Hey guys. Thanks for tuning in to another video on forgottenweapons.com I'm Ian, and I'm here today at the Rock Island Auction Company
We're taking a look at some guns that they're going to be selling in their February of 2017 Regional Auction
Before we talk about this one. I just [want] to set the stage a little bit
its
1967 so that means James Bond is still being played by Sean Connery
You can go buy yourself a brand new nice Chevy for 3,200 bucks
Billboard hit of the year was Aretha Franklin's "Respect"
The 9-1-1 system does not yet exist
That chevy that you just bought for 3,200 bucks, there is not literally a single jurisdiction in the world that requires you to wear seatbelts
The BBC has not yet begun broadcasting in color and of course we haven't landed on the moon yet the state of
Mobile phone technology is
Non-existent because they haven't yet invented the handheld calculator.
That's the scene when this specific rifle was manufactured
1967 I think a lot of people well intellectually we know that yes, the
Ar-15 dates to the Vietnam war but I think a lot of people don't really think about just how old that is in
terms of the technology that we have in our daily lives today, the thing is old in fact
this thing is specifically fifty years old as of today (this particular one)
Colt started making and selling SP-1s in
1964 and '63 if you want to nitpick but really 64 and
US Federal Law
Specifies that any firearm that is 50 years old or older
qualifies as a curio and/or relic well that started including AR-15 just a couple years ago and
by now in 2017 there's actually like tens of thousands of
Colt SP1 rifles that qualify as CNR guns
Let's take a closer
look at this one
And I'll show you some of the features of it that you don't normally see in today's Modern ARs
So continuing the tradition of many Arsenal's and gun companies throughout the- world and throughout history
Colt opted to make a civilian version of the military M16 rifles
They were producing because hey they've got everything tooled up to make it
so if you can make a couple little tweaks and sell it on the open market as well as the military why not?
Now basically the little tweak on the
AR-15 was to get rid of the M16s full-auto capability you'll notice here the selector is to position only and
Does not go to full auto and there are some changes made internally to the gun to prevent it from being easily
Changed into a full auto M16 type rifle
but beyond that, this was basically the exact same as the standard M16 of the period
in fact, it's interesting that in some ways these are more legitimately retro than
actual period M16s, because when the military would make little minor changes to the parts like
Little things like changing the exact casting pattern of the front sight assembly
Where Colt might have already manufactured a whole bunch of those parts they needed new parts for the military contract guns?
But they were able to take these old parts that we're still perfectly usable and they put them into Civilian production
So here's our prancing pony on the side
Caliber .223 model is SP1 and the serial number on this is SP
09088
now to put this in proper context
this is a 1967 production gun and
1968 Began with serial number ten thousand seven hundred and fifty
So by the very end of sixty seven there were 10,749
SP1 rifles sold on the commercial market or manufactured for the commercial market and as of
2017 every single one of those is a Curio and Relic
Moving over here. You can see the original manufacturer marks: Colt patent Firearms, Hartford, Connecticut
Safety Selector, they're safe and fire
Now if we look at the other side things get a little bit more complicated because the SP1
never had a forward assist like this and
It also wouldn't have had a chrome lined bolt carrier for some of the very very early guns
however
One of the other indicative features of the SP1 lower is it what's called a no fence lower
There's nothing protecting the magazine release button
one of the issues that the military would
Decide was needed to be changed was that it was a little too easy to bump the button and eject the magazine
So they retrofitted they changed the design of the lower and added some fencing
Built-up around the magazine release to help prevent things like gear from accidentally depressing the button
But the commercial SP1 lowers never had that. Colt also replaced the front pin with a screw
Umm, ehh, because, I suppose...
Now, what we can tell happened
That resulted in this
In fact it is the- original
early "teardrop style" of forward assist
is that someone actually put
a surplus M16a1 upper on this gun
It's a little hard to see because it's pretty small there, but the front of the barrel is marked SAK
MP-B
And that indicates that this is a barrel made by Seiko defense that it is magnetic particle inspected and the Bore B
Is chrome-lined so these were actually replacement barrels sold to the US government.
That barrel was at some point assembled onto an M16A1 in government property
y'know, someone shot out their bore or otherwise damaged it and it needed to be replaced that machine gun was then later surplus
Its lower receiver destroyed and the rest of the parts sold as a part kit
And someone then bought that part kit and stuck this
M16a1 Surplus upper onto their FP1 lower which makes it makes this a pretty good replica of an
M16a1
machine gun or a service rifle a couple other things to mention here the chrome-lined bolt carrier is a
Feature that was only used very early [the] M16A1s in military production did not have
Chrome bolt carriers
So whoever had this rifle at some point found one and put it in the gun while it wouldn't have been in new production M16a1
Rifles it. The bolt carriers were still floating around and it wouldn't have been completely out of place to find one in an A1
now you'll also notice that there are these teeth in the side of the bolt carrier and
those are for use with the forward assist which allows you to just slowly cam the bolt all the way forward into position and
What's interesting is the SP1 rifles didn't have this forward assist
But they almost always did have bolt carriers with those teeth
the reason for that is the army decided that it wanted the forward assist as of
1967 so Colt was producing bolt carriers with these cuts and
They didn't they didn't cause any problems by being there
So there was no reason for Colt to make a separate toothless version for the civilian production guns
so a lot of people will look at that and say well the bolt carrier must be wrong if the bolt carrier has teeth but
The receiver doesn't well in fact that's not the case. They put those bolt carriers in all of the rifles
It's also interesting
I think to point out that the forward assist is not a particularly necessary feature on an M16 or an AR-15
in fact the Air Force never did want them and
this is part of the reason that early on you have two different model numbers and
designations for Air Force rifles and Army rifles because the Air Force rifles never had forward assists
It was just the army that insisted on them. Stoner himself was not a big fan of the concept
The objection to the forward assist is basically that if you are ever in a position where you have to use the forward assist
to pound the bolt carrier into battery you're far more likely to be making your problem worse than to fixing it and
If the bolt carrier doesn't go home on- It's just on the power of the mainspring you really need to find the root problem
That's causing that and fix it rather than just force the bolt carrier into position
One more interesting element we can actually look at is the buffer, so if I pop the pin on this
And break the rifle open
now the mainspring for an AR-15 is in the buttstock and
Today we have a spring plunger here that has weights in it, and it acts as a buffer
And it does to simply add mass to the bolt carrier
To delay the opening of the action to slow it down a little bit and slowing you down like that helps prevent
Extraction problems because it allows the pressure in the chamber
To drop a little bit more before the bolt carrier starts moving backward and pulling the case out of the chamber
some of the very early
AR-15s had this very early style of buffer which has no weights in it at all
It's basically just a large diameter guide, Rod
[this] is called an Edge water buffer
And this is one of the things that was replaced to help fix some of the initial problems with the M16
that were there were actually due to a change in Powder composition
So they changed this out added weights to the buffer and that helped resolve those the kind of famous
legendary infamous actually
M16 reliability issues at the beginning of the Vietnam war
So pretty cool that this particular rifle has one of these early
So called buffers. That's that's a feature that someone went. I think to some lengths to find and [install] and it's really neat to have
One other common misconception a lot of people think that all the Vietnam, Era Ars or M16
Had those early three-prong Flash hiders
And that's actually not really the case of the military with the m16a1 standardized on this early birdcage
Flash hider which by the way the early version has slots all the way around the circumference the later version would
Leave the bottom solid and attempt to have less dust signature, but they adopted this birdcage in
1967 so quite a lot of the Vietnam war heard with this as the standard Flash hider
So the Curio and relic license in under US law was developed to give
Basically old-fashioned firearms collectors a simpler way to transfer guns say instead of having to go through the regular
Background check process instead they do a background check on you and issue you [a] federal firearms [license] which allows you to receive firearms
Directly in the mail when you purchase them it's a really handy kind of like
To have although I will warn you if you're thinking about getting one
They get really expensive the license is 30 bucks for three years and then you end up draining your entire bank account buying
Curio & Relic firearms because it becomes so convenient well well a lot of people with these licenses
Don't really think about the fact that a lot of our modern firearms are getting to the point where they're old enough that they actually
qualify as C & R guns, so
this particular one if
You decide to buy it here at Rock Island in this upcoming auction if you have a Curio & Relic License
Ship straight to you instead of going through a separate dealer
So pretty cool if you're interested in doing that take a look at the link in the description text below this video
That will take you to Rock Island's catalog page for this rifle
and you can take a look at their
Description and pictures, and price estimate and if you decide that you want to place a bid on it, you can do that
Right through the website as well, thanks for watching
Y'know, when this rifle was made, Chris Costa hadn't even been born yet. *pew noises*