Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on forgottenweapons.com. I'm Ian McCollum and today
We are going to take a look at a
Chinese Type 97 rifle. This is specifically the Canadian
semi-automatic-only import version of the Type 97, which is the civilianized version - in 5.56 - of the Chinese Type 95 assault rifle.
This goes back originally well pretty much to
1987.
And in 1987 the Chinese started to develop, or did develop, a new cartridge. They wanted to replace the 7.62x39mm cartridge.
Interestingly while the Russians back in the 70s went from 7.62 to the new 5.45 cartridge, the Chinese never adopted 5.45.
Instead, in the 80s, they finally decided to find something new, and they came up with their own indigenous
5.8x42mm cartridge.
Now this cartridge was a little bit larger and a little bit hotter than either the 5.56 or the 5.45.
I know that case length of 42 millimeters doesn't sound longer - the case isn't, but the overall projectile length is slightly larger.
And they actually developed two different loadings of this:
A 64-grain bullet traveling at
3,050 feet per second, and that was intended for rifles and carbines. The also developed a 77-grain loading,
traveling at like 2,940 feet per second, and that was
specifically for light machine guns. Something where they wanted a little bit more weight in the bullet for a little bit longer effective range.
Now this cartridge was originally used in a modified version of the Type 81 rifle. Which is kind of an AK/SKS hybrid.
That was done while the Type 95 rifle was put in development.
So if we fast forward a bit what we get to is the Type 95 is
a completely new built from scratch rifle. It is a bullpup rifle as you can see; they made three different versions of it,
so this really is a family, in fact, in Chinese its designation is QBZ which stands for
Basically light weapons family. They have a carbine version; a little short thing, this, which is the rifle version, and they also had a squad automatic
version with a longer barrel and a bipod and
in fact these were first seen in
1997 when the Chinese re-occupied Honk Kong and basically took possession of Hong Kong back from the British. And there's some speculation that
the design was kind of rushed, right at the end, to make sure that they had it ready for this big
publicity event of the Chinese reoccupation. They wanted to have troops that were armed with something that looked
sexy and modern and new, and not AKs or SKS's.
And for that reason the gun actually went through an update in about 2012.
Or at least that's when the updated rifles were first seen in the Western media.
So the updated rifle is the type 95-1,
and this, this is the 97 and so instead of using this new
5.8 millimeter cartridge the 97 is made for commercial export, and it's made in standard 5.56 NATO using AR-15 magazines.
And this particular one, the- the Canadian export version (or the Canadian import version)
is kind of a hybrid between the Type 95 and the Type 95-1.
We'll take a look at some of the elements, and which are the old version and which are the new version, in a minute,
when we take this apart, but
in general what we have here is a reasonably effective rifle in all ways, but an exceptional rifle in no ways.
So with bullpup designs, usually what designers and what people are doing is trying to do is come up with the most effective, clever ways
to address the shortcomings of a bullpup design. And those shortcomings are basically
that the magazine
changes are going to be a little bit awkward and slow, because the magazine is back here instead of being in front of the trigger
guard.
The trigger pull, it has- certainly has the potential to be quite poor because you're pulling a lever here
and you're trying to actuate something back here, and so there's often a long flexible connecting
rod that results in a creepy or very heavy trigger
And safeties are- well safety is kind of tied to the trigger group.
But usually you'll get things like the Tavor where they're coming up with clever magazine or a bolt release options when you put in magazines,
or systems like the
FS2000 (or F2000), where they have forward ejections so that the guns are ambidextrous.
The Chinese really did none of that; they just put together a rifle that is
effectively functional - it's not going to be nearly as fast to operate, to do any of these standard operations,
as pretty much any of the other modern bullpups, but it's simple, it's cost-effective, and it works.
We will begin here with the basic functionality: the ejection port is on the right side of the gun it is non-reversible.
There is no way to swap this, so it's pretty much only shootable right-handed.
However the ejection port is fairly far forward on the receiver, and it does apparently kick cartridges pretty much forward
So if you can- if you are careful, and make sure to keep your face kind of back on the receiver,
you should be able to shoot this left-handed...
Maybe not not easily enough that you would want to do it all the time, but I think it would allow for the sort of
shoulder-changing in order to shoot the proper way around the corner
in a military context. That's not as good as having it actually reversible, but it's a big step close to that.
The magazine release is also on the right side, and so what you do when you're shooting,
This is- you take your firing hand back,
You're going to kind of beer can grip the magazine, hit the release with your thumb, and you can pull the magazine out.
This does lock open on an empty magazine,
But in order to drop the magazine [bolt], you have to grab the charging handle and just pull it back slightly
The safety selector is located at the very rear of the receiver, and on the left side;
so this is pulled up tight in against the shooters body,
and it's this rotary switch: safe here, fire here. On the military versions, It's safe, and then there's typically a
single/semi-auto function that's vertical, and then you have a full auto version in the back (or setting).
And some of them also have three round burst settings on them, depending on the model.
Now the selector is one of the things that the Chinese updated on the type 95-1; and they moved it from here
up to here, above the trigger.
Which is a much more ergonomic place for it - they recognized that that was a problem,
and so they moved it. That has not been done on these
Canadian-import civilian guns.
No idea why; might just be a manufacturing thing.
However, they did make one of the changes that was made to the 95-1 on the early Chinese guns - there's actually a secondary vertical
front grip located right here,
integrated into the trigger guard and on the 95-1 they got rid of that.
And that updated version of the stock and handguard is what's on the Canadian export guns, the Type 97 NSRs.
So you do get that upgrade, but you don't get this upgrade.
There is an adjustable gas regulator on the gun, which is kind of cool.
We have a one, a zero and a two setting. Zero, in the center, is cut off - that's no gas and that's for grenade launching.
As you can see the flash hider here is the proper diameter and has gas-sealing rings for using rifle grenades.
And then the 1 and 2 settings are normal and
dirty or adverse.
And they have a kind of cool setting here. If you're thinking about it,
if you were shooting this a bunch and the gun was dirty,
and you realized that it wasn't working right and you had to adjust it,
There's a good chance the gun would be hot.
And if the gun's hot, this gas selector plug is going to be really hot, so they actually
built in a little setting here so that you use a cartridge to push down on that,
and then rotate the selector in two different positions.
Now what I find kind of interesting about this is: this is a dummy 5.56 round, which is too big.
This- this tool was designed for a
5.8x42mm cartridge case and clearly they didn't bother to change that for the export guns;
it's close enough that you can make it work with a 5.56, and this isn't particularly important for a
semi-auto civilian gun anyway, so they just left it as is.
The front sight is basically an AK sight. It is both windage and elevation adjustable on the front sight post.
And then the rear sight is actually kind of vaguely HK-like (sort of) It's- you have four different options,
ranges from 100 out to 500 meters, and these are aperture rear sights - with the exception of -
let's see if we can find it here - that one. I think that's supposed to be like a really close range zero.
Not really sure how this one's supposed to work. I guess you're supposed to line up this post with the front sight...
In which case the front sight would disappear?
All of these are kind of difficult to use.
The apertures kind of tend to just fuzz out and disappear on you...
Which is sort of what an aperture is supposed to do, but not quite. I'm curious to see how this is to actually shoot.
All right enough of that. Let's take this thing apart so you can see the gas piston system and the rotating bolt system.
So the disassembly procedure begins of course by checking it, close the bolt,
set the selector to fire
drop the trigger, or drop the striker/hammer thing
then set the selector to safe. And what that's going to do is actually lock the striker assembly in the action and prevent it
from trying to fly out when we take the stock off.
Next we're going to push out this pin.
That comes out, and then now it's still under a little bit of tension, but then we can take this rear top cover assembly off.
That leaves us in this position,
and what we have now is the bolt carrier assembly and the- what is actually a linear hammer assembly,
so we can
hold on to this - we'll pull it forward a little bit, put the selector on fire,
and then we can slide this off the back of the action.
You can pull out
the mainspring and then
the bolt assembly comes out the back.
Next up we have this second pin. Which has a little wire keeper, but it is not a captive pin.
So push that pin out,
so then I can pull the upper handguard off. I'm gonna slide it back, and then it lifts off,
and then I can take the lower handguard off. It's going to slide forward -
kinda wiggle it...
we have a - there we go.
This connector bar has to kind of detach from the trigger to do this,
so now we have the lower handguard off.
And then lastly we can disassemble the gas system by pushing this in. We're going to rotate it all the way down flat,
which you cannot do
when the handguard is in place, and then we can pull out the gas plug,
the gas piston, and its return spring.
So there's the whole thing completely field-stripped. We have an interesting combination of some good heavy-duty steel parts like this entire assembly,
But then all the furniture is plastic,
and it's kind of flimsy-feeling plastic to be honest, the FAMAS - felt the same sort of
kind of flimsiness on some of the plastic hardware.
But presumably it's reasonably rugged and durable, despite being a little bendy when it's taken off of the gun.
I think the most interesting part of this, mechanically, is actually the firing system, which is that striker or hammer.
So we will start there,
however,
a couple things to point out first.
This is actually kind of like an HK style of bolt carrier where this tube isn't a gas piston itself.
This is basically just a charging handle tube like you have on an HK.
The gas piston that runs the gun actually
impinged on this thing up here, and just gives it a smack and pushes this entire assembly backwards to cycle.
The bolt is very AK-like,
which makes sense, given the extensive Chinese use of the AK. It is going to go into this carrier -
this extra lug sits in there - and then there's your rotating bolt.
That's locked that's unlocked, that's pretty simple and straightforward.
And notice that we have a floating firing pin here.
So there's the firing pin sticking out, and then I can push on it,
and it's going to protrude out the front. On an AK, that would get hit by the hammer to fire.
If we look at the back of this receiver though. There's no hammer in there.
We just have these two
sears operating. One goes up, one goes down.
So what we have in lieu of a hammer
is this piece, and this acts as a hammer. This surface right here is going to hit the back of
the bolt - it's going to hit on the firing pin, and fire the gun. So this thing nests inside the rear of the bolt carrier.
And you can see, when this comes back, the striker is going to hit it right there.
This is actually how a lot of
semi-automatic machine gun conversions are done in the US, when guns meant to be firing from an open bolt,
And there's no easy way to add a hammer, you do a system like this.
It's done here because there's no easy way to add a hammer because you're trying to transmit....
I guess actually they could have used a hammer. But at any rate they opted not to,
and so we have this guy, it's going to slide on the receiver
Just like this.
So when the gun has fired it's going to look like this
and then when everything cycles,
these two are going to come back together. The bolt carrier is going to push the striker assembly,
and there's a second recoil spring here that I've left out that would be operating on the bolt carrier.
You can see that the bolt has unlocked. It's traveling on these two rails and receiver. It's going to come back to about here,
It's cleared the ejector,
So that's going to kick the empty case out
And then it will have lost its momentum - by the way you can see this rod up here is acting as a guide
for the front of the charging handle tube.
Anyway, this is going to come back,
and I'm putting pressure on this spring, just like the gun would -
that goes forward, but this is held backwards by
The sear down here, and it's only when you pull the trigger -
like that - it releases this sear, which flies forward, hits the firing pin, and fires the cartridge.
At that point gas is going to come up through the barrel here into this gas cylinder.
It's going to hit the piston, the piston is going to go backwards to there,
That's its full travel.
The bottom of the piston or the major- the diameter of the piston here is going to hit the bottom of the charging handle tube.
It's going to slide back, this thing is just a guide rod to keep it in track,
and the whole system repeats itself.
A couple other interesting features to look at on the rear top cover here.
We have this thing: this is your recoil buffer, so when the bolt comes back, it's going to
hit this, which pivots this whole thing forward. When that goes forward, this plug is going to hit the back of the receiver -
It's a little hard to show you, but it's basically going to hit this surface right here
and this plug has a very tight
spring in it, and that's going to absorb some of the energy of the bolt impacting on the back of the receiver.
The trigger itself is nothing more than a lever, there is a little round plug
on the left side of it, right there,
that goes forward when I pull the trigger.
This is the trigger bar which hooks around that little round plug, so when you pull the trigger,
this slides forward just slightly,
which releases the sear,
and allows the striker to go forward.
By the way, when people talk about things like long connecting bars that make for really terrible triggers,
this is exactly the sort of thing they're talking about. The trigger in this rifle is really pretty darn poor.
It's not very heavy, but it's very long and very mushy, and there's no obvious [break]. There's no two-stage setup to it,
It's a very long, single-stage, gooey trigger pull.
There is an optics mounting platform right here attached to the rear sight block. It's obviously not picatinny rail.
Presumably this is for a proprietary Chinese military optic and on the civilian export guns, they just left the same rail in place.
To my knowledge nobody has ever exported any- any Chinese optics that fit this. Maybe they will at some point,
but it would appear the Chinese decided that
they can do fine with optics of their own design, and they don't need to standardize on the same sorts of
platforms/mounting systems that
Europe and the United States are using.
One other thing I should point out, I suppose, is:
On the type 97 the export guns they're in 5.56 with AR magazines - which means they have to have a magazine catch
right up in this area, and you need a long magazine well to properly hold the magazine in place. The Chinese version, the Type 95,
uses this 5.8 millimeter cartridge, and it is in an AK style of magazine: nose in and rock back.
So the Chinese ones don't have this - basically - magazine tower on the bottom of the gun, so they look a little bit different.
Now that you know how this thing works,
now we are going to go ahead and take this out to the range and do some shooting with it! So that should be interesting.
I'm looking forward to getting some trigger time on it, that video will be coming tomorrow.
So if you're interested in these guns stay tuned, stick around, and we will have that coming up tomorrow.
I do want to thank Daniel and Colin for allowing me/coordinating access
so I can get my hands on one of these and take it out shooting. Thank you guys very much, appreciate that.
I was really looking forward to getting a chance to inspect and shoot one of these anyway.
Thank you all for watching, stick around for the shooting tomorrow!