This era also makes it that much more impressive that some of the guns that came out of it were just objectively good even by later standards when people had figured out optimal functions and forms a lot more.
Here in Czechia we always had some talented designers and engineers. It is just we are small country, so nobody give a crap about us. But hey, in times of massive immigration, we live in peace thanks to this exact aspect, so you lose some, you win some.
@@vladimirpain3942 ty vole, breč víc, jsme malinkatá zemička, nikdo nás nemá rád,buuuuuu. Jses ubožák, očividně je to zajímá, když Gun Jesus udělal desítky videii o českých zbraní
@@cedhome7945 As long you don't see the torso Gun Jesus can manifest as many arms as needed. A fomidable ability especially when combined with his other ability that allows him to conjure any gun from his lap.
Minor correction - AKC. SPOL. (akciová společnost) is joint-stock company, Inc./AG, not limited liability company LLC/GmbH. Thanks for cool video, Ian :)
Dobry postreh Ondro. Me se libi jak Ian vyslovuje slovo Zbrojovka ("zebrovka"). To je pro me prekvapujici vzhledem k tomu, ze se pohybuje v Cy-Zy jiz pomerne dlouho. Ale uz skoro umi rict slovo "Strakonice" coz je chvalyhodne :-)
Very interesting case, as the initial idea is actually very simple - to capitalize on muzzle blast for operation, but it turned out to be more complicated because of that.
@@mikoajpietrych6168I find it Ironic that the mind that came up with that didn’t think let’s drill a hole in a test barrel and finally settle that accuracy argument before I make a 30lb complicated rifle doomed to fail .
Really appreciate Ian doing these Videos since such a long Time! I'm a Veteran of the 23rd Gebirgsjägerbrigade (231st Gebirgsjägerbattalion) with 2 Tours in Afghanistan and 1 in Kosovo via KFOR and i remember finding Forgotten Weapons during the whole (G36 Scandal) which we all know wasn't a Scandal. Just wanna say how much i appreciate the Content of Forgotten Weapons! Also now i finally learned how to pronounce "Skoda" which i definitely mispronounced all my Life refering to the Skoda Cars (which are great btw, too bad Americans can't buy them) Prost & Cheers from Berchtesgaden in the Bavarian Alps
Fun language fact: As others have mentioned, "samostříl" (literally "selfshooter", as something that shoots by itself) is a somewhat archaic Czech term for a crossbow or arbalest. It sounds fairly funny to actually use that kind of term for a gun like this, even for this period when the terminology for modern self-loaders and automats was still in diapers. Considering the language habits back in the day, my guess is that Mr. Netsch was trying to sound distinguished and professional before the military officers, but with a way too oldschool conservative mindset. X) In contrast, a sibling term "samopal" (literally "self-fire-er" ... ) was a neologism that became widely established in the following decades (most notably after WW2), as a general word for any handheld automatic self-loading gun. That's why it was used the same for either the vz.61 Škorpion, or the vz.58 rifle. Terms "automatic rifle/pistol" (automatická puška/pistole) were used more sparingly back then, as very technical terms in documentation and among professionals. But coloquially, any automatic handheld gun was a samopal. This started changing since the nineties with the influx of western terminology habits, automatic/assault rifle (automatická/útočná puška) became the new norm and "samopal" now remains as the equivalent to the english "submachinegun". And BTW, our word for a machine gun is "kulomet" which also sounds a bit funny when literally translated as a ... "bullet-launcher". Or maybe "bulletcaster", a fitting name for a heavy metal gun ... :D
From the Polish perspective, these Czech names sound interesting, completely understandable, but with an archaic tinge, as if they were medieval words :)
I reckon the recoil would suck cos you'd get all that mass moving away from your shoulder and giving itself a run-up for when it does slam into your shoulder.
Wow...Rube Goldberg would be proud! That has to be the most complex gun I can remember seeing! It's completely impractical but is a treasure trove of crazy mechanisms...pure joy for those of us who love those sort of things! Thanks for sharing!
Oh, hai Mark ;-) I'm guessing, given the timeframe, inconsistent ammo was his biggest concern here? Anything short of a real squib load would probably be enough to blow that big old gas-trap forwards and after that, the rest of the cycle is the same, regardless of ammo pressure. Not much of a concern nowadays, but back then, kinda genius when you think about it. A bit similar to the Farquhar-Hill Ian did a video on years ago. What do you reckon?
I'm from the Czech Republic, and I think I know all the Czech weapons and prototypes that were made, but Ian can always surprise me with something I've never heard of in my life
The parts are so big there is no way you could lose them, besides the screws. More than likely the crayon-eater would gunk up the rotary mag and it fails to feed.
This thing is beautiful. Mechanically just, unbelievable. It looks needlessly insanely complex. But beautiful in a sense, completely fascinating with wild ways to address something we take for granted. Something that we see as simple now, but back then was, well anyone's guess how it should be. It looks insanely expensive to produce. But again, beautiful and fascinating in it's complexity, and in the way it addresses select fire mechanisms in a very unique way. Too bad these things were never manufactured in some number (I could never see it ever hoping to reach mass production), it would be really cool to see a few hundred of these floating around.
Can you imagine if you ever had to fire that in a confined area and that gas shroud was rubbing on or punching into things as you tried to fire? What a weird way to get malfunctions from inability to fully extend forward. Yikes! (That said, it'd be amusing to watch Ian try to run an action like that through a two-gun challenge. Don't rest the moving bit on the barricade :D)
My thoughts exactly, this thing must be a terror to shoot in any sort of "resting the barrel on something" position, also good luck trying to shoot through a firing port of any sort.
Fun fact: In Croatian, which is somewhat similar to Czech, the word "samostrel" literally means crossbow. Also the word "strijeljati" (to shoot) is related to the word "strijela" (arrow).
As someone else said, in Czech it means the same, though it is also somewhat archaic now. In relation to guns it seems to have just fallen out of use in favour of the similar "samopal", which just means "self-fire" and was used for pretty much all full auto guns smaller than a machinegun. The Vz 58 and Vz 61 were both "samopal" despite the big difference in calibre and form factor.
@@CMDKeenCZ Sounds similar to Croatian "samokres", which is an archaic and somewhat... funny term for firearms in general. The HS-Produkts HS2000s full name is "Hrvatski Samokres".
I am endlessly impressed by how hundred year old guns were built to such a high standard that they can still run through operations under spring pressure and there isn't a worry about the whole thing breaking into pieces, and that the pieces still all fit so well.
I wonder how much recoil is absorbed by that gas system? First the gun is dragged forward by the muzzle "blast" (like a muzzle brake), then as it returns to the rear it is pulling the gun forward (I think, hard to visualize the forces with the mainspring and bolt involved). I think that timing of the cycle would feel quite strange compared to what we are used to.
@@jgrenwod I wrote entire comment about that here in discusion. Another high-quality video, in which half of the important information is missing.. There was no Czech army in the 20s, the fact that the constructor is a Slovak, not Slovakian, demonstrates this, I think. The origin of testing this category of weapons is that after 1918, not 1919, when Czechoslovakia was founded, its highest command was a general from the French mission, because the Czechoslovak officer corps did not have that many high-ranking officers of that age to draw from. Eugène Mittelhauser 1873-1949 was the supreme commander of the Czechoslovak army at that time and he wanted to build the Czechoslovak army on the French model, often rather as a place to dump expensive worn-out French state armaments and a place to make money for French manufacturers. From the point of view of smallarms, this of course meant an army on self-loading rifles and light machine guns, types of weapons that the young Czechoslovak army did not have, so he announced a competition to test light machine guns and self-loading rifles, which in this case therefore overlapped a bit, from established French manufacturers and Czechoslovak young constructions and prototypes. Another impulse was that, in addition to the need for a light machine gun, testing a self-loading rifle and at the same time the need to solve the replacement of repeating rifles and machine guns, where the situation was not ideal, just not as tragic as in the case of light machine guns that did not exist, and one of those designers told the military commission that the semi-automatic/automatic rifle is capable of replacing a repeating rifle, light and heavy machine gun in one, like clasic pushing designer of that era with this kind of talking lol. This is a bit of a wild theory, but it has been experimented with several times in later years with sort of universal weapons, such as the Czechoslovak machine gun ZK423 for the SS, the Stoner rifle, the M27 USMC rifle, and today's Sig Sauer introduced into the US Army. The military administration liked the idea of solving the problem of 3-4 weapons with one type of weapon, so it went to test. So the tests of self-loading rifles ended in nothing and continued with light machine guns, the ZB 26 did not come until 5 years later, already in the same year the Praga-I-23 was tested, which is a ZB 26 with a drum and a belt, it was in 1924 as a result reworked by critics into vz 24, which is actually what we know under the name ZB 26 and which came to the units from 1927. Before the adaption of the ZB 26, however, the French general urgently pushed for the adaption of a light machine gun, which resulted in the French purchases of the Hotchkiss and Darne machine guns, one of them worst then the other. Out of 1000 Hotchkiss light machine gun on striper clips, only about 769 machine guns were registered after 4-5 years in service before being phased out in 1929-30, during several attempts to sell, no one wanted to buy both types of machine guns, not even the poor Warlords in China.
To be fair, the forward movement of the inner barrel shroud and gas trap mechanism probably helped to mitigate the recoil to some degree, so that wouldn't surprise me.
I actually think that the socket at the end of the barrel going forward with each shot would mean that the rifle actually pulls FROM your shoulder rather than push INTO your shoulder... 🤔
While the front would go forward, the receiver and stick would still be pushed backward into the shooter's shoulder. It would change the recoil a lot but it wouldn't just pull away, except maybe for a short impulse when it reaches the forward limit of its motion.
If you think about it, the first impulse would still push the gun back immediately, if I understand the workings of it I don’t think you’d feel much else… the shroud isn’t being launched, it’s being dragged along, the impulse from that would much later than the initial recoil, only milliseconds I’m sure, no very fast, but orders of magnitude slower than the recoil pushing back… I imagine it feels very different from what we’re used to… the same way a blowback operated pistol feels way different than a revolver, and a big block back with a heavy slide feels way different that a snappy little ppk. I guess this is blow forward, or is it a double blow? I’d definitely like to see what it feels like to pop this off, and watch in slowmo to see it all moving.
Would be intriguing to see if this system would have been feasible if scaled up to like 20mm - it seems the sort of thing that'd be better as an emplaced cannon than a shoulder gun.
I think it's a really elegant design, if overly complicated :) Kind of the same way that the H&K G11 is. Also impressive to have an entirely tool-less disassembly on a 1920s automatic rifle!
Not at all, we spent like an hour before filming discusding everything and curator showing him how to disassemble this thing, he was just in the corner doing his thing, minding his own.😅
That baby is beautiful! It’s probably way too complicated for large scale use, but after many videos about kludge weapons from less well know designers, this thing was obviously a labor of skill and love.
I'm really surprised that you handle these old rifles without wearing gloves to protect them from oils or sweat from your hands. A quite interesting weapon.
Would love to see this contraption fired in slow motion. Would imagine it gives the Chauchat a run for its money on "total number of random parts moving in all directions all at once"
Note that the word "samostříl" also (and more frequently) means "kuše" = a "crossbow". For a gun the almost synonymous term "samopal" is used (meaning specificaly a submachine gun, but sometimes referes to an assault rifle also.) The name is correct, but unusual.
@@martinpojer5375 That one I'd love to see as well, bet it's at least as whacky inside and out as this was. What can i say I just have a soft spot for weird guns
I was expecting it to be some sort of Johnson copy after seeing the picture. I can now conirm it is definitley not at all related! It would be fascinating to see this shoot!
I like the operating system, I keep thinking of a long travel that remains locked until full travel then the barrel goes forwards and unlocks ejects etc and then drops the bolt when the barrel reaches full travel
Actually, directly translated, "SAMOSTŘÍL" really means self-shooter, but practically this word is an archaic term for a crossbow. (KUŠE in czech). Some words cannot be translated directly. Their meaning can change completely. "SAMOSTŘÍL" = CROSSBOW
Now this is interesting! I was wondering about the origin of that surname. The spelling looks german, but it sounds similar to the slovak word "nič", meaning "nothing". It might be a loan word!
Cool, i thought it was some other classic German word, but since Netsch was born far away from Germany, but on the border of Austria, it makes sense, even though I've seen him listed as ethnic German before.
@@ritalinfan by Czech and Slovaks you cant judge according german surnames. For example in 18. century almost all Czechs, doesn´t matter if czech or german speaking had german surnames, lot of them changed it into czech ones during nationalistic movements in 19 century, and lot of them kept german ones, so its impossible to tell which ethnicity are people in Czech lands according surnames. ;)
What a beautiful piece of mechanics and probably incredibly expensive to manufacture. The 20s were the Zenith for mechanical designers, strange, complicated and completely out of touch with reality.
It looks like the designer was looking at the American Johnson Automatic Rifle when dreaming up this contraption. Though actually this thing did come out earlier. Maybe Johnson was looking at this thing and thought, "I can do better than this!" 😅
Ironically Samostrel (self shooter) not only means "firearm" (although it originally, in the Old Russian at least, was a word for crossbow) but is also a slang for self inflicted gunshot injuries as a way to avoid combat duty. In Russian, but i presume in some other Slavic languages as well.
I genuinely love any early attempt at self-loading firearms. The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw some wild and extravagant mechanisms wrapped in very aesthetic wood and steel materials. Absolutely comfy.
This design goes from 0-very strange in record time. There's more linear feet 9even different layers of metal) of sheet metal and steel than I've seen in any rifle of this size. The action is basically the entire rifle minus the rear wooden stock.
Ah yes, let's make the forward operating rifle with an already long barrel, have rearward locking lugs. That way the operating system is as long as possible. Nothing could go wrong.
The safety covering the bolt handle travel slot is neat. I know the AK-47 wasn't the first rifle to do this, I've seen an earlier one in one of your videos, IIRC. But is this Netsch the *first* rifle to do this trick with the safety?
We in the danish military have a similar concept call the LSV(Light Support Weapon/ Våben) Which is a mag fed beefed up m95 or, in american, and AR16 with a heavy barrel. I carry one Usually used as a DMR, but in close firefight, is a support weapon.
really fascinating to see a new to me cycling system. I'm in the UK, I did some training with a gunsmith some years ago but mainly air rifles and shotguns.
6:32 to be overly specific, the german "GmbH" is equivalent to the english "Ltd.", it's a limited liability company, a popular legal model for small to medium companies (very german name, gemeinschaft mit beschränkter haftung). a different company type abbreviation commonly contained in company abbreviation is AG for aktiengesellschaft, those are publicly traded companies.
I thought it looked like a reasonably simple and affordable gun until you took the outer shroud off and I saw all those holes in the inner shroud and I realized that even if it didn’t fail the reliability tests it probably would have gotten rejected for being way too complicated and expensive to manufacture in large quantities
Hope you enjoyed your stay in Prague. Just at a small note - it was tested as well in 1921 in Military Compound at Milovice (at least as my father is telling me right now, his father (my grandpa) was from that area).
A bayonet would turn into a automatic stabby thing.
Thank you, made me chuckle. A genuine LOL.
Unfortunately, you'd also already be shooting at the same time... or I guess fortunately??? Double damage.
I checked and “automatic stabby thing” is the correct description for such contraption.
_All_ guns are just advanced stabby things.
and here ppl were scared of "chainsaw bayonets"...Autostabber 3000: "hold my beer, while I stab it 100x times"
Good lord, this is a niche rifle. And steampunk AF. I love these from the early days of "We don't quite know what we're doing yet".
I came here to make that pun. Thank you for already doing it.
You forgot to czech that
This era also makes it that much more impressive that some of the guns that came out of it were just objectively good even by later standards when people had figured out optimal functions and forms a lot more.
Netsch*
Respectfully disagree, THIS weapon is _pure_ Dieselpunk (based on the time period).
I am not going to be surprised when a Czech weapon shows up some day and literally has elves inside moving bullets.
More like Smurfs.
Here in Czechia we always had some talented designers and engineers. It is just we are small country, so nobody give a crap about us. But hey, in times of massive immigration, we live in peace thanks to this exact aspect, so you lose some, you win some.
Better that than gremlins.
...and you'll have to give them some beer,in order to make them work xDDD
@@vladimirpain3942 ty vole, breč víc, jsme malinkatá zemička, nikdo nás nemá rád,buuuuuu. Jses ubožák, očividně je to zajímá, když Gun Jesus udělal desítky videii o českých zbraní
Netsch: so I made a niche gun.
Huot: huot?
That's a super good joke.
Fun fact on this tangent, the file/unlock name for the Huot in Battlefield 1 is "U_Huot".
Too clever by half (at least). Thank you, sir.
Netsch: you know, Nietzsche gun, it has will to power.
Ian: "It moves forward rather substantially..."
Me: "So like a whole in- oh that is really substantial..."
proceeds to unsheathe the barrel like a horses cck
yeah, that is truly a lot.
It's a grower, not a shower.
@@johnsmith-jq1uc wonder if you could use that forward extension as a bayonetting-assist?
@@fidjeenjanrjsnsfh mate it's both.
Ian's mysterious 3rd hand appears at 7:26
Its clearly the hand he wears his watch on
1st rule of the third hand is ...
That was me, sorry 😅
Gun jesus has as many as he needs..... just don't play cards with him 😄
@@cedhome7945 As long you don't see the torso Gun Jesus can manifest as many arms as needed. A fomidable ability especially when combined with his other ability that allows him to conjure any gun from his lap.
Minor correction - AKC. SPOL. (akciová společnost) is joint-stock company, Inc./AG, not limited liability company LLC/GmbH. Thanks for cool video, Ian :)
Dobry postreh Ondro. Me se libi jak Ian vyslovuje slovo Zbrojovka ("zebrovka"). To je pro me prekvapujici vzhledem k tomu, ze se pohybuje v Cy-Zy jiz pomerne dlouho. Ale uz skoro umi rict slovo "Strakonice" coz je chvalyhodne :-)
Mi to spíše zní, že zná polskou žubrovku, tak to tam prostě dá :)@@zdenekprisovsky2783
I do love the weird over-engineering of a lot of these early self loaders. great video, good so see something this forgotten
I do too. I find these incredibly fascinating.
Very interesting case, as the initial idea is actually very simple - to capitalize on muzzle blast for operation, but it turned out to be more complicated because of that.
Fun thing, a lot of the modern turkish bullpup 12 guage shotguns use the same style of gas system, I have one of the better ones and it's nuts
@@mikoajpietrych6168I find it Ironic that the mind that came up with that didn’t think let’s drill a hole in a test barrel and finally settle that accuracy argument before I make a 30lb complicated rifle doomed to fail .
@@dustyak79 Yeah human brain is like that sometimes.
Really appreciate Ian doing these Videos since such a long Time! I'm a Veteran of the 23rd Gebirgsjägerbrigade (231st Gebirgsjägerbattalion) with 2 Tours in Afghanistan and 1 in Kosovo via KFOR and i remember finding Forgotten Weapons during the whole (G36 Scandal) which we all know wasn't a Scandal.
Just wanna say how much i appreciate the Content of Forgotten Weapons!
Also now i finally learned how to pronounce "Skoda" which i definitely mispronounced all my Life refering to the Skoda Cars (which are great btw, too bad Americans can't buy them)
Prost & Cheers from Berchtesgaden in the Bavarian Alps
Fun language fact:
As others have mentioned, "samostříl" (literally "selfshooter", as something that shoots by itself) is a somewhat archaic Czech term for a crossbow or arbalest. It sounds fairly funny to actually use that kind of term for a gun like this, even for this period when the terminology for modern self-loaders and automats was still in diapers. Considering the language habits back in the day, my guess is that Mr. Netsch was trying to sound distinguished and professional before the military officers, but with a way too oldschool conservative mindset. X)
In contrast, a sibling term "samopal" (literally "self-fire-er" ... ) was a neologism that became widely established in the following decades (most notably after WW2), as a general word for any handheld automatic self-loading gun. That's why it was used the same for either the vz.61 Škorpion, or the vz.58 rifle. Terms "automatic rifle/pistol" (automatická puška/pistole) were used more sparingly back then, as very technical terms in documentation and among professionals. But coloquially, any automatic handheld gun was a samopal.
This started changing since the nineties with the influx of western terminology habits, automatic/assault rifle (automatická/útočná puška) became the new norm and "samopal" now remains as the equivalent to the english "submachinegun".
And BTW, our word for a machine gun is "kulomet" which also sounds a bit funny when literally translated as a ... "bullet-launcher".
Or maybe "bulletcaster", a fitting name for a heavy metal gun ... :D
Yes, and before WW II the Czechoslovak military called the SMG "kulometná pistole", which is "machinegun pistol". Nice mess in terminology.
@@vitezslavnovak2077 that was because of the doctrine of using SMGs in the same way as machine guns
From the Polish perspective, these Czech names sound interesting, completely understandable, but with an archaic tinge, as if they were medieval words :)
"Bulletcaster" is a fitting name for a heavy metal band, not just a gun.
@@vitezslavnovak2077 reminds me of how in Swedish we've got "kulspruta" (bullet-sprayer) for machinegun and "kulsprutepistol" for an SMG.
This gun looks like something Bethesda would make that accidentally operates in a plausible way.
4:00 omg I wanna see this gun fire in slow motion so bad now. This looks so interesting
I bet it moves like an epileptic belly dancer.
In slo-mo with the shroud removed!
@@BleedingUranium And finger inside that mechanism.
I was hoping for this unique design to be added into world of guns, but sadly it does not seem like they're interested in prototypes...
This is an insanely funky rifle. It would be just as amazing to see firing as M1915 Howell automatic rifle. The purest steampunk)
Wonder how the recoil feels with it extending like that lol.
Bizarre in the title, very much earned.
I imagine a jerky rocking motion, especially in full auto.
The whole rifle probably pulls away from your shoulder 6 inches between shots.
I actually think that the rifle pulls forward rather than pushes into your shoulder...🤔
I reckon the recoil would suck cos you'd get all that mass moving away from your shoulder and giving itself a run-up for when it does slam into your shoulder.
While the barrel goes forward, there is still recoil pushing back. The resulting forces in this system would be interesting...
Wow...Rube Goldberg would be proud! That has to be the most complex gun I can remember seeing! It's completely impractical but is a treasure trove of crazy mechanisms...pure joy for those of us who love those sort of things! Thanks for sharing!
Oh, hai Mark ;-) I'm guessing, given the timeframe, inconsistent ammo was his biggest concern here? Anything short of a real squib load would probably be enough to blow that big old gas-trap forwards and after that, the rest of the cycle is the same, regardless of ammo pressure. Not much of a concern nowadays, but back then, kinda genius when you think about it. A bit similar to the Farquhar-Hill Ian did a video on years ago. What do you reckon?
You apparently haven't seen the H&K G11 (Ian covered this one as well)...
@rrolf71 do you know who you're talking to...
@@evanjohnson9269 More or less. But I still think that the clockwork innards of the G11 can be beaten.
Ian has shown us a few guns that are weirder than this one, but it's definitely in the top five, perhaps top three.
I'm a simple man:
I see "Czech", "prototype" and "rifle" in the same title, I click.
I'm from the Czech Republic, and I think I know all the Czech weapons and prototypes that were made, but Ian can always surprise me with something I've never heard of in my life
ve VHU toho máme spoustu v depozitářích o čem široká ani odbornější veřejnost neví ale stačí chtít a dá se k tomu dostat
I can't even imagine doing a field strip in the field to clean, without losing something. LOL
Like a finger perhaps. This looks like a Garand thumb incident just waiting to happen
I had much the same thought, just imagine giving this weapon to an illiterate recruit! Bits and bobs everywhere!
Nobody...probably😂
this is a prototype, one assumes a production version would be simplified
The parts are so big there is no way you could lose them, besides the screws. More than likely the crayon-eater would gunk up the rotary mag and it fails to feed.
Those parts are beautifully machined
This thing is beautiful. Mechanically just, unbelievable. It looks needlessly insanely complex. But beautiful in a sense, completely fascinating with wild ways to address something we take for granted. Something that we see as simple now, but back then was, well anyone's guess how it should be. It looks insanely expensive to produce. But again, beautiful and fascinating in it's complexity, and in the way it addresses select fire mechanisms in a very unique way. Too bad these things were never manufactured in some number (I could never see it ever hoping to reach mass production), it would be really cool to see a few hundred of these floating around.
Let's all just take a second to appreciate Ian putting his fingers on his right hand in serious peril to show us the operating system!
5:57 That is THE single, coolest feature I've ever seen on a firearm.
Coming back and binge watching your channel high af has to be one of the best things in my life rn
Thanks!
Thanks for the review, Ian. And many thanks to the VHU for letting us see an interesting design.
me: I want a Johnson Rifle
Mom: we have Johnson Rifle at home
Johnson Rifle at home:…
XD yes
It's more of Farquhar
I was gonna say its like a Johnson rifle if you got it off of Temu
It reminded me more of a huot or a farquhar hill, but i can see that a bit
Can you imagine if you ever had to fire that in a confined area and that gas shroud was rubbing on or punching into things as you tried to fire? What a weird way to get malfunctions from inability to fully extend forward. Yikes!
(That said, it'd be amusing to watch Ian try to run an action like that through a two-gun challenge. Don't rest the moving bit on the barricade :D)
My thoughts exactly, this thing must be a terror to shoot in any sort of "resting the barrel on something" position, also good luck trying to shoot through a firing port of any sort.
Fun fact: In Croatian, which is somewhat similar to Czech, the word "samostrel" literally means crossbow. Also the word "strijeljati" (to shoot) is related to the word "strijela" (arrow).
In Polish arrow is "strzała", to shot is "strzelać" and shotgun is "strzelba"
In the Czech language original meaning of _samostříl_ is _a crossbow_ too. Although more common term for it is _kuše_
As someone else said, in Czech it means the same, though it is also somewhat archaic now. In relation to guns it seems to have just fallen out of use in favour of the similar "samopal", which just means "self-fire" and was used for pretty much all full auto guns smaller than a machinegun. The Vz 58 and Vz 61 were both "samopal" despite the big difference in calibre and form factor.
Shooter (or gunman) in Ukrainian: Strelok
@@CMDKeenCZ Sounds similar to Croatian "samokres", which is an archaic and somewhat... funny term for firearms in general. The HS-Produkts HS2000s full name is "Hrvatski Samokres".
Samostříl is also a czech word for crossbow
Holy cow, that makes a Borchardt C-93 look straightforward and elegant, lol.
Good thing instruction and dis/assembly manuals for these are readily available, otherwise it would be quite a puzzle to take apart.
Fricking early gang reporting for duty. Can't wait to Czech this out.
Yo!
Ahoy-hoy good person!
Rapid reaction force developed
Love Czeching out this gun
Ba dum tss
Ayooooooo I like that very smooth
I love to see these early solutions to automatic/semiautomatic firearms.
This museum have another cca 20 of those strange construction of rifles/machineguns.
That is a very interesting and unusual rifle! Kinda complicated and it must have been rather expensive to manufacture.
The magic 3rd arm!
This type of content is why I keep watching. Thank you, Mr. McCollum
Always a good morning when Ian drops a new weird firearm video.
You can really see the 'converted bolt action' aspect of this design once Ian peels off the two outermost layers of the onion
15:43 Czech that out.
I am endlessly impressed by how hundred year old guns were built to such a high standard that they can still run through operations under spring pressure and there isn't a worry about the whole thing breaking into pieces, and that the pieces still all fit so well.
That’s not a magazine, that’s a whole steam engine.
"I'm Ian McCallum, and I'm here at the VHU with my Echo and we're taking a look at some really funky Czech machine guns..."
I wonder how much recoil is absorbed by that gas system? First the gun is dragged forward by the muzzle "blast" (like a muzzle brake), then as it returns to the rear it is pulling the gun forward (I think, hard to visualize the forces with the mainspring and bolt involved). I think that timing of the cycle would feel quite strange compared to what we are used to.
AEK 971
@@SonKaneOf or AK107
Imagine the hours of prep time necessary to master the disassembly of a contraption like this so it can be presented in a 20 minute video. Dedication.
It was around an hour of prep time 😂
And he still miss half of important information..
@@DOMINIK99013
He did? Tell us the important parts he missed.
@@martinpojer5375
Excellent!
@@jgrenwod I wrote entire comment about that here in discusion. Another high-quality video, in which half of the important information is missing.. There was no Czech army in the 20s, the fact that the constructor is a Slovak, not Slovakian, demonstrates this, I think. The origin of testing this category of weapons is that after 1918, not 1919, when Czechoslovakia was founded, its highest command was a general from the French mission, because the Czechoslovak officer corps did not have that many high-ranking officers of that age to draw from. Eugène Mittelhauser 1873-1949 was the supreme commander of the Czechoslovak army at that time and he wanted to build the Czechoslovak army on the French model, often rather as a place to dump expensive worn-out French state armaments and a place to make money for French manufacturers. From the point of view of smallarms, this of course meant an army on self-loading rifles and light machine guns, types of weapons that the young Czechoslovak army did not have, so he announced a competition to test light machine guns and self-loading rifles, which in this case therefore overlapped a bit, from established French manufacturers and Czechoslovak young constructions and prototypes. Another impulse was that, in addition to the need for a light machine gun, testing a self-loading rifle and at the same time the need to solve the replacement of repeating rifles and machine guns, where the situation was not ideal, just not as tragic as in the case of light machine guns that did not exist, and one of those designers told the military commission that the semi-automatic/automatic rifle is capable of replacing a repeating rifle, light and heavy machine gun in one, like clasic pushing designer of that era with this kind of talking lol. This is a bit of a wild theory, but it has been experimented with several times in later years with sort of universal weapons, such as the Czechoslovak machine gun ZK423 for the SS, the Stoner rifle, the M27 USMC rifle, and today's Sig Sauer introduced into the US Army. The military administration liked the idea of solving the problem of 3-4 weapons with one type of weapon, so it went to test. So the tests of self-loading rifles ended in nothing and continued with light machine guns, the ZB 26 did not come until 5 years later, already in the same year the Praga-I-23 was tested, which is a ZB 26 with a drum and a belt, it was in 1924 as a result reworked by critics into vz 24, which is actually what we know under the name ZB 26 and which came to the units from 1927. Before the adaption of the ZB 26, however, the French general urgently pushed for the adaption of a light machine gun, which resulted in the French purchases of the Hotchkiss and Darne machine guns, one of them worst then the other. Out of 1000 Hotchkiss light machine gun on striper clips, only about 769 machine guns were registered after 4-5 years in service before being phased out in 1929-30, during several attempts to sell, no one wanted to buy both types of machine guns, not even the poor Warlords in China.
The recoil feel on this must have been weird as hell.
To be fair, the forward movement of the inner barrel shroud and gas trap mechanism probably helped to mitigate the recoil to some degree, so that wouldn't surprise me.
I actually think that the socket at the end of the barrel going forward with each shot would mean that the rifle actually pulls FROM your shoulder rather than push INTO your shoulder... 🤔
While the front would go forward, the receiver and stick would still be pushed backward into the shooter's shoulder. It would change the recoil a lot but it wouldn't just pull away, except maybe for a short impulse when it reaches the forward limit of its motion.
If you think about it, the first impulse would still push the gun back immediately, if I understand the workings of it I don’t think you’d feel much else… the shroud isn’t being launched, it’s being dragged along, the impulse from that would much later than the initial recoil, only milliseconds I’m sure, no very fast, but orders of magnitude slower than the recoil pushing back…
I imagine it feels very different from what we’re used to… the same way a blowback operated pistol feels way different than a revolver, and a big block back with a heavy slide feels way different that a snappy little ppk.
I guess this is blow forward, or is it a double blow?
I’d definitely like to see what it feels like to pop this off, and watch in slowmo to see it all moving.
🎉@@trixus4768
@7:25 mysteriously, Ian grows a third hand to help with disassembly...
It really comes in handy sometimes.
that is standard attachment that comes with the weapon
Would be intriguing to see if this system would have been feasible if scaled up to like 20mm - it seems the sort of thing that'd be better as an emplaced cannon than a shoulder gun.
The view of a 20mm autocannon with a shroud just extending like that with every shot. That would be very weird.
Super interesting video! I love all the quircky guns but this one hits home like no other :D I also like your pronunciation of Češká Žubrovka :D
I think it's a really elegant design, if overly complicated :) Kind of the same way that the H&K G11 is. Also impressive to have an entirely tool-less disassembly on a 1920s automatic rifle!
Always enjoy watching you and the old guns and designs that have . Change the firearm industry and the way that you explain the operating systems
I can only imagine the museum's curator watching Ian disassembling such a complex piece while his hair is slowly getting grey.
Not at all, we spent like an hour before filming discusding everything and curator showing him how to disassemble this thing, he was just in the corner doing his thing, minding his own.😅
Dude i kinda love the look of this rifle.
When I first saw the thumbnail, this gun reminded me of the Huot Automatic Rifle.
That baby is beautiful! It’s probably way too complicated for large scale use, but after many videos about kludge weapons from less well know designers, this thing was obviously a labor of skill and love.
I'm really surprised that you handle these old rifles without wearing gloves to protect them from oils or sweat from your hands.
A quite interesting weapon.
After all filming days they were returned to deposit and reoiled
Would love to see this contraption fired in slow motion. Would imagine it gives the Chauchat a run for its money on "total number of random parts moving in all directions all at once"
Super over engineered but very cool rifle. I think that drum mag would have worked well and seems like it had a reliable feeding system.
Note that the word "samostříl" also (and more frequently) means "kuše" = a "crossbow". For a gun the almost synonymous term "samopal" is used (meaning specificaly a submachine gun, but sometimes referes to an assault rifle also.) The name is correct, but unusual.
@7:25 Ian's 3rd hand finally on camera. Jokes aside what a fascinating firearm.
Sorry about that 😅
I'm curious as to how it feels to shoot. The shroud going forward and back has to do something funky to the recoil impulse.
Maximum points for style, this is steampunk AF!
That thing is amazing! I love all the little details like the magazine well cover, and the action is just so fun!
Netsch should of been told to look into telescoping barrels
Clearly what the Czech military needed
That's one bizarre looking gun for sure..And for some strange reason I love it already just from first look.
And only more so after seeing that operating system.
There is also a carbine version in our collection there
@@martinpojer5375 That one I'd love to see as well, bet it's at least as whacky inside and out as this was.
What can i say I just have a soft spot for weird guns
I was expecting it to be some sort of Johnson copy after seeing the picture. I can now conirm it is definitley not at all related!
It would be fascinating to see this shoot!
Nietzsche : What doesn't kill you makes you stronger
Netsch : Anyway here's a rifle...
I like the operating system, I keep thinking of a long travel that remains locked until full travel then the barrel goes forwards and unlocks ejects etc and then drops the bolt when the barrel reaches full travel
Actually, directly translated, "SAMOSTŘÍL" really means self-shooter, but practically this word is an archaic term for a crossbow. (KUŠE in czech). Some words cannot be translated directly. Their meaning can change completely. "SAMOSTŘÍL" = CROSSBOW
Jinak řečeno kuše, která je natažená a může sama vystřelit, kdy bude střelec chtít. A z řečtiny tomu odpovídá slovo "auto" a je ještě starší.
"Netsch" is austrian slang describing a very little amount of money
Now this is interesting! I was wondering about the origin of that surname.
The spelling looks german, but it sounds similar to the slovak word "nič", meaning "nothing". It might be a loan word!
Cool, i thought it was some other classic German word, but since Netsch was born far away from Germany, but on the border of Austria, it makes sense, even though I've seen him listed as ethnic German before.
@@DOMINIK99013 He most certainly was ethnic German.
Which is funny, because of in Czech lands slang for somebody who doesnt have money is "Schworz/Švorc" from german word schwarz.😉
@@ritalinfan by Czech and Slovaks you cant judge according german surnames. For example in 18. century almost all Czechs, doesn´t matter if czech or german speaking had german surnames, lot of them changed it into czech ones during nationalistic movements in 19 century, and lot of them kept german ones, so its impossible to tell which ethnicity are people in Czech lands according surnames. ;)
I'm really impressed that you to manage to go to all the places you visit, good job
What a beautiful piece of mechanics and probably incredibly expensive to manufacture. The 20s were the Zenith for mechanical designers, strange, complicated and completely out of touch with reality.
My all time favorite Forgotten Weapons vids are the one's about guns I've never seen before and I never imagined would exist.
It looks like the designer was looking at the American Johnson Automatic Rifle when dreaming up this contraption. Though actually this thing did come out earlier. Maybe Johnson was looking at this thing and thought, "I can do better than this!" 😅
To quote Slavoj Zizek on this rifle "but what if the opposite is true?"
Interesting also samostříl means crossbow in czech.
Well if you translate it word to word it mean something like seflshooting-automatic.
@@ondrejsuch2048 true
I'm amazed at the different approaches designers took to achieve the goal of autoloading firearms.
Ironically Samostrel (self shooter) not only means "firearm" (although it originally, in the Old Russian at least, was a word for crossbow) but is also a slang for self inflicted gunshot injuries as a way to avoid combat duty. In Russian, but i presume in some other Slavic languages as well.
In czech it's almost the same, it's a word for crossbow. We don't have the connotation for self inflicted wound there, tho :)
You get shot point blank by this, the bullet goes through you and the action punches you 20 yards downrange
I'm really wondering how it sounded when fired in both semi & auto...
I genuinely love any early attempt at self-loading firearms. The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw some wild and extravagant mechanisms wrapped in very aesthetic wood and steel materials. Absolutely comfy.
Iam a simple Slovak man. I see Czechoslovak gun, i press like!
Translation is actually more akin to "on its own shooter", but thank you for covering this and delving into its history!
I don't think so. *samostříl* is something like auto-fire, therefore an automatic gun.
This design goes from 0-very strange in record time. There's more linear feet 9even different layers of metal) of sheet metal and steel than I've seen in any rifle of this size. The action is basically the entire rifle minus the rear wooden stock.
The handguard that slides back to cover the empty magazine well is a lovely touch.
Ah yes, let's make the forward operating rifle with an already long barrel, have rearward locking lugs. That way the operating system is as long as possible. Nothing could go wrong.
The safety covering the bolt handle travel slot is neat. I know the AK-47 wasn't the first rifle to do this, I've seen an earlier one in one of your videos, IIRC. But is this Netsch the *first* rifle to do this trick with the safety?
We in the danish military have a similar concept call the LSV(Light Support Weapon/ Våben) Which is a mag fed beefed up m95 or, in american, and AR16 with a heavy barrel. I carry one
Usually used as a DMR, but in close firefight, is a support weapon.
really fascinating to see a new to me cycling system. I'm in the UK, I did some training with a gunsmith some years ago but mainly air rifles and shotguns.
6:32 to be overly specific, the german "GmbH" is equivalent to the english "Ltd.", it's a limited liability company, a popular legal model for small to medium companies (very german name, gemeinschaft mit beschränkter haftung). a different company type abbreviation commonly contained in company abbreviation is AG for aktiengesellschaft, those are publicly traded companies.
I thought it looked like a reasonably simple and affordable gun until you took the outer shroud off and I saw all those holes in the inner shroud and I realized that even if it didn’t fail the reliability tests it probably would have gotten rejected for being way too complicated and expensive to manufacture in large quantities
Rather intriguing
Hope you enjoyed your stay in Prague. Just at a small note - it was tested as well in 1921 in Military Compound at Milovice (at least as my father is telling me right now, his father (my grandpa) was from that area).
Did I miss something? I didn't hear the caliber.
Dont remember if it is stated in video but it is chambered in 7.92 Mauser
@@martinpojer5375 Thank you
Awesome gun and great video. Thank you sir !
11:37 Don't you mean 'The Netscht step'?
Very clever 🙏
Woah, Ian, now with 3 arms!
Отличное Видео , камрад ! Спасибо .
I would have like to have seen how the drum mag worked.
Looks like a mutated Johnson had an affair with an SVT40! Nice!
When you demonstrated the action, I started grinning from ear to ear!