Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today we're taking a look
at a remarkably modern Chinese service pistol.
This is the CF98, and this is the export version
which is in 9x19 Parabellum.
The Chinese also manufacture this in their
proprietary 5.8x21mm cartridge.
In that cartridge, this thing holds 20 rounds
in the magazine, in 9mm Parabellum
it holds 15, ... still not exactly a slouch.
Now, there ... are a number of interesting unusual features to this thing.
Starting with the fact that it's a rotating-barrel locking system pistol.
... That goes all the way back to the 1910s with the Steyr-Hahn,
but it has been used relatively recently.
Beretta has a pistol out that is a ... rotating-barrel locking system, as well as a number of others.
This also has a modular metal frame with a separate plastic grip assembly.
Pretty cool, a modern modular sort of feature.
There's a lot of interesting stuff going on with this pistol, which is neat.
But at the same time this is kind of what you would expect
for a Chinese service pistol: it's nothing really spectacular.
... This is one of the paradoxes of firearms collecting and ownership in the US,
is we often tend to think that the rarer something is, the better it must be.
Well, in the United States we have an import embargo on Norinco products,
we can't bring them in, at least not rifles and handguns.
And as a result, these pistols are basically completely unavailable in the United States.
However they are available up in Canada, and you may notice
that there aren't a whole lot of people raving about how great they are up in Canada.
And there's good reason for that. So let's take a closer look.
Well, you know it's cool and Communist Chinese when it's got that five pointed star in the grips.
Moving on to some more substantive issues though.
The safety mechanism on here is
a combination safety and de-cocker.
So if the hammer is cocked and you engage that, it is going to drop the hammer and then lock it.
Bring the safety down, and now you can fire in double-action / single-action mode.
So you can manually cock the hammer. Trigger pull in single action is ... light but mushy.
Trigger pull in double action is long and heavy.
Sights are pretty typical sort of three dot standard pistol sights there.
Magazine release is pretty standard: push button, pops out.
The magazine has this open slot on the side.
Typical of ... prior Chinese service pistols like the Makarov.
What is unusual about this is they actually had the foresight
to make it a double-feed pistol magazine.
That's pretty unusual, you typically see that in
rifle and submachine gun magazines rather than pistol magazines.
Because it does take a little more space in the action to design a pistol slide
that can pick up cartridges alternating on the right and left of the magazine.
However, that makes it substantially easier to load,
which is really actually quite a nice feature.
You'll notice that there are magazine catch cuts on both sides of the magazine.
You can take the magazine release and you can actually swap it over
to whichever side you prefer.
Most people of course are going to leave it on the left side
so that you can activate it with your right thumb.
And then of course the most unusual mechanical feature is the fact that it is a rotating barrel.
So let's see if you can get that and see it, you sort of see it rotating - right there.
This is a system that, as I said, has been around for a while, but it's never been particularly popular.
It's always been much more common to see pistols with the Browning tilting-barrel style of action.
The reasons that some people will occasionally go with the rotating barrel
usually come down to an assumption of greater accuracy
because the barrel ... axis is never changing.
So a typical Browning pistol is going to tilt up and down,
and people worry that that has a negative impact on accuracy.
I think when it actually comes down to it, any impact on accuracy from that is far more
because of quality control and manufacturing than it is the actual mechanics of the gun.
Browning pistols can shoot really quite well, so can rotating barrel pistols.
There is also potentially an issue of bore offset.
If you have a rotating barrel, well maybe you can build the whole thing a little bit lower
since you don't have to have space allowed for the barrel to tilt down.
They didn't really do anything particularly exciting with ... bore axis in the CF98.
It handles very much like a typical polymer-framed service pistol.
To disassemble it, we're going to pull this lever out.
In a Browning gun you would typically pull the slide back, on this you don't have to.
It does take some force on this pin though,
so I'm going to use the base plate of the magazine to ...
there we go, so that's now flush there.
It came out a little bit, now we can pull that pin out - there'll be a little snap, there it is.
That is held captive by the recoil spring, so.
Once that's out of the gun, we can then slide the frame forward, ...
(yeah, had the hammer down), and then the slide comes right off the front.
Then the other cool thing about this is
this ... would normally be the lower assembly of the pistol.
On this guy this actually disassembles a bit further.
We can take this guy ...
out (at least in theory), ...
there we go.
And that is the whole fire-control trigger-mechanism housing,
as well as the rails that contain the slide.
So this guy is just a simple polymer frame.
All it does is hold the magazine release and provide a space for everything to sit in.
Once you have the barrel off, we can then pull this apart a little bit further
by taking this assembly, pull it forward.
Then we have our recoil spring.
Interesting there is a second buffer, and we'll take a look at that in a moment.
You have your locking block here.
Then there's a barrel bushing in the front, that comes off, and then the barrel comes out.
So there's our CF98 all field-stripped.
We can take a look at a couple of the unique pieces here, mostly the locking mechanism.
On a Browning style pistol you would have a couple of locking lugs
right up here in the top of the slide.
On this guy we actually have locking lugs on both sides of the slide.
And when you look at the barrel, you'll see that there are three sets
of locking lugs that are going to engage in the slide.
We then have this lug, which controls rotation of the barrel to lock and unlock it.
So the barrel is going to slide into the slide here.
And at this point that is the locked position, that is the unlocked position.
In the unlocked position of course the barrel can be held in place,
and the slide can go back to extract the empty case, and then load a new one.
When it's locked, the two of course are held together.
What controls that motion is this locking block which is held in the frame,
and it has this camming surface right here.
That is going to force this lug to move side to side,
which causes the barrel to rotate, and lock or unlock.
So this sits in place right like so.
And when the pistol fires ... the block stays in place,
the slide is going to come backwards.
Right there it unlocks, and then cycles.
When the slide goes forward, it's going to come to here,
then that camming track pushes the lug over, locks the barrel, and it's in battery again.
The recoil spring is ... a normal spring with a normal guide rod,
with this extra little kind of interesting bit.
It has a second spring, which is a very stiff buffer spring there,
just to pad the final impact of the slide so that it doesn't batter against the frame.
Not a bad idea considering that ... what would be battered against
is kind of delicate thin metal.
Speaking of which, this frame is a piece of bent sheet metal,
and it forms the rails that the slide is going to ride in.
Specifically it is the barrel bushing at the front here
which has these two lugs on the side which ride in that lower frame like so.
And that guides the front end of the slide.
At the back end here we have the trigger.
It's a yoke type of trigger that splays around the magazine and then back to the sear.
Hammer, we have our ejector here.
All of that is a self-contained unit, safety as well.
So if anything ... in this assembly goes wrong,
as a military armourer all you have to do is pull this out,
replace it with a brand new one, and the pistol is now functional again.
Then you can take this back to a depot somewhere and repair it for later use.
The rest of the slide is pretty typical modern handgun technology, it is hammer fired.
We have a safety right here, if this block is not depressed,
it will prevent the firing pin from going forward.
Once I do push that down, then the firing pin can
protrude out the face of the ... bolt ... and fire a cartridge.
So nothing really fundamentally novel up there.
This may not be the world's greatest military handgun ever, but it is a pretty cool one actually.
A lot of interesting and modern features on it.
So like I said, this was adopted by the Chinese in 1998,
and it is still a standard service pistol for the Chinese military.
We only have one really relevant marking on the outside of this pistol,
which is up here on the slide. And it's really lightly engraved, so it's a bit hard to see.
And there it is: "9mm Pistol, Made in China, CF98", and a serial number.
I think that's actually a serial number, and I'm going to guess a year code.
So I think the serial number on there is 4061,
it was made in 2008, and it was made in Factory 236.
I could be wrong on that, but I think that's what's going on there.
There you have it - CF98.
Definitely an exotic pistol in the US. How good it is - well you know what,
I don't think it's going to be taking over the position of the Glock anytime soon.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
Thanks for tuning in to ForgottenWeapons.com,
and make sure to check back tomorrow for another cool Forgotten Weapon.