Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I'm here today at the James D. Julia Auction House
up in Maine, where it's a bit cold outside.
And we are taking a look at today one of the guns that they're going to be selling in their upcoming
... April of 2017 Firearms Auction.
Now this is a rifle that I have done some video on in the past, but I've never had the chance to shoot.
And I thought well I kind of want to try shooting one, and I bet you'd like to enjoy seeing one fire.
This is a Czech ZH-29, it was ... one of the early military trials semi-auto rifles,
and these were tested by a ton of different countries, including the United States.
And it's interesting, the role that this played probably primarily in the United States was
to be an example of a functional, reliable, decent self-loading rifle that was actually under 10 pounds.
So until this was brought into the US test trials, everything had been a lot heavier.
And it had gotten to the point where the Ordnance Department was almost willing to accept that you just
couldn't do a semi-auto rifle under 10 pounds. And then they got their hands on a ZH-29.
Now several references say that, or suggest, that this was a harsh and brutal recoiling gun to shoot,
probably because of that light weight. And I'm curious if that's actually the case.
So we have this one here and I have a magazine, a 5 round mag for this one,
and we're going to do a little bit of shooting and see how it actually feels
Now, when you lock the bolt open on a ZH-29 there is no bolt release, so you actually pull the trigger
to drop the bolt. And then the second trigger pull will fire.
This mag is not happy with this ammunition.
Ha-haa, and of course that's the one that's just fed properly.
Alright, so how does that feel? Yeah, it's a little bit hefty.
It is an 8mm Mauser semi-auto rifle, so it does have some kick.
What's interesting to me is that it almost is kicking the cheek a little more than it's kicking the shoulder.
The recoil impulse just going straight backwards is not bad,
and I would say totally comparable to anything else of this type. ...
Shooting it, there's just a little bit of an impact on the cheek though, and that might just be stock design.
Well as you can see in the high-speed, the problem wasn't actually one with the magazine.
It was that the ammunition and the gas port setting we were using didn't quite fully cycle the rifle.
The bolt would come back far enough to eject, but not quite far enough to feed the next round.
That shouldn't be a big deal to fix, but it's something we didn't have time
to address in the short period we had with this rifle out today.
At any rate on the question of recoil,
I think the reports of this being a particularly harsh recoiling gun are overblown.
It's a little less pleasant than some, but I think that's largely the stock design
and not anything fundamental to the mechanism. So I found it a pretty interesting gun to shoot.
... Actually the most curious thing about it to me was the sights.
Now if you've seen some of my previous videos on the ZH-29, you may recall that the barrel is not parallel to the receiver.
This has a side tilting bolt, and in order to have the ... face of the barrel exactly perpendicular to the breech face,
the barrel is actually tilted just a couple degrees off to the right.
So ... these sights are also offset. The rear sight's slightly out to the left, the front sight's slightly off to the right.
What I found is when I brought the gun up to shoot I would naturally line my eye up on the receiver,
and then notice that the front sight and the rear sight weren't lined up,
and then have to adjust consciously to get a sight picture.
And while I knew that the sights were not square to the receiver,
I didn't realise that I was naturally going to line up with the receiver, and not the sights or the barrel.
So it was ... an interesting and unexpected little tiny effect shooting this rifle.
If you'd like to try that out yourself, ... I think this would be a really good shooter grade ZH-29 for someone.
It doesn't have the, you know, the immaculate finish that some of them do
that really appeals to the collectors, and brings the really high prices.
This is a nice, mechanically intact shooter ZH-29. I think it would be
a great gun for someone who's looking for that experience.
If that's you, take a look at the description text below. You'll find a link there to Julia's catalogue page on the rifle.
You can see their photos and description and provenance.
And if you're interested you can come up here and participate in the auction live, or place a bid through their website.
Thanks for watching.