Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at Morphy's
taking a look at an FN FNC.
Now the story for this rifle
really goes back to the FN c-a-l, the FN CAL,
which was originally developed to be sort of the
carbine companion to the FN FAL.
The FAL is the Fusil Automatique Léger, the light automatic rifle.
The CAL was the Carabine Automatique Légère, the light automatic carbine.
The problem was the FN CAL wasn't that great of a design.
It was difficult to disassemble, it was difficult to maintain, and it was expensive.
And it was really pretty much a commercial flop for FN.
In fact I have a previous video on the FN CAL that I'll link to at the end of this one.
If you're interested in the backstory, definitely check that video out.
But what ended up happening was the French
were interested in adopting a 5.56 rifle in about 1970.
... Basically they started developing the FAMAS right about this time.
But in the meantime they were interested in a rifle, and it's possible that they could have
bypassed internal development entirely, and just adopted the FN CAL.
Because the French went and got the CAL, and tested it - and rejected it.
And it is in large part that rejection that prompted FN
to look at improving the design, and coming up with something better.
And that would happen in 1975 with this, the FNC.
Which, by the way, just stands for FN Carabine, the FN Carbine.
The idea here was to fix all the problems of the CAL.
They wanted to make a gun that was a lot easier to take apart,
easier to maintain, cheaper to manufacture.
And they really did a pretty effective job at that.
So ... the first prototypes were ready in 1975.
The very first version of the gun was deemed the FNC 76 in 1976.
It was tested by a number of different countries.
In particular the Swedish were testing it even as early as late 1975.
And they found some issues, ... really kind of the sort of things that
... happen with every new firearms development.
There were some parts that weren't quite strong enough, things broke a little too early.
So FN went back in, spent a couple of years, revised a few of the parts,
made things a little bit more durable, and came out with the final pattern,
which was termed the FNC 80, in 1980.
And that is essentially this rifle right here.
Now a little bit of an explanatory note before we take a closer look.
There were something like 6,000 FNCs manufactured as semi-automatic only sporting rifles
that were imported into the US before 1989.
This was one of them.
A substantial number of those guns were actually converted to full-auto.
After ... 1968, between 1968 and 1986, it was illegal to import new machine guns into the US.
But you could still manufacture them in the US, and so
there are a number of guns like the FNC, that were imported as semi-autos
and then registered and converted to full-auto
by gunsmiths and companies here in the United States.
And the FNC is one of the more common of these patterns.
So what we are looking at here is a full select-fire,
this is safe, semi, 3 round burst, full-auto, fully transferable FNC.
But the full-auto conversion was done here in the US, not originally by the FN factory.
So with that in mind, let's go ahead and take a look at how the FNC works.
The FNC was designed primarily to be easy to manufacture,
and easy to maintain and disassemble. So let's see if it actually meets that.
Now the lower is aluminium, relatively easy to machine for sure.
The upper is stamped sheet steel,
relatively easy to manufacture if you've got the right tooling.
Let's go ahead and start with ... pull the magazine out.
This uses a magazine that is interchangeable with the standard M16 magazine.
But the original FNC mag is not identical,
because the FNC does not have a bolt hold-open mechanism.
It will accommodate an M16 magazine, but the bolt won't lock open.
And if you find an original FNC magazine it won't have a hold-open tab on it,
and so it won't actuate the hold open on an M16 pattern rifle.
But it certainly made a lot of good sense for FN to make a rifle that
could interchange magazines with the gun that was
far and away the most common 5.56 rifle at the time, the M16.
We have a little bit to unpack on the markings here. So serial number.
This was originally manufactured by FN in Herstal in Belgium.
It was then imported into the US as a semi-auto by Steyr.
That may seem a little surprising, but Steyr did a bunch of US interesting rifle importation
around this period in the 1980s, they also brought in some of the very first AKs.
The Maadi AKs out of Egypt were imported by Steyr.
It's worth pointing out that Howco and Gun South also imported FNCs into the US
between 1982 and 1988, with ... importation ending by legal requirement in 1989.
Now we have another marking here and that is, I just mentioned, Gun South.
Gun South is the company that converted this into a full-auto machine gun.
Legally, they registered it as a machine gun, but when they do that
they are required to put their name on the gun as well.
So that's why we have FN as the original manufacturer, Steyr as the original importer,
and Gun South, ... well in legal terms, they are the manufacturer of this gun as a machine gun.
And the original model here is Cal .223 Remington Sporter.
This was a semi-auto only when it came into the country.
Taking a look at the controls, we have a four position selector lever.
Everything from full-auto, 3 round burst, semi-auto - one round burst, and safe.
We have a nice plain magazine release here, very similar to the M16 in position.
This doesn't have any fencing around it, and never did.
And then we have a charging handle up here that is reciprocating.
And it has this neat spring-loaded dust cover that the young folks out there may think
was created by the Galil ACE, it was not, this was originally found on the FNC back in the '80s.
So the idea here is that this can tip up and sort of follow the path of the bolt handle as it cycles,
and keep the side of the gun as closed as possible at all times.
The gas regulator is in a rather unusual position here,
it is this lever on the very top at the back of the barrel in front of the receiver.
There is a single bar here, that's 1, that is the normal firing position.
And two bars here for adverse service.
And it's just this detented flip position like that. And what that actually does ...
is either expose or enclose this little hole. That is a gas vent hole.
So in normal operating mode, which is what we have now,
some of the gas hits the piston, and some of it vents out that little hole.
For adverse mode, we're going to rotate this cover closed.
Now there's no gas venting out that hole, and all the gas goes onto the piston.
A pretty simple way to do it.
And one of the clever things I like about this feature
is that this lever is not going to get hot in the way that
the typical gas adjustment out here on the gas block [does].
Usually by the time you would need to make a change to it, that thing is so hot
that you can't even remotely touch it, and you have to use a tool or a cartridge.
And they're generally finicky.
The FNC system is actually very easy to use and handy.
That's a cool system that I haven't seen replicated anywhere else that I can think of.
The rear sight is a two position flip.
Note that we have bracketry here for an optics mount.
This is ... pre common Picatinny era, but instead you have a little toe.
You can notch your scope mount in here,
and then it locks down onto this little section of dovetail.
So there was a way to mount optics on it.
Your two apertures are set for 250 and 400 metres.
The front sight is just a very standard simple post, some nice big chunky protective ears.
This is a gas cut off for using rifle grenades.
When you flip this up, that completely cuts off gas to the piston,
so it renders the rifle single-shot only.
You have to manually cycle the ... bolt.
Which means that the significant impetus of gas coming off the grenade
doesn't slam the bolt carrier back into the receiver and damage it.
This cut off then also has the rear sight for your grenade.
You would typically, I believe, use the nose of the grenade as the front sight,
and this notch as your rear sight.
And of course, speaking of rifle grenades, there is a muzzle device
that works as a muzzle brake, and also fits rifle grenades.
And lastly we have a side-folding stock.
There was also a fixed stock offered, this particular rifle has the folding stock
which I believe is the more common pattern.
The stock itself is very similar to the FAL, the hinge is a bit different.
You push the button here, and pull the stock down,
and then you can fold it over like so.
It does not obstruct the charging handle, the rifle does work with the stock folded.
Now it's held in place by tension and leverage, but not by a fixed lock.
So to open the stock, you just pop it open and into position.
One of the intentions of the FNC was simple takedown, and they did that very effectively.
So we're going to start with two pins, this is actually very much like an AR.
These are both captive pins,
and once we pull the back one out, the action pivots open.
Now it only pivots open this far, which is enough for you to pull the bolt carrier assembly out.
Going to come back to here.
At which point you have a little open cutout which allows you to take the charging handle out.
There we go, charging handle comes out.
Then the entire bolt carrier group comes out.
That's our gas piston, op rod, bolt carrier, bolt,
and recoil spring assembly, which is all one single piece.
If I want to pull the entire upper off still,
all I have to do is pull the front pin (also captive).
And, presto, ... there's our upper receiver.
The lower here has the fire control group in it.
A little bit of a complex fire control group, because it does have a 3 round burst ratchet in it.
And that ratchet, by the way, does reset. So if you set it to 3 round burst,
but you got pretty quick trigger control and you let off the trigger after 2 rounds,
that limiter will reset. So your next burst is in fact 3 rounds again.
The mechanical heart of the FNC here is essentially very AK-like.
It's a long-stroke gas piston system.
We have a cam lug right there on the side of the bolt,
and two locking lugs, here and here.
This lug picks up the cartridge from the magazine.
It's very easy to take the bolt out, I just rotate that ... camming lug down below,
and the bolt comes off.
The firing pin is held in place by this roll pin.
(Sorry, this gun's a little gross.)
If you need to replace the firing pin, knock out the roll pin.
The bolt looks really rather AK-like.
Not exactly, obviously not interchangeable, but clearly a bit inspired by the AK.
The FN CAL also had a rotating bolt.
... FN did not try to make their 5.56 rifles use a tilting bolt like the FAL had.
Up here we have the front of the recoil spring.
So if I take the back end of the recoil spring I can push it in, rotate it 90 degrees,
and pull the spring out, separating it from the bolt carrier.
The firing pin here is actually held from going any further forward
by a slight reduction in diameter of its channel there.
So it'll slide to this point.
If you want to take it out, you have to take out that roll pin,
and it'll slide out the back for replacement.
This is kind of nice in that it allows you to clean the tip of the firing pin,
it allows you to take the bolt off to clean the extractor,
the bolt face, anything you need to do there.
But it does not leave the firing pin as a loose component that you might lose.
So an interesting theory, it seems very fragile sitting in here.
But frankly, I'd rather have it captive there then floating around
where it can much more easily get dropped in the mud, or lost entirely.
The receiver here is pretty simple stamped sheet metal.
We've got a trunnion welded in the front, we've got a pair of rails here
for the bolt to run on that are welded in the side.
That's a series of welds right there. Rear sight is welded on.
The ejector is riveted on from the outside.
Of course the ejector is going to be a hardened component,
where the receiver itself does not need to be hardened.
So you are going to want a way to harden the ejector separately, and replace it if necessary.
This would be a fairly simple armourer task
to drill off the rivets and replace the ejector if you have to.
Lastly, we can pull the handguards off.
I'm going to go ahead and pop that up. And then the handguards are held in place
by this little sort of spring clip.
What you do is pop that off the front, you can use a cartridge to do that.
I'm going to use a little jeweller's screwdriver that's convenient here.
There we go, with that clip out on the barrel, I can then just lift off both of the handguards.
So there is a metal shell on the inside there to give you a little bit of insulation.
And then there is our gas tube, with its spring and detent to act as the gas regulator as well.
Ports here are much like an AK,
so that once the gas piston starts moving excess gas gets vented there.
And that's pretty much it. That's your gas block.
And a sling swivel on the front.
The FNC was really ready for prime time, for marketing and sales, about 1980.
And this is a very convenient time for FN to be bringing this rifle onto the market.
NATO had just spent a couple of years in the late 1970s
attempting, once again, to adopt a standard cartridge and rifle for the NATO Alliance.
And once again they kind of failed.
The first time they managed to adopt 7.62 NATO as a cartridge,
and another FN product as almost a standard rifle, the FN FAL.
Well, in the '70s they once again managed to standardise on a cartridge.
It is not, by the way, the American .223 cartridge,
it is in fact the Belgian SS109 cartridge.
Which is interchangeable with American .223, but uses a 62 grain semi-armour piercing bullet.
Which requires a rather faster twist rate than the standard American round at the time,
the M193 with a 55 grain projectile.
Not to get too deep into the weeds, but there's I think a view by some
that the 1970s NATO trials
were once again the US forcing its equipment on the rest of the Alliance.
In this case it's not true, adopting SS109 required the US
to modify [the design to become the M16A2] ... with new ... barrels for new twist rates.
This wasn't the American cartridge, it was in fact the Belgian cartridge
largely developed for this rifle.
Anyway, 1980, 5.56 NATO has been adopted,
there are now a lot of NATO and NATO adjacent countries who need a 5.56 rifle.
I should point out that the French by this point have just decided to do their own thing,
which is what one would have expected from them in the first place,
and they will end up with the FAMAS before the FNC is actually ready and available.
But the Swedes have been testing the FNC since the mid-1970s, mid-1980s they finally adopt it.
They decide to get rid of the 3 round burst mechanism,
but otherwise keep the rifle more or less the same.
In subsequent years they have made a number of variations on it,
including painting them all green, or a lot of them green.
So the Swedes adopt the FNC. They buy a bunch of them initially from FN,
and then they also purchase a licence to make them domestically in Sweden.
Which is where the majority of Ak 5 production will happen.
1980 is actually the first contract for these guns, and that goes to Indonesia.
Who also, like the Swedes would do in a few years,
the Indonesians bought a batch of guns from FN,
and then also purchased a licence to manufacture them domestically.
So we end up with actually three factories that have produced FNCs worldwide,
FN in Belgium, and then government factories in Sweden and Indonesia.
In 1981 we'd see testing by a couple of other fairly significant militaries.
The Canadians and the Austrians both tested the FNC, but both rejected it.
The Canadians of course chose the M16 from Diemaco, or Colt Canada.
And the Austrians would choose the Steyr AUG.
So in total, we're looking at a couple of hundred thousand of these manufactured.
The Swedes would do about a quarter million in total.
I don't have solid numbers for the Belgian Army, which, by the way, also adopted the rifle.
Or the Indonesian Army.
There were of course semi-auto sporting rifles made in the FNC pattern, like this one.
That doesn't account for a particularly huge amount of production.
The FNC would not be the barn-burning success that the FN FAL was,
but it was still a relatively effective and successful rifle.
Certainly in terms of reliability, and durability, and functionality,
the FNC is a very nice rifle that meets all the standards one would expect from FN.
So hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
I think we are going to go ahead and take this puppy out to the range.
I have never tried one of these in full-auto, and I'm kind of curious to see how it handles.
Because there are actually a surprising number of
registered, transferable, full-auto FNCs in the United States.
But frankly how that came to be is a story for another day.
Stick with us tomorrow, and we'll try this one out on the range.
Thanks for watching.