[ IM Metal AK Bullpup Conversion ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today in
Karlovac, Croatia, a little south of Zagreb
at the HS Produkt factory to take a look at
some of the really cool prototype firearms
that they developed before they had the
really well-known big hits that are available now.
Guns like the XD pistol series and the VHS-2 rifles.
So HS Produkt actually began as a company called IM Metal.
It was formed in 1990 in Croatia to meet the growing demand
for basically metal fabricated goods in Croatia.
Croatia was starting to move away from the rest of Yugoslavia,
and well, there was a lot of demand for domestic production of various things.
When Croatia actually declared independence and the Homeland War began,
there was clearly a need for domestic small arms production
to equip the Croatian military, and that's where this comes in.
The two guys who founded IM Metal were both engineers.
They didn't have any specific firearms experience prior,
but they of course wanted to respond to the need ... to arm the Croatian military.
And so their very first project was this, and this is in fact the only example of it ever made.
It was an idea to take an existing
Serbian Zastava M70 AK and convert it into a bullpup configuration.
In particular they wanted to get better accuracy by having a longer barrel.
... That may or may not work that way, but that was the initial expectation, that was the plan.
And this would be the first in a long line of bullpup rifles that HS Produkt has produced,
they really like the bullpup concept.
And it's worth considering that while bullpups have fallen a bit out of favour today,
in the 1990s that was the form of rifle that was equipping
a lot of the major European military powers.
So you of course had the French still using the FAMAS.
You had the British using the L85, which ... had basically just recently been ... introduced.
You had the Austrians using the Steyr AUG.
Bullpups were a hot thing, and so it makes sense that they would look to a bullpup configuration.
Anyway, this was a one-off product that was intended to be developed for the Croatian army.
It was in fact developed with the ... involvement, guidance, feedback of the Croatian army.
But it never quite got far enough to go into production before the war ended.
So, before we talk more about what happened to it,
let's take a look at how this bullpup configuration of an AK has been done.
There are a lot of different ways that people have attempted this,
and this one's a bit different than the others.
Alright, let's start with the receiver, because things are getting funky right from the beginning.
This looks like it's a milled receiver, but it's actually not.
If we look here inside, these are rivets.
This is actually a trunnion for a stamped-receiver gun.
... They have made a set of ... basically milled side plates to build a stamped receiver
without having to actually get any stamping tooling.
And that's because this is a very first prototype, and it's a lot more cost effective
to just mill a one-off of this than to build a stamping die for one gun.
You can see all the tooling marks here where they milled this flat,
but essentially made it to duplicate a stamped receiver.
That's why it's got a strengthening rivet right here
which these giant flat plates really don't actually technically need.
Now at the back we have a selector lever, so this is between full-auto and semi-auto.
The original safety dust cover has been left off because it's really not necessary here.
You can also see that the top cover has been manufactured specifically for this gun
because it does not have a slot in it back here for the charging handle to reciprocate
because the charging handle has been milled off.
This was done because the charging handle has been relocated up forward,
and it's better not to have a reciprocating thing sticking out the side of the gun.
You can sort of actually shoot this left handed more or less.
The length of pull from the butt plate up to the ejection port is really pretty long,
and you can hold your face back here instead of putting it up on the receiver cover.
And I think you could actually shoot this left handed.
I don't know that I want to be the first person to try it,
but I suspect it can be done without too much problem.
I believe this was originally developed to use a somewhat shortened magazine,
because a standard AK magazine doesn't quite fit.
You have to tilt it forward to lock in like this, and the pistol grip gets in the way.
So if the magazine were cut here, say a 20 rounder, I think that would fit OK.
Remember this is a literal very first prototype.
And this is the sort of thing, it's like, "Well, we'll put a short magazine in it, and we'll figure that out later."
The magazine catch is totally standard AK pattern.
Moving a bit forward we have an AK rear sight block.
The rear sight is not in this one, but it would have been a standard AK rear sight.
They have made their own wooden copy of a Yugoslav M70 pistol grip, which is pretty cool.
That's, I think a lot of people would argue, the best ... standard AK pistol grip design.
We have a safety lever here. That is ... the fire position,
and rotating it all the way forward is the safe position.
And then the way the trigger actually works
is when you pull the trigger back it pulls this bar forward.
Which pulls this whole lug forward.
Which translates into pulling this bar forward.
And when we take this apart in a moment, we'll follow that back into the receiver.
Up here we have basically standard AK configuration parts.
This is still a long-stroke gas piston,
although the gas tube and the operating rod inside it are longer than a standard AK.
The barrel has been lengthened to 600mm ... (tighten that up), which is 23.6 inches.
The charging handle has been moved to here, and it is a folding charging handle.
So it's non-reciprocating.
And the way this works is this little lug right back here.
When you pull the charging handle down, that lug locks in front of
that surface on the operating rod.
And then you can cycle the whole thing back, like so.
And then when you're not using it you just flip that forward.
And when the op rod cycles when you fire, it's not going to move the [handle].
We have a very simple wooden handguard here,
you need a place to hold onto this thing and you don't want to be grabbing the barrel.
Although I would point out that the gas tube is also going to get really hot,
and this handguard is a little bit on the small side.
You don't want to accidentally grab that after you've done a bunch of shooting.
The Zastava M70s were basically all equipped with grenade launcher cut offs
and grenade launcher sights, and those have been duplicated here.
So this ... is a new-manufactured gas block, not an original M70 one,
but it's been set up with a grenade launcher sight and cut off.
Croatia captured a substantial number of rifle grenades
from the Serbian forces over the course of the Independence War.
There are your two gas vent holes in the gas tube.
And then we have a simple pinned on front sight block, and slant brake.
Now disassembly is going to work just like a standard AK,
so I'm going to push the recoil spring tab in.
There we go, lift off the top cover there.
And if we look at this you can see ... really not the world's greatest welding in there.
But the idea here was they bent this part of it over a mandrel,
and then welded on the ... back plate.
A simpler way to do this than the fabrication you would set up for mass production.
And then they did polish it down nicely on the outside where it matters more.
Now we can take the recoil spring out, that's a standard AK recoil spring.
And then I'm going to re-cock the hammer there to get it out of the way.
And then we can take out the bolt and piston.
This is a little tricky to finagle out.
There we go, I'm just going to pull the bolt out completely,
then I can pivot the gas piston.
So you can see that this is a lot longer than a standard AK gas piston.
And that's just so that the gas block
can be the same distance from the muzzle while the barrel is longer.
Looking back here at the fire control group you can see that this ... is sort of basically AK,
but all the parts have been newly manufactured from scratch.
And there's been a fair amount of modification, and in this case it looks like peening of the hammer
because it may not have been totally heat treated as a first attempt prototype.
Anyway, our last bit of disassembly is to remove the gas tube.
We have a standard sort of AK gas tube retention lever.
There we go, and I can lift that up.
The gas tube has our charging handle on it.
So there's the mechanism at the front of the gun,
we've got the pistol grip attached through this collar around the barrel.
Also locked in place around the rear sight block.
And then there is the gas block.
As far as the operating parts, the bolt and the bolt carrier
are standard AK without any apparent modifications.
The gas piston is newly made.
But the gas piston is a separate part from the bolt carrier on an AK.
So this ... has just had a new piston riveted in place.
Note that it does have some wobble here, that is intentional.
that's a very deliberate, necessary part of the AK design.
And that was properly duplicated on this rifle.
I think this is a really cool example of a couple of engineers' very first attempt at a firearm.
And as we continue this series on HS's rifles,
you'll see the progression from basically inexperienced novice.
Someone who's got the engineering design background and skills,
but not the direct firearms experience.
You'll see the progression from novice designs like this,
through to really good matured concepts like the VHS-2.
So I'm excited to continue this series and show you the whole line of progression.
As for this one in particular, it's really quite clear
that this was not going to be a successful development for the Croatian army.
Even if it had gone far enough in development to be put into at least limited production,
this was never going to be a satisfactory rifle, in my mind.
But that is how ... firearms design companies always start.
The first project is never particularly successful because, well, it requires experience
to do firearms design right and you have to gain that experience somewhere.
And it comes from making early designs that are not so great.
So stay tuned, ... this will be an ongoing intermittent series.
And the next one is going to be a question of,
"Well if not this, what's a better thing that we can take a look at?"
So stick around for that, hopefully you enjoyed the video.
A big thanks to HS Produkt for providing me access to all of these cool prototypes.
And thanks to you for watching.