[ Stoner 63A "Automatic Rifle" Configuration ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on Forgotten Weapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I'm here today at the James Julia
Auction House taking a look at some of the guns
that they're going to be selling in their upcoming
spring of 2018 Firearms Auction.
And today of course we have a Stoner 63A to take a look at.
Now the Stoner machine gun system
really has captured the interest of a large
portion of the American, and worldwide, firearms collecting and shooting community
because it's got just this great combination of ... assets to it.
It was a technologically very advanced firearm,
it was tested by the US military, it actually saw service in the Vietnam War,
specifically by SEALs, cool Special Operations commando-type guys.
And yet it never really took off.
So it's kind of like the conspiracy theory of machine guns, "What killed the Stoner?"
Well, we're going to get into that.
So the beginning of this story is with Eugene Stoner.
After working for ArmaLite on the AR-15 and AR-18, and many other ArmaLite designs,
he ended up leaving that company, struck out on his own,
and ended up getting the assistance of the Cadillac Gage Corporation
in designing what he thought would be a really revolutionary new modular firearms system.
He ... hired off two of his primary assistants from the AR-15 project days,
they being Bob Fremont and Jim Sullivan.
And together those guys put together the Stoner 63 system.
It was, as the name implies, introduced in 1963.
And the basic concept here is that you have one central receiver unit
that can be configured into a multitude of different types of firearm, seven specifically.
This was set up to be a carbine, a rifle, an automatic rifle,
a light machine gun, a medium machine gun, a fixed machine gun, and even a survival rifle.
Although they never really got to the survival rifle, I think they built one of them.
But the concept was really quite clever.
And a lot of it is fundamentally based on the fact that the receiver
can be flipped upside down for some configurations and right-side up for others.
But it has attachment points so that you ...
basically you have a pile of bits, and you choose what configuration you want
and bolt on those bits, and presto, you have that style of gun.
And if you decide to ... change it, you use the exact same receiver and many of the same components,
and just switch them up a bit and you've got some other type of gun.
In fact, ... the very first version of this, the experimental first one, was designated the M69W.
It wasn't in 1969, they gave it that designation specifically
because they could write that on the side of the receiver and
whichever way you'd flipped it over, it still read M69W.
That didn't last long, that was just their prototype basically.
The next version was the Stoner Model 62 in 1962,
and that was basically this system, but in 7.62 NATO.
However, it became clear that the way military forces and armaments were progressing
it would be the 5.56 cartridge that ... would be predominant.
And so in 1963 they introduced the gun in 5.56.
One of the very first clients for it was actually DARPA,
the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency,
they bought 25 of them for testing.
The Marine Corps did some testing in 1963, and things were rather promising.
The Cadillac Gage Company decided to put this into limited production, they built about 2,000 of them.
And the gun was actually pretty enthusiastically received, specifically by the Navy SEALs.
They went ahead and used them in Vietnam.
They had some problems, some issues cropped up
that led to the gun being somewhat redesigned and improved,
and re-released in 1966 as the 63A. That's what we have here.
Now we'll get into the differences between the 63 and the 63A in a different video.
There is a lot to cover with the whole Stoner system,
so ... today we're going to limit this to specifically
the assembly and the modularity, and how that all works.
So, I should say this is currently in the automatic rifle configuration,
as the Stoner system designated it.
... A lot of people call it the "Bren gun" configuration, because it has a top-mounted magazine.
And in addition to that it has a heavy machine gun type barrel,
and it has a full-auto only fire control group.
... And of course offset sights because of the top-mounted magazine.
The concept here was that ... this is a rifle that is intended for fully-automatic fire, predominantly.
It's not quite a light machine gun because it's still magazine fed,
the light machine gun version was belt fed.
That's one of the other really cool things about the modularity of this system
was some of the versions were mag fed, some of them were belt fed.
And those parts all just bolted on interchangeably to the same receiver.
With the automatic rifle version here you retain magazine capability,
so your ammunition was interchangeable with guys who had carbines and rifles.
The magazine was mounted on the top to facilitate the use of a bipod
so that you didn't have the magazine sticking down and getting in the way.
This is the reason that a lot of the light machine guns from World War Two and
the decade or two prior had top-mounted magazines,
so that those didn't interfere with using the gun from the prone position.
Because the prone position is really where a gun like this is at its most useful.
It's got a heavier barrel for sustained fire,
the magazines can actually be changed by an assistant gunner.
That was a pretty typical setup, especially during World War Two and the decades previously.
You'd have a gunner actually shooting,
you'd have an assistant gunner whose job was to change magazines
so that the gunner didn't ever have to get off of their firing position.
And that's what you get here with the automatic rifle ... configuration of the Stoner.
So the main problem that the Stoner had as a military weapon was
basically that it was kind of a helicopter of a gun.
It was a weapon that was technically excellent, and very clever,
and very efficient, very well designed, it was a very lightweight firearm.
In the automatic rifle configuration with the heavy barrel
it still only came in at 10.2 pounds, that's 4.6 kilos.
And yet the problem that often goes along with a gun like that
is that it requires sophisticated maintenance and careful handling.
And I don't mean like you have to use gloves every time you're touching it lest it break,
what I mean is that it's not necessarily, say, Marine proof.
There's a saying that if you put a Marine in an empty room with a ball bearing,
come back half an hour later you'll find a broken ball bearing, somehow.
That's the sort of thing that the Stoner 63 just wasn't really able to handle.
For Special Forces guys like the SEAL teams, who were ... better trained,
better able to take really good care of their guns,
and frankly they were often taking guns on specific limited missions and then coming back to base.
And the guns are able to be repaired if necessary, refitted, cleaned, taken very good care of.
As opposed to more typical line infantry soldiers,
who would be out on deployment for longer periods of time.
The guns just weren't quite soldier-proof enough,
if I was to distil the issues all down into one simple thing.
So that ultimately is why the Stoner never ... was accepted by the mainstream military.
And ... it also explains why, for example, the SEALs kept them into I think the 1980s.
They were able to properly take care of a gun like this that's a little bit finicky,
and get all of the best results from it.
They were really able to ... use it to its full potential in a way that other troops weren't.
Now, let's move on to disassembly here.
So I'm going to start by removing the magazine.
One interesting thing to point out is typically,
and often when you see other pictures of automatic rifle configurations,
you'll see a magazine catch down here, as well as one up here.
The one up here is on the automatic rifle top-cover piece,
which is a unique element that bolts onto the top.
Typically you would be using a multi-purpose lower assembly
that could also be configured as a rifle or carbine,
and for that reason it would have a magazine catch on the bottom.
In this case the pin holding the magazine catch spring has been pulled out,
the magazine catch removed, and replaced with just a solid piece of metal
to block off that opening in the pistol grip.
While we're down here I can also show you the markings on the gun.
This is a Stoner 63A, serial number 179.
We'll touch on the [Knight's] thing in a few minutes.
Now there are two types of pins holding all the bits of the 63 or 63A together.
One is just a removable pushpin, kind of like an HK pushpin.
We have one of those up here.
The other is a two-part threaded-together pin like this,
and in order to remove that you actually have to unscrew it.
And then you get the inner component and the outer component.
Now these are for elements of the gun
that don't have to come apart for standard regular maintenance.
Alright, I already pulled out this pin,
so we'll just go ahead and take the handguard off, there it goes.
Next up, we can take off the top mounted components.
And what we have here is a magazine well, there's one pin, and the other.
So the magazine well comes out, as does ...
this is the automatic rifle top cover portion
that has the offset rear sight and the top magazine catch.
And then this guy is just the top magazine well.
Next up I can go ahead and remove the barrel.
All the Stoners have a detachable barrel, although if you are shooting in rifle
or carbine configuration this is kind of hidden under the handguard because it's not necessary.
In order to remove the barrel, first I'm going to lock the bolt back
so that the bolt head is no longer locked into the barrel trunnion.
Then push this tab down,
and the barrel slides out.
I'm going to start by removing this pin.
You can do just the rear pin, and pivot the grip down for just basic field stripping.
But because I want to disassemble all the parts,
(we've got the middle piece),
so this is another one of the two-part pins,
because completely removing the fire-control grip
is not something you would typically do for a basic field strip.
Then we will push through that pin.
That is the only captive pin in the system.
There we go, we can pull off the fire control group.
By the way, if you wanted to have this as, say, a fixed machine gun mounted in a vehicle,
which Cadillac Gage did intend to do,
we also can push out this pin and
simply remove the buttstock.
Leaving you with just a flat-ended gun if you don't need the buttstock on it.
Almost done here, we can now pull out the recoil spring which is captive.
And then the ... bolt, and bolt carrier, and gas piston assembly
is going to come out of the back of the receiver.
And, last but not least, I can take off the charging handle,
which comes back to here and then just lifts off.
So here is the whole system laid out.
Now this isn't every component of the Stoner 63,
this is specifically the parts that are required for the automatic rifle configuration.
So we have these guys up here, but we don't for example have the
rifle rear sight, or the rifle or carbine magazine wells, or of course the belt-feed adapters.
A couple of brief technical points.
The Stoner 63 is a ... long-stroke gas-piston operated action,
which uses an AR-15 style of multi-lug rotating bolt.
So that bolt will look very familiar, along with its cam system,
to anyone who's ever taken apart an AR-15 or an AR-18.
That was something that was not specifically patented by ArmaLite when they did the AR-15,
because of course this originated much earlier with the Johnson rifle,
and even some prototypes before that.
For that reason Stoner was able to continue using this bolt design.
When set up to use magazines, the Stoner used a 30 round magazine
that looks a lot like an AR-15 mag,
because of course it's the same size and the same cartridge, but it's not interchangeable.
It does have some feed stops up here, and it is a nose in, rock back style of magazine,
not a straight-in design like the AR-15.
Now the receiver here is the heart of the Stoner system, and it's really remarkably clever and cool.
So we have a forward barrel shroud, we have the receiver itself,
we have the gas tube, and all of that is one complete non-disassemblable unit.
Back here on the receiver there are three (or six I suppose) sets of mounting points,
and those are there to attach sights and feed devices, as well as the fire control group.
So if you have the rifle or carbine version,
you would actually be looking at it this direction.
The fire control group is going to bolt onto the bottom, right here.
And then you'll have a rear sight that bolts on here,
nothing up here, that's just solid and open.
The ejection port will be on the right side,
and you'll have a magazine well that bolts onto the bottom here.
And the handguard of course will also bolt onto the bottom.
In fact we can put the handguard all the way on,
you can see those pin holes, well, they almost line up - I don't quite have it in position.
The handguard in this position covers the barrel release
because you're not going to be changing out the barrel on a rifle or carbine.
And the gas piston in these configurations is located on the top of the gun.
No big deal, kind of like an AK.
If, however, you have one of the machine gun versions
from the automatic rifle up to the light, medium, or fixed machine gun,
then you're going to flip this over. The gas piston will be on the bottom
because you will need to feed from the top of the gun.
So note that the receiver is open here,
this is where cartridges go in, from whatever feeding device is being used.
On this side the receiver is sealed.
So, if you're feeding from the bottom with a magazine like a rifle,
that opening goes on the bottom.
If you're feeding from the top like the automatic rifle
or the belt-fed versions, then this opening has to go up on the top.
In that case the ejection port is now on the left side, so the belt fed feeds from the right.
... Well, I don't have a belt-fed mechanism here to show you, but it's going to clamp on here.
It'll have a little ejection port of its own for links,
because this used a disintegrating link.
So it will eject links at the top, cartridge cases at the bottom, and feed from this side.
And then the belt feed mechanism, most of the actual mechanism is in this section,
with the belt coming in here, so the belt feed mechanism runs this whole length.
Where on the rifles you have just a rear sight,
because there's nothing else required mechanically for the gun.
There are so many aspect of this modularity that are really clever to me
that it's hard to even cover all of them. But, for example, the charging handle.
On the machine gun you need a charging handle at the back, and it mounts in right here.
And so it's grabbing the [bolt carrier] up here, ...
and then the charging handle itself is back here, where it's easily accessible.
However, if you're running a rifle configuration,
you need a charging handle that's a little more accessible from a shoulder-fired position.
So instead on the rifle the charging handle runs vertically right in this slot,
because in the rifle configuration this is the top of the gun.
So the charging handle is now ambidextrous, and located right on the front end of the action.
Because the gun always ejects out the same side and feeds from the same side,
whether that's top or bottom, the ejector is able to be fixed in position right here.
It's spring-loaded so that it retracts when the bolt goes over it, and then it pops up to kick cases out.
But it's built into this block, and that never has to change
in any of the various final configurations.
You'll notice that this has both a semi-auto and a full-auto selector switch setting.
And in general, the rifle and carbine versions of the Stoner
were select fire and they fired from a closed bolt.
While the machine guns, the automatic rifle, and then all the bigger versions
were automatic only and fired from an open bolt.
Now one of the clever things here is you'll notice that on the bottom of the receiver
where you would have a machine gun fire control group attached,
there's a slot here which allows for the sear to come up.
And then there's also a second hole, I believe this is going to be for a disconnector,
so that you can also clamp a semi-auto ... fire control mechanism on here.
On the top of the rifle of course this is entirely open, so anything will fit,
there's no restriction on fire control bits fitting inside the receiver on that side.
But just another example of the cleverness involved in making this gun operable
with the receiver in either right side up or upside down configuration.
Now this particular fire control group is full-auto only,
and unfortunately I don't have a semi-auto or a select fire group
around that I can show you as a comparison.
But on this one all you have is a sear right there, when you pull the trigger, sear drops down.
When you release the trigger it comes back up and catches the bolt again.
So it's a very simple open-bolt firing mechanism.
So as you saw, this is actually a gun manufactured by Knight's Armament.
They bought out the remnants of Cadillac Gage in the '70s or early '80s I believe,
and got a lot of Stoner parts and receivers with them.
And ... they manufactured new receivers and then they assembled a bunch of the guns.
And they were all fully transferable because they were manufactured prior to 1986
in the United States, and registered as transferable machine guns.
So a lot of the ones that you find on the commercial market, like this,
are Knight's Armament guns.
Now in the automatic rifle configuration you've got one of the
really one of the rarer configurations of the Stoner.
You'll find a lot more of them belt fed.
It's hard to find the fixed machine gun version that has the solenoid firing system,
but that's also not a particularly practical one to actually shoot.
If you want one for shooting, and you don't want to have to deal with links,
this, with its heavy barrel for better sustained fire,
and just the rarity and the cool factor of this system,
this is one of the really good options for an actual shooter.
If you're interested in doing that yourself,
or if you just want to have it for decoration in your collection,
well, take a look at the description text below.
You'll find a link there to the Julia catalogue page for the gun,
where you'll find their pictures, their description, their price estimate,
everything else you would need to know to confidently
place a bid on it in their upcoming auction.
Thanks for watching.