[ IM Metal Reworked FAMAS Prototype ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today in
Karlovac, Croatia, at the HS Produkt factory
taking a look at the whole developmental series of rifles
that eventually led to the VHS-2, aka the Hellion.
Now where we left off last time, we took a look at HS's (or at the time: IM Metal's)
very first rifle project, which was a bullpup conversion of a Zastava M70 AK.
That rifle didn't really go anywhere, in fact it totally didn't go anywhere.
But the bullpup idea was kind of stuck.
And so what would IM Metal (or HS Produkt) do next?
Well, they wanted to ... work on a rifle
that was a bullpup from the start, not a conversion of something else.
And when the Croatian Homeland War began, one of the sources of
experienced combat troops that came into Croatia was actually the French Foreign Legion.
There were a non-trivial number of Croatian nationals
who had joined the French Foreign Legion who came back to Croatia
to fight for the country's independence.
We actually see something similar to this happened in Ukraine,
with the French Foreign Legion releasing Ukrainian Legionnaires
to return to Ukraine to fight the Russian invasion.
So remembering that this is the early 1990s, this is pre-internet,
the guys at IM Metal, and the Croatian military in general,
are looking at this question of, "What's the best rifle out there?
What should we work with? What's the good starting point
to build ourselves the best rifle we can come up with?"
And the FAMAS looks pretty cool.
The FAMAS is well understood and well respected
by some of the best fighters who are coming into Croatia from the Foreign Legion.
And so that becomes the basis for IM Metal's second development.
And this is what would fundamentally really lead to the VHS rifles.
So IM Metal acquires themselves a FAMAS, we actually have it here.
They've made their own new furniture, and this thing is totally beat to crap
because this ... was subjected to a lot of experimentation and abuse.
But this is at its core a FAMAS receiver and barrel.
Now, there were some elements of the design they didn't like,
so let's take a closer look at what they were tinkering with.
We won't get into the details of precisely how IM Metal got their hands on a FAMAS,
suffice to say that they got one.
And excuse this poor thing, ... this has had a long and difficult life.
... And it no longer has really any of its operating parts here,
but you can see that this clearly started out as a FAMAS receiver.
Now there are a couple of things that IM Metal changed from the original FAMAS design.
And one of them is moving the charging handle back.
So on the original FAMAS this carry handle goes all the way out to the front sight.
HS (or IM) has cut it short here.
And instead of the charging handle being located out here, it's now been moved back.
They did this, apparently, because they were concerned with the overall weight of the gun.
The FAMAS isn't a particularly heavy gun, but they wanted to lighten it as much as possible.
And so on the FAMAS you have a barrel sleeve
that comes out here so that you can free float the bipod.
Well, they didn't bother to put a bipod on it.
And they didn't like having all the hardware for the charging handle this far out on the gun.
So instead they move it back to here,
and they simply get rid of the free float tube on the barrel, judging it as unnecessary.
So we don't have all of the components in here, but this tube is a replacement.
This is substantially different from the original FAMAS,
which for example, does not have a threaded end cap on it.
Still original FAMAS sights though.
Now it's not visible on this specific rifle, but IM Metal also didn't really like
the lever-delayed system that the original FAMAS operates on.
From an outside perspective, what I would say looking at this is that
that lever-delay system requires a fairly substantial bit of precision engineering
and heat treating to make sure that the rifle operates safely and properly,
and ... has long-term durability.
And ... those processes are things that are not a big deal
for a well-established large enterprise like Saint-Étienne.
But they could potentially be a problem for what was still a small
sort of upstart company in Croatia, operating basically under wartime conditions.
And so it makes sense that they would want to replace this with a system
that's a little bit simpler to operate, like a short-stroke gas piston.
Again, this is still set up as a lever-delayed gun,
but the development process here that led to the early VHS rifles
would see them using a short-stroke (or long stroke depending on the gun) gas piston system.
And this particular example has just really been beaten around and abused.
And like these aren't actually FAMAS parts.
The ... plastic here is all IM Metal new production pieces for their own internal testing.
At this point I think you can really see the core kernel
of what's going to become the VHS rifles. At least you can see it in retrospect.
You have the bullpup layout, the FAMAS based ergonomics,
combined with a gas piston operating system.
So stick around, next time we're going to be taking a look
at the Israeli Tavor connection to this whole story.
So, a big thanks to HS Produkt for giving me access
to all of their cool prototypes to film. Hopefully you enjoyed the video.
Thanks for watching.