[ Ljutic Space Gun ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, this is one I've wanted to do a video on for a long time,
and it's unusual, well, obviously it's unusual, it looks pretty darn weird.
This is a Ljutic Space Gun, that's Ljutic spelled with a J.
Al Ljutic was quite the interesting character, in fact
he might be even more interesting than the gun itself.
His career, well he started as a young man in the 1930s
as a professional boxer and amateur machinist.
And turned into quite the renowned machinist and
pretty much a household name in shotgun ... trap shooting.
... Well he got out of boxing apparently after one particular fight when he got home
and realised he couldn't remember what had happened in the fight,
and that this might not be the best thing for him to be doing cognitively.
So, up and quit boxing, went full time into machining instead.
Was very much a lifelong shooting enthusiast as well.
In fact apparently he was actually slated to be on the US 1940 Olympic rifle team.
Which went nowhere, because the 1940 Olympics were scheduled to be held in Tokyo.
They were rescheduled as war broke out for Helsinki,
and then cancelled altogether with the full-on emergence of World War Two.
So 1940 Olympics never happened, Al Ljutic never went to the Olympics for the US.
But instead what he did was eventually get into trap shooting.
Now, the story goes that being a fairly well known rifle guy,
he was actually invited out to do some shotgun shooting by a Remington representative
and said, "Yeah, sure, why not? Haven't done that, sounds interesting."
Realised he didn't have a shotgun and so he just made himself one.
Because why not? He's a gun inventor, he's a machinist, he's got all the tools.
How difficult can it be? The barrel's not even rifled.
So he threw together a gun that ended up becoming this.
By the way, I should point out, historically this was not his first gun project.
He actually took out a patent for a gas-operated rotating-bolt rifle system,
which apparently was bought out by Winchester.
There was a version of this rifle that was submitted to the US military for trials in the 1940s.
Didn't go anywhere because they had already adopted the Garand.
But Winchester ended up producing this, after some lengthy court battle,
as the Winchester Model 100.
Which is one of Winchester's nice semi-automatic sporting rifles.
So this trap thing worked out pretty well for Al Ljutic,
and he ended up developing that gun into this, the Ljutic Space Gun.
Now only like 200 of these were ever actually manufactured.
Before they really took off, and they probably never
would really take off just given the way they look,
... Ljutic fell in into business basically
with a guy named Phil Miller, who was a very high-end trap shooter.
And Miller convinced him to design a new trap shotgun to compete in the US at the high end.
Something that was a little more conventional looking that would
appeal more to the general shotgun-buying public.
That became the Ljutic Mono Gun (mono as in single barrel),
and sold extremely well, it became a very popular gun.
And it propelled Ljutic and his company to be in the shotgun business,
in fact they're still in that business today. Al Ljutic died in 1997 at the age of 94,
but his company still survives, still making very high-end trap shotguns.
Anyway, let's take a closer look ... at this specific one, because his other guns, while very good,
are much more typical looking. And this one's just weird and different.
I'm not just calling this thing a Space Gun because I think it looks weird,
I'm calling it that because that's what Al Ljutic actually called it.
There it is right on the side. And this is serial number 107 out of something like 200.
I've been unable to find a really clear answer
to exactly how many of these were made, but it was not many.
Now despite all of its weird looks, every element on this gun
is actually done with a specific purpose in mind.
So the pistol grip allows very good solid control of the gun.
The stock and receiver are one continuous tube.
That directs the recoil straight into the shooter's shoulder,
instead of causing the gun to buck up. Nice thick recoil pad to support that.
Now because of that straight-line stock,
of course the sights have to be raised substantially above the ... bore.
And so they are, there's a sight rib out here at the front.
And it's just a short sight rib, it's actually really only as much as you actually need for aiming.
And that's lifted up to give you a proper sight picture.
What you would do is line this bead up with that one, a typical shotgun style of sighting.
It does have threaded interchangeable chokes.
But the really interesting part of the design is the action here.
You'll see this described sometimes as a slam-fire shotgun,
and sometimes ... people saying, "No, no, it's a locked breech, it's not a slam-fire gun."
Well, the answer is: it is kind of both.
So this is a little bit awkward until you really get used to using it,
at which point it can be reasonably quick and efficient to use.
But you've got this handle at the bottom, and in order to cycle the action
(because it does not cycle automatically), you pull it down this way.
That is going to unlock this sleeve, ... this really is the bolt.
You then pull it back and I'm going to re-cock the firing pin in the process.
There is a very heavy firing pin spring in this,
it feels like a semi-automatic bolt-action mainspring.
But it's actually not, it's just the firing pin or the striker spring.
And at this point there is a sear that catches in the trigger (we'll pull this off in a moment and I'll show you).
But what we have here is the bolt itself, right there.
And that goes forward, locks the shell in place.
And then this element right in here is a very, very massive striker or firing pin.
When you pull the trigger, that jumps forward
like so, and it's going to fire the gun.
But what Ljutic specifically did was put a lot of mass
and a reasonably long distance of travel in this,
so that it kind of gives you a counter-recoil force.
What happens is this thing slams forward and it starts to push the gun forward.
However, at the same time it's firing the cartridge.
And so the gun is starting to slide forward from the inertia of this dropping,
at the same time that recoil starts to push it back.
And to some extent those two forces counteract each other.
Now, this is not a zero-recoil gun,
but this mechanism does substantially reduce the felt recoil.
If you talk to people who have shot these, that's one of the common
initial comments people make is, "Wow, that's a lot lighter shooting than you would expect."
It is certainly far lighter in recoil than a traditional single-shot gun,
because typically those have the worst recoil,
being both light and having no features to absorb any of that energy.
And a lot of people would describe this as being lighter recoiling
than a semi-automatic shotgun, which is surprising and impressive.
Now in a rifle this sort of system would be eschewed,
because that jump is going to throw off your aim.
But this is a shotgun, not a rifle, and you would fire this
while swinging it through an arc at a flying target.
And that ... jump is not nearly as substantial of a problem
in that style of shotgun shooting as it would be for precision rifle shooting.
And the recoil reduction really makes it worthwhile,
especially on a long course of fire where you're going to shoot ...
maybe 100, maybe 150 rounds in a single session, a couple of rounds of trap.
If you look at the trigger, it's a button-shaped trigger, interesting.
It does slide directly backwards, and this thing has a very nice, crisp trigger pull.
This particular one is a traditional standard-pull trigger,
but ... as was done with a variety of sporting shotguns,
these were also occasionally offered with release triggers.
Where you would actually pull the trigger back,
and when you let go of it, it would pop forward and that would fire the weapon.
This was popular in some circles for trap and skeet shooting
because it was felt that it would jar your sight picture less.
... You're a lot less likely to jerk the trigger when you are releasing it rather than pulling it.
Those are traditionally not considered safe today,
because once you have pulled the trigger you have to fire the gun.
And ... if you pull the trigger getting ready to take a shot
and then something comes up that makes the range unsafe,
and you have to unload the gun, well you're stuck with kind of this deadman's switch.
The way that Ljutic dealt with that was
to allow you to grab the bolt handle and un-cock the thing like this.
When you unlock the bolt it cams the firing pin back, and prevents it from firing.
So what you could do is unlock it and then release the trigger.
And ... that would allow you to get your hand away from the trigger without actually firing the gun.
Anyway, we can take a look at the insides here by removing the pistol grip and then the trigger.
Pull that off, there's the trigger mechanism.
We can pull the trigger out ... with this second screw.
What's interesting is this trigger mechanism is actually rather like a submachine gun trigger.
It doesn't have to have a whole lot of I want to say safety features,
but it looks ... very much like just a dropping sear from a submachine gun.
And that is feasible on a single shot gun like this because, well,
you don't have to worry about making sure it doesn't fire full-auto because it's only got one round.
And it's not going to open after you fire it, so you can have a very simple trigger just like this.
You can see the sear bar here. And what's going to happen when you have this in the gun
is that this sear bar is being pushed down like this by the actual striker or firing pin.
And it's under spring tension, it's pushing on that. And when you pull the trigger,
... the bottom surface comes forward which gives this a place to go,
and it drops down like that and the ... firing pin goes forward and fires the gun.
You can see that surface right here. That's what's engaging with the firing pin.
And when I have the bolt unlocked, and then it cycles back like this.
This isn't ... semi-auto cycling, now you have to do this
in order to manually eject the shell when you're not firing.
And then you hold it back, drop another shell up into the chamber, allow it to close.
And normally (when you have the trigger installed), this is going to lock in place right about there.
So you've got all of this mass being propelled by a heavy spring inside the stock.
That's going to push this forward when you fire, and that's what gives you your counter-recoil effect.
There you go. If you want to be the guy at the trap range who has the most unusual looking shotgun,
and also be the guy at the trap range who's got one of the very best shotguns,
this might be just the thing for you.