Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today we have an opportunity to take
a look at a pair of very rare French military sniper rifles.
This is an FR-G1 and an FR-G2. Now these are very similar
to the FR-F1 and 2 series rifles, but of course distinct.
So the story behind these is of course when the French went to develop
the FR-F series of sniper rifles they started with the MAS 36 receiver.
And the intention was like, "We want a MAS 36 but turned into
a proper precision sniper's rifle.
We want a bipod on it, we want a pistol grip on it,
we want it super-duper accurate, like, true sniper rifle accuracy."
And they found that the MAS 36 receiver flexed a little too much for that level of accuracy.
And so they decided to abandon the idea of using a straight up MAS 36 receiver
and instead designed a receiver that was basically, fundamentally the same type but not interchangeable.
It was a stronger receiver, it didn't have the thumb cut out for stripper clips, that sort of thing.
And that's what became the FR-F1 and then the FR-F2.
Now when those were manufactured, you know,
... not contracts were sent out, but, you know, all the branches of the military were contacted like,
"OK, hey, we're making some sniper rifles, do you want any?"
This was the Saint-Étienne Arsenal, and the Gendarmerie said, "Yep, we want some."
And the Army definitely wanted a bunch, and the Navy wanted some and the Air Force said,
"You know what? Really we're fine, like we don't really need that."
OK, the FR-F series gets produced.
Production then shuts down, they make about 6,000 of these FR-F1 rifles.
And the problem was then later the Air Force came back and said, "You know what? Actually we do want some of those."
But by the time they did production had shut down, ... it wasn't economical to restart production
for the rather small number of sniper rifles that the Air Force wanted.
So the Air Force was kind of stuck on their own.
And what they did then was actually go back and use standard MAS 36 receivers to make a gun roughly equivalent to the FR-F1.
And so ... the design process for this started in 1991, and the rifles actually went into production in 1994.
So really quite recently compared to the FR series which was manufactured ... starting in 1968.
Now there were three versions that were planned. There was the FR-G1, which is this guy, which has a fixed bipod
basically patterned after the FR-F1. There was then the FR-G2, which is this guy, which has
the improved bipod and a few other tweaks from the FR-F2.
And then there was originally going to be an FR-G3 chambered for 7mm-08 for commercial sale to the civilian market.
Those never actually got produced, so the G1 and the G2 are the rifles that did get produced.
And we're talking only really a couple hundred of each.
Now there are a few ... substantial and significant differences between these and the FR-Fs.
So let's take a closer look, let me show you these various couple of differences up close.
So we can start by looking at the markings here.
These rifles were originally MAS 36 receivers,
so they would have said MAS Model 1936 and a serial number here.
And there is this relief panel, you can see where they milled away all of those markings
and replaced them with FR-G1 and a calibre. Now both the G1 and the G2 were made from the beginning in 7.62 NATO.
Of course, this is the 1990s, the 7.5 French cartridge is well obsolete at this point,
and 7.62 NATO is the obvious cartridge for them.
The serial numbers remain ... vertically on the back of the receiver, like they are on the FR-F rifles.
It can be a little difficult to distinguish between an FR-F and an FR-G in a lot of pictures.
... One of the easiest distinguishing features is to look for this cutout. This was the thumb
relief for stripper clips in the MAS 36. Of course this is a MAS 36 receiver so that relief cut remains in there.
We can also look underneath here
and you can see that this is actually where the original floor plate for the MAS 36 would have sat.
And that leads to another problem, which was magazines.
So when the FR-F1 was designed, they wanted it to have a detachable box magazine (and this was still in 7.5 French).
Well, you have a bit of a problem if you're going to use a MAS 36 receiver that was designed to have
just a floor plate and follower. You didn't need magazine walls, because you had the receiver walls to act in that role.
So when they designed the box magazine they had to make it a little bit bigger than would actually fit in
a MAS 36 receiver. So FR-F magazines will not fit in the FR-G.
Instead, when the Air Force decided that it wanted its own sniper rifles and had to build them out of MAS 36s,
they had to design a new magazine. Now because these were in 7.62 NATO,
which is a 3mm shorter case, they were able to make the FR-G magazine just a hair shorter
which allowed it to fit in the MAS 36 receiver.
The feed lips are a little bit different here, not a tremendous difference,
but you can see that they come all the way back on the FR-F, and they're cut a little bit shorter on the FR-Gs.
The easiest way to distinguish between these
(by the way, this thing is just a rubber pad that sits on it, in fact I think that's an FR-F base pad, we can pop that off),
the easiest way to distinguish an FR-G magazine is that it has one over-travel stop, where the FR-F magazines have two.
So this
will fit nicely in there. That's a 10 round magazine by the way.
The stock assembly on the FR-G is identical to the FR-F. So it's the same pistol grip, same wood stock.
There are two interchangeable cheek risers. There's interchangeable inserts for length of pull.
The same style of trigger. And these do have a manual safety on them. Although it is a very simple one,
it just simply blocks the trigger from going backwards. And that's the same as the FR-F series.
And it was actually the very first French bolt action rifle to have a manual safety on it.
On the G1 we have a wooden handguard out here with a pair of bipod legs.
These bipod legs are not adjustable. They don't tilt, they don't pan. You do have adjustable length
legs, if I unscrew that.
This is supposed to be spring-loaded, this one is a little grindy, it needs some oil on it.
But you can adjust the length of the leg like that.
However, where the FR-F1 had iron sights on the barrel, the FR-G does not.
So you have a wood handguard here that's solid all the way across the top.
In addition, the FR-F had its own proprietary scope mount.
The FR-Gs they put this rail just across the top of the receiver, and that fits a kind of an old style STANAG scope mount.
The bolt handles. Again, because this is a standard MAS 36, the bolt handles were changed up a bit.
And they have the same sort of bend, they've just been run vertically.
Where the MAS 36 originally had a forward bent bolt, the FR-Gs were given just straight vertical bent bolts.
A little simpler to operate. Magazine release is the same as on the FR-Fs.
And we have the same style of flash hider out here. This is a four groove barrel with a four ... slot flash hider.
The reason for this two-piece deal here is they found best accuracy when the slots in the flash hider lined up with
the rifling in the barrel. So you can adjust the flash hider to line it up precisely with the rifling.
There's a specific tool for that, and then you tighten down this, basically locking nut, to get it in the proper position.
You can also adjust how far in or out the flash hider is set to tune it for best possible accuracy.
The main difference with the G2 over the G1 is that it has the same bipod as the FR-F2.
So instead of being fixed into the handguard, this bipod is mounted on a sleeve that goes over the very back of the barrel.
And the rifle actually hangs below the bipod and it's able to move in two axes.
So I can rotate the rifle like so, I can also pivot it like so.
(I don't want to hit my camera tripod.) But we've got a decent range of motion in this.
You do still have the ability to extend the bipod legs.
So push that in and we can retract it.
We have some rubber bipod feet on there now, instead of the original just metal foot.
You can see that there is a cutout in the handguard to allow space for the bipod to move.
But there are still no iron sights on the barrel.
And the bipod now instead of just being friction locked, actually has a locking button.
So I push this in, and then I can fold the bipod legs up. Do that on each side and they lock in position like that.
The rest of the gun is the same. We still have the same
STANAG type rail across the top of the receiver, same pistol grip, same safety.
The same adjustable style of stock.
So the FR-F1 in 7.5 French had four groove barrels, all of them.
In 7.62 NATO with the FR-F2s, they had both three groove and four groove,
so they made flash hiders to match with this whole concept of lining up the flash hider with the rifling lands and grooves.
You can note that this is an original MAS barrel, and it is marked with what I think is just a lot number there.
As you can see.
So there you have the FR-G1 and FR-G2.
Well needless to say, these are quite rare guns today.
In military service they have been replaced by the HK417,
and the FR-F2 is well on its way to being replaced by the 417 as well. [Since filming the FN SCAR was chosen to replace the FR-F2.]
So very few of these survived and a big thank you to the private collector who
allowed me to show you his FR-G1 and G2. Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
Thanks for watching.