Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com. I'm Ian McCollum
And I'm here today at Hire Arms a movie firearm supply house in Johannesburg South Africa
And we're taking a look at a pair of poaching guns. These are guns that were actually confiscated by the Zimbabwe police from
fairly modern African poachers and I thought it'd be really interesting to take a look at what those guys are actually using because if
When we take a look up close at these you'll see they have basically zero access to authentic real firearms
And so they're manufacturing things like these
that look like guns and
usually function like guns, but boy are they horrifyingly scary to think about putting your face next to when you fire so
These are all relatively primitive systems some of them like this one are percussion guns
I believe they're probably still Flint type guns out there. And this one's actually a paper cartridge gun. This is designed for shotgun shells and
it has
they're a bunch of huge variety in these because they're all individually custom-made and
What's interesting to me is one of the biggest problems with this is okay
We can get some scrap metal put together some sort of mostly fun functioning firearm
But you can't find scrap gun powder. So where do these guys come up with propellants?
and there are a couple potential sources one is
Grinding up match heads, which is quite dangerous
That's an easy way to blow up a firearm
and another
The really interesting one that I heard about was actually stealing safety fuse from mining operations
So a lot of these guys will work intermittently in mines
you know in areas of Southern Africa and they would steal everyday just a little bit of safety fuse and
safety fuse is a very slow burning fuse you would if you were doing a
Detonating some explosives in the mine. You would use first a chunk of safety fuse which burns slowly
Gives you enough time to get to a safe distance and then it would go to a faster acting fuse
Etc well the other fuses aren't important the safety fuse is basically very finely ground black powder
wrapped in string and bitumen
a rubber asphalt sort of material
and what these guys would do is they'd steal a little bit every day and then cut it open and
Salvage the very fine black powder out of it and you got very little every time
but if you did this for a while you could accumulate an actual supply of
Legitimate black powder and that's what they would typically use to actually make ammunition for these guns. So this one's a breech loader
This one's a muzzle loader. Let's go ahead and take a closer look at them because they're just totally weird and cool
So here's an example of a percussion
Totally homemade gun all of this is replica
So the lock plate's not original the hammer's not actually made by a gun factory. None of this is this is all
Put together
You can actually cock it there
you know, look at all the pieces of this are just
handmade and
Whoever made this one decided that they wanted to go all super tactical on it
With not one but two pistol grips and you know what? It's actually not uncomfortable to hold
Although I'd be terrified to actually fire it I think
Another neat element of this particular one is there is a it's not really a recoil pad
it's just a butt plate on the gun hammered in place with some tacks and this is actually a piece of
Mine conveyor belt so you can see it. It's rubber there, but it's actually got
Cloth reinforcing or some sort of fiber reinforcing in it, because what was a conveyer belt so a neat use of reclaimed materials
Look at the barrel, you can see that this isn't even a piece of tube
This is I don't know what this started as but it's clearly hammered into shape
It's a brass
crude brass front band
This is a muzzle loader. So it's got a ramrod underneath it and the front sight there is missing
But it does actually fire I know you're not supposed to fire it, you know dry fire percussion guns for fear of damaging them
But I'm not particularly worried about damaging this one
That number on there, by the way
is not a serial number that is a police confiscation number and
Since we're here, there's the original rear sight which it's kind of shaped like a front sight
Now this one instead of having tactical front grips was made with a folding bipod sort of monopod triangular pod
so this one is actually designed to take shotgun shells and
What you do is there's a safety cover here you would open it and then you have to cock the action, which is quite stiff
There we go
So that's cocked now note there is even a safety notch here and pull this back and lift it up
at any rate you would then take your shell put it in and push it into the chamber when you fire and this shotgun shell
Probably, you know, I think that'll fire a standard primer when you fire this whole thing is gonna slam forward
Like that that fires the shell oh I should say you don't fire it until you've got this thing closed and
latched
Latched over when you fire it. This is actually kinda gonna work a little bit like a recoilless rifle in that
This isn't a locked breech by any means. You've got a spring in this rod holding the shell in place
It'll vent some gas around
Because this is on a really stiff spring that will absorb a little bit of the energy coming back
And kind of like a recoilless rifle some of the energy gets vented backwards
Which is what prevents it from actually exploding when you fire and then this cover including a little rubber piece there
Prevents shrapnel or gas leakage from actually coming out and injuring you
hopefully
The barrel on this one is clearly made from a piece of pipe
crude stock
the front sight's not really a
Front sight it's kind of a tab on the barrel and the barrel is actually kind of pointed upwards relative to the stock. So a
aiming this is trial and error
and then just
you know a piece of twisted wire connecting the trigger guard to the rear band
all sorts of interesting creative work on this
Now looking at safety for a moment. You kind of have to imagine that these things are often going to work
So if they don't work at all nobody's gonna keep making them and trying to use them
However, they absolutely do fail from time to time and someone had a really bad day with this one
That thing is thoroughly blown open
Now exactly what caused this is who knows anyone's guess
That could have been too much powder
It could have been someone got their hands on some actual smokeless powder and used it
like black powder could be ground-up match heads any number of things that could result in that but
That gun is thoroughly
unusable
Thank you guys for watching. Hopefully you enjoyed the video. It's funny over here in South Africa
These things are rightfully all considered completely useless garbage
But to me, they're really interesting
this is the sort of thing that we don't see in the United States because who on earth would import this it literally has a
commercial value of nothing
but it's interesting to look at the construction, the fabrication, the use, the wear, and
Gives you some idea of what's actually going on with the guys who are using these anyway big
thank you to Hire Arms for letting me take a look at a couple of these
pieces of complete and very interesting garbage in their gun collection and
Stay tuned for more Forgotten Weapons tomorrow.