands of draftees. A busy gun like that would be better suited to a specialized gun crew that trained to a higher level than just field grunts.
And also war had become trenches full of water and mud. You lose a piece there and it's gone for good, disappeared into hell for being a component of such a bad gun.
25:39 Complex but simple to take apart. Some interesting ideas in this rifle, and I also like how they were able to have things serving multiple purposes, very clever. From the looks of it, that would have been a very expensive rifle to manufacture.
It wouldn't surprise me if the cracked open stock may have been caused by air pressure, that tube would move a fair bit of air ahead of it and the pressure just from that may have been enough to split the wood if it was a close fit. And as pointed out any contact would cause splitting.
It would also neatly explain where the magazine went. Into pieces. ...come to think of it, what's the documentation of the trials like? If that's what happened they almost certainly would have made note of 'well, this one kind of blew up.'
This is a closed-bolt rifle, where more metal moves between the pulling of the trigger and the firing of the cartridge, than on many open-bolt guns. I wouldn't expect it to win many target matches! However, as the ancestor of the Vickers-Berthier machine-gun, it is also the ancestor of the Vickers "K" gun used in considerable numbers by the RAF and Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm in WW2 -and subsequently famously used by the SAS and "Phantom" on armed jeeps. One advantage as a machine-gun would be that the primer gets a really good high-momentum whack each time, which might minimise misfires. By the same token, cartridges being fed get a good push, which may be how the K gun managed to work reliably with 97-round drums.
There is a bit about this rifle in "Hatcher's Notebook". Page 99 shows a young and keen-looking Julian Hatcher with a version in 1917. There is another photo of an early variant on page 145.
So... Do the various auction houses you browse for rare guns have some sort of arrangement as to which one will get you to come visit and when ? A shared custody perhaps ? :)
Hi Ian. I've watched sooo many of your FW videos, and I NEVER cease to be amazed at how well you know your stuff. And it's not just like you're reading it off 'cue cards', you know it 1st hand; presumably because it's of great interest to you. Re' this gun. It seems so complicated compared to many others, and when you were explaining it, it made me wonder whether you had ever designed a gun of any kind? I imagine that you've got more than enough knowledge in your head to do so. Anyway, thanks for sharing all these videos with us. Regards Mark in the UK.
One thing that has struck me after watching Ian take a look at a bunch of trial rifles: holy shit, these things are literally one-of-a-kind, where do people FIND these things? How do they end up at an auction?
Wow that handle is almost straight. But I ought to give them credits for that cool clean trigger unit. I started drewling on the machined parts around 19:20
@@jeffcarroll1990shock Thats why were talking about the Gun Jesus, he brings the knowledge and shooting fun^^ Despite that its as far as i could go with believing, not really into all the religion stuff, but hey to each his own :)
i gotta say that this adds to my questions about stock shapes, though it's more specific to this one in particular rather than the ones i have in general.
Makes me wonder how different these "awkward" designs would have been if they ditched the standard rifle design and went with an in line stock and forward pistol grip design.
@@joshuakarmann7488 in short? Have you seen your buses? Compare them to german or japanese ones:P Sorry, there is a stereotype here that your public transportation is so bad solely thanks to the need to promote car sales and suburdia lifestyle after WWII to keep the industry going nonstop as in the late days of the war.
@@ForgottenWeapons Would it actually interest you? It's not really an issued firearm that saw service and there are lots of prototypes. I always had the impression you'd prefer a complete collection of service weapons.
I really hope you get the chance to take a look at one of the early type Berthier machine guns from before WW1. They had a lot of neat aspects, such as being able to swap the positions of the necessary parts like the trigger group and pistol grip to flip the entire gun upside down so you no longer had the magazine being fed from the top. It also had a lightweight water cooling system on some of the guns that I am surprised never caught much interest from any of the militaries of the time. From the literature I have read, the French military almost intentionally tried to ignore the LMG, despite Berthier himself being among their ranks. Some sources suggest that the US military (the Marines, I believe) had accepted the design of the LMG late in the First World War, but the tooling to make them had not even been completed by the end of WW1, prompting the Military to cancel the order with none of the U.S. Berthier Machine Guns ever having been made. Pictures for those curious: www.ar15.com/forums/ar-15/Berthier_Automatic_Rifle/123-591363/
Complex but interesting. However the supreme foolishness of the stock construction is amazing. It could easily be remedied by using a more sensible construction that encased the bolt assembly completely, plus added bands for strength.
The stock cracked because there was no place for the compressed air from the bolt moving backwards to bleed off and popped the stock open. It's the same principle as a fire piston.
Seems like, with that much moving mass attached to the firing pin, there would be a risk of light primer strikes. A big issue with the hard primers that were common back when.
Hmm, i can see the sudden increase in airpressure in the buffer-cutout from the cycling bolt being a possible cause for the cracking. Depending on how tight it is of course.
It might be an unpleasant to fire rifle, all that mass would jerk you around. That doesn't necessarily imply anything about the mechanical accuracy of the design.
So, the safety mechanism freezing everything makes it seem like it would be really easy to screw something up by, in a tense moment, trying to rack the bolt against the retaining pin.
There are a couple other "minor" improvements I could think that the designs needed. The major item I see is the "none reinforced" pistol grip assembly, and spring plunger buffering in said assembly.
From a technical standpoint it’s incredible however it looks likes a nightmare to put into mass production. Not to mention there’s something about that gas system that gives me the creeps.
I didn’t know that the Lewis gun fg42 and m60 all used the main spring to power the firing pin. Would it be fair to say that the maxim silverman pistol is similar to them in the way that the the main spring is is also it’s firing pin spring?
The little pivot piece between the bolt body & bolt head: could it double as the method of setting headspace? Or is there a removable locking block in the receiver?
Using a century of hindsight. would it have been plausible to rotate this action 180 degrees? Giving it a bottom feed and clear space on top for central sights. I’m just interested to see if anyone with more mechanical/design knowledge would think this would be possible.
Also, that spring loaded "cartridge grabber" on top of the bolt is begging to be jammed with dirt, preventing it from going into battery. This gun is a generous mix of good, or at least interesting, ideas and really, really bad ones.
Seriously think you should get a load of promotional ballpoint pens printed up with "Universal Gun Disassembly Tool" and sell them or give them out as Patreon benfits... ;-)
@@sussy_bed_stain and? It'll be a much shorter bullet. Carbine at best. And if you're ok with carbine, then why bother with making such bolt actions in the first place? And if you mean PD itself, then it wasn't very reliable if I recall. Or at least wasn't proven to be reliable by combat by the time the need for it was lost.
@@TheArklyte the pederson device also required exacting angular tolerances similar to the Luger, that was later replaced because of manufacturing expense.
Could it also be possible that if the tolerance on the stock was tight enough that it could have made a seal and created pressure when the rod went back causing the break? Or is the tolerance loose enough to allow air flow?
Was expecting some steam punky rube goldberg contraption and found a fairly svelte rifle, i can see how an svt-like semi auto rifle could come from this
That recoil tube is going to be moving at very high speed and the air that is behind it, in the wooden stock, looks like it has no where to go. Compressed air is amazing and powerful stuff and it seems that the recoil tube is acting like a piston in an air compressor - forcing the air to compress. Air needs to expand, that's what it does best when squeezed and that's why air powered tools are so powerful. No wonder the wood split - and I bet it went with one hell of a bang and mass of fragments! But that said, there looks like there could have been a drilled vent hole right at the end...
I don't understand why this weapon was even put forward, considering the BAR was already in use. Top magazine and offset sights should have ruled it out before anyone pulled a trigger.
I simply cannot believe anyone would have submitted this to a military trial. It is simply too complicated to be reasonably used by the average soldier.
Wouldn't it be possible to cnc machine or 3d print a mag for this weapon or for the chauchat Ian? I know it would possible break very soon but better than nothing or an $$$ expensive thing
If I could time travel I probably would suggest to designers to turn receiver and gas system upside down and have a kind of BAR style bit more usable rifle
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Trials Report: "We will accept this gun if it's not this gun."
Well put! You absolutely nailed it!
I think the real amazing part of this gun is just how compact that trigger mechanism is
TheGoldenCaulk where the hell have you been? Haven’t seen you around in the comment section lately
@@warmongerairsoft he died
@@samholdsworth3957 he contracted AIDS in a kid sand airbag accident with an elderly person
@@Around_blax_dont_relax AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIDS!!!
As well designed internally as this thing is, I can't get over the fact that this looks like it was made by an insane engineer. 1920s were wild times indeed.
I can see why it was never seriously considered for adoption. The disassembly sequence with all the small parts that could be dropped and lost was a nightmare when you think about being in the hands of draftees. A busy gun like that would be better suited to a specialized gun crew that trained to a higher level than just field grunts.
No it would still be horrible with small parts that could dropped or lost.
Except it was successful, as a LMG.A much more busy gun
Like a machine gun crew for example? What a coincidence.
Especially when the gun is covered in mud and all jammed up.
And also war had become trenches full of water and mud. You lose a piece there and it's gone for good, disappeared into hell for being a component of such a bad gun.
25:39 Complex but simple to take apart. Some interesting ideas in this rifle, and I also like how they were able to have things serving multiple purposes, very clever. From the looks of it, that would have been a very expensive rifle to manufacture.
It wouldn't surprise me if the cracked open stock may have been caused by air pressure, that tube would move a fair bit of air ahead of it and the pressure just from that may have been enough to split the wood if it was a close fit. And as pointed out any contact would cause splitting.
Ungodly alliance between french engineer and an english company. Doomed from the start ^^
But his LMG very nearly beat out the gun that would become the Bren.
Not really it created a light machine gun that served from the middle 30s until the 50s in India, Pakistan and Burma
The Vickers-Berthier machine gun was pretty good.
I suspect that the replacement bolt may be related to the broken stock. Perhaps a round with an excess pressure caused a catastrophic event.
It would also neatly explain where the magazine went. Into pieces.
...come to think of it, what's the documentation of the trials like? If that's what happened they almost certainly would have made note of 'well, this one kind of blew up.'
That firing pin??? Looks like something right out of the Khyber Pass Quality Machining & Manufacturing Co.
Only the finest
glooc perfection
Seems like it would be fairly easy for the gas piston to get misaligned with it's port and do some damage.
Completely met and surpassed steampunk complexity with over 7 minutes to go for the explanation for the mechanism.
the cut in that your finger is ponting at 21:30 is for the safety such that at 23:23 when you engage the safety, it will push the oprod slightly back.
You thought Ian was done with berthier rifles, huh?
This is a closed-bolt rifle, where more metal moves between the pulling of the trigger and the firing of the cartridge, than on many open-bolt guns. I wouldn't expect it to win many target matches! However, as the ancestor of the Vickers-Berthier machine-gun, it is also the ancestor of the Vickers "K" gun used in considerable numbers by the RAF and Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm in WW2 -and subsequently famously used by the SAS and "Phantom" on armed jeeps. One advantage as a machine-gun would be that the primer gets a really good high-momentum whack each time, which might minimise misfires. By the same token, cartridges being fed get a good push, which may be how the K gun managed to work reliably with 97-round drums.
Thank you , Ian.
Having only ever disassembled/assembled the RK-62, every other weapon looks so damn complex.
Today is my birthday and this is really cool to see released on it, kind of like a pseudo gift.
There is a bit about this rifle in "Hatcher's Notebook". Page 99 shows a young and keen-looking Julian Hatcher with a version in 1917. There is another photo of an early variant on page 145.
But where is Ian's universal gun disassembly tool?
Laughs in BAR.
So... Do the various auction houses you browse for rare guns have some sort of arrangement as to which one will get you to come visit and when ? A shared custody perhaps ? :)
Only if the alimony comes through
Hi Ian. I've watched sooo many of your FW videos, and I NEVER cease to be amazed at how well you know your stuff. And it's not just like you're reading it off 'cue cards', you know it 1st hand; presumably because it's of great interest to you.
Re' this gun. It seems so complicated compared to many others, and when you were explaining it, it made me wonder whether you had ever designed a gun of any kind?
I imagine that you've got more than enough knowledge in your head to do so.
Anyway, thanks for sharing all these videos with us.
Regards Mark in the UK.
One thing that has struck me after watching Ian take a look at a bunch of trial rifles: holy shit, these things are literally one-of-a-kind, where do people FIND these things? How do they end up at an auction?
they honestly belong in museums
@@megabrout Agreed.
I love these longer episodes.
That trigger placement though, ech!
so many machining operations to make this
Wow that handle is almost straight.
But I ought to give them credits for that cool clean trigger unit.
I started drewling on the machined parts around 19:20
Another piece of knowledge delivered by Gun Jesus^^
Some hot steaming knowledge haha
@@jeffcarroll1990shock Thats why were talking about the Gun Jesus, he brings the knowledge and shooting fun^^ Despite that its as far as i could go with believing, not really into all the religion stuff, but hey to each his own :)
i gotta say that this adds to my questions about stock shapes, though it's more specific to this one in particular rather than the ones i have in general.
Makes me wonder how different these "awkward" designs would have been if they ditched the standard rifle design and went with an in line stock and forward pistol grip design.
So well preserved
Nothing like forgotten weapons on the drive home
@@joshuakarmann7488 passenger seat? Public transport(heretical thought for americans, right?;))? Tesla?
Passenger lol
@@joshuakarmann7488 in short? Have you seen your buses? Compare them to german or japanese ones:P
Sorry, there is a stereotype here that your public transportation is so bad solely thanks to the need to promote car sales and suburdia lifestyle after WWII to keep the industry going nonstop as in the late days of the war.
Jarrett Beal god damn it stop watching RUclips and focus on the road.
@@TheArklyte there is some truth to that.
I wonder if Ian will buy this for his French collection ... another French unicorn!
No I don't think so, I remember him saying if he had his eye on a gun he wouldn't put up a video on it, or at least not until after the auction?
This one is going to be much too rich for my blood. :(
@@ForgottenWeapons we have been blessed by the almighty gun Jesus replying to us!
@@ForgottenWeapons Would it actually interest you? It's not really an issued firearm that saw service and there are lots of prototypes. I always had the impression you'd prefer a complete collection of service weapons.
That is a really dirty rifle. Thank you Ian.
What an amazingly complex rifle. Holy hell.
28 minutes of Gun Jesus blessing? My day has been made. Thank you, Gun Jesus!
Good, I've got some extra time this morning before I go vote.
Man, Larry Vickers is a busy guy. Looks good for his age too.
I really hope you get the chance to take a look at one of the early type Berthier machine guns from before WW1. They had a lot of neat aspects, such as being able to swap the positions of the necessary parts like the trigger group and pistol grip to flip the entire gun upside down so you no longer had the magazine being fed from the top. It also had a lightweight water cooling system on some of the guns that I am surprised never caught much interest from any of the militaries of the time.
From the literature I have read, the French military almost intentionally tried to ignore the LMG, despite Berthier himself being among their ranks. Some sources suggest that the US military (the Marines, I believe) had accepted the design of the LMG late in the First World War, but the tooling to make them had not even been completed by the end of WW1, prompting the Military to cancel the order with none of the U.S. Berthier Machine Guns ever having been made.
Pictures for those curious: www.ar15.com/forums/ar-15/Berthier_Automatic_Rifle/123-591363/
Ian I think the reason for the Round interface piece being it's own may be for making Headspacing the gun simpler
It looks like it's begging for a pistol grip, a straight stock and a selector switch.
That sear on the oprod could give a bullpup a good trigger pull.
Beautifull rifle IMO. Definately should've had a pistol grip . TY for posting this Ian.
Complex but interesting. However the supreme foolishness of the stock construction is amazing. It could easily be remedied by using a more sensible construction that encased the bolt assembly completely, plus added bands for strength.
I think the guys at Vickers are still laughing about that one.
The stock cracked because there was no place for the compressed air from the bolt moving backwards to bleed off and popped the stock open. It's the same principle as a fire piston.
The proportions of some of the mechanism is so bizarre.
Seems like, with that much moving mass attached to the firing pin, there would be a risk of light primer strikes. A big issue with the hard primers that were common back when.
Hmm, i can see the sudden increase in airpressure in the buffer-cutout from the cycling bolt being a possible cause for the cracking. Depending on how tight it is of course.
this thing looks really cool.
Would this be an inaccurate rifle, with the extra mass of the gas piston moving forward when fired? I've probably misunderstood something.
It might be an unpleasant to fire rifle, all that mass would jerk you around. That doesn't necessarily imply anything about the mechanical accuracy of the design.
Probably not as bad as an open bolt rifle, but yeah I had the same thought.
So, the safety mechanism freezing everything makes it seem like it would be really easy to screw something up by, in a tense moment, trying to rack the bolt against the retaining pin.
28 minutes, strap in boys/girls
My body is ready.
28 likes yeeehaaw
Did you assume only 2 genders?
@@madrigalelect3388 I, too, was appalled.
Buckle up buttercup
Vickers Tactical Berthier 1919 US Trials Rifle
There are a couple other "minor" improvements I could think that the designs needed. The major item I see is the "none reinforced" pistol grip assembly, and spring plunger buffering in said assembly.
man that looks like it was so close to being good.
Why was the original preference for box magazines to be loaded on the top or the side?
I appears the odd notch in the op rod is the catch for the half moon safety lever. I saw nowhere else for the safety lever to push the rod back.
This gun looks much modern than others from the same period....
From a technical standpoint it’s incredible however it looks likes a nightmare to put into mass production. Not to mention there’s something about that gas system that gives me the creeps.
Such a complicated piece of equipment
@@bmstylee No 100%, its still more complicated than it should be, can you imagine giving it to a troop to clean
Given how thick the (unbroken) grip on the stock looks, it seems like it would have been a rather awkward rifle to fire.
Most dedicated steampunk individual looking at this rifle:
"Its a bit much"
Wow is it any wonder it didn't get accepted?
At 21:37 Could this notch have been intended to be used for allowing a pull of the trigger to drop the bolt?
Looks at home at the Valkyria Chronicles games series.
Woah the new laser rifle looks dope.
Thanks Ian :)
I didn’t know that the Lewis gun fg42 and m60 all used the main spring to power the firing pin. Would it be fair to say that the maxim silverman pistol is similar to them in the way that the the main spring is is also it’s firing pin spring?
"It looks pretty awkward, but on the inside it's better than you'd expect." -Ian McCollum
Sometimes I fear that someday Ian will run out of guns... but no, this will never happen.
Another unicorn...well done.
The little pivot piece between the bolt body & bolt head: could it double as the method of setting headspace? Or is there a removable locking block in the receiver?
Using a century of hindsight. would it have been plausible to rotate this action 180 degrees? Giving it a bottom feed and clear space on top for central sights. I’m just interested to see if anyone with more mechanical/design knowledge would think this would be possible.
Also, that spring loaded "cartridge grabber" on top of the bolt is begging to be jammed with dirt, preventing it from going into battery.
This gun is a generous mix of good, or at least interesting, ideas and really, really bad ones.
Beatiful rifle, what a pity the magazine was lost
I wonder if that bolt head is numbered for headspacing, like an Enfield no4. Completely unrelated to it's serial number.
Sorry if this was mentioned. What size round would it fire. Was it the same as the Vickers-Berthier MG?
Seriously think you should get a load of promotional ballpoint pens printed up with "Universal Gun Disassembly Tool" and sell them or give them out as Patreon benfits... ;-)
I mean why take a machingun and make it semi auto
Paul Hök It’s easier to redesign a few parts in a gun then to design an entirely new gun
And ammo consumption.
Weeell i guess your right but could you not just make a peterson device but for 30-06
@@sussy_bed_stain and? It'll be a much shorter bullet. Carbine at best. And if you're ok with carbine, then why bother with making such bolt actions in the first place?
And if you mean PD itself, then it wasn't very reliable if I recall. Or at least wasn't proven to be reliable by combat by the time the need for it was lost.
@@TheArklyte the pederson device also required exacting angular tolerances similar to the Luger, that was later replaced because of manufacturing expense.
Could it also be possible that if the tolerance on the stock was tight enough that it could have made a seal and created pressure when the rod went back causing the break? Or is the tolerance loose enough to allow air flow?
How does the shooter reach the trigger while gripping the stock? The grip seems very far back and above the trigger.
That stock = Breaky breaky.
Was expecting some steam punky rube goldberg contraption and found a fairly svelte rifle, i can see how an svt-like semi auto rifle could come from this
That recoil tube is going to be moving at very high speed and the air that is behind it, in the wooden stock, looks like it has no where to go. Compressed air is amazing and powerful stuff and it seems that the recoil tube is acting like a piston in an air compressor - forcing the air to compress. Air needs to expand, that's what it does best when squeezed and that's why air powered tools are so powerful. No wonder the wood split - and I bet it went with one hell of a bang and mass of fragments!
But that said, there looks like there could have been a drilled vent hole right at the end...
Wouldnt it be useful to have some sort of endoscope camera to show these hard to reach spots?
You can get phone endoscopes with integral light that can go down bores as small as .223 for under $20USD now.
I don't understand why this weapon was even put forward, considering the BAR was already in use. Top magazine and offset sights should have ruled it out before anyone pulled a trigger.
I simply cannot believe anyone would have submitted this to a military trial. It is simply too complicated to be reasonably used by the average soldier.
This has to be the biggest battle rifle ever...
How about Berthier automatic rifle?
I kind of want one, sort of an old school take on the Robinson Arms M(^ Bren configuration. I know, I know. But still...
Holy shit. Field strip should be called Field trip.
Is it bad I really want one of these just to see how it shoots
Wouldn't it be possible to cnc machine or 3d print a mag for this weapon or for the chauchat Ian? I know it would possible break very soon but better than nothing or an $$$ expensive thing
Is Larry related to the "vickers" gun poeple?
Seems to me that the stock issue might be fixed by an inline stock and pistol grip.
If I could time travel I probably would suggest to designers to turn receiver and gas system upside down and have a kind of BAR style bit more usable rifle
I may have missed this, but what was the caliber? '06?
Yes, .30-06
That little trough at the back of the stock is a little.....scary. God help the guy who was firing it when it broke.
Very interesting gun.
Okay, I _know_ I'm not the only one who thinks this looks more like a shotgun.