Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com, I'm Ian McCollum
And I'm here today at the Dutch National Military Museum, taking a look at some of the interesting and unusual
rifles in their extensive firearms collection
specifically today
We are taking a look at a semi-automatic conversion of a Dutch Mannlicher bolt-action rifle.
Now this specifically is a "Snabb" conversion; "Snabb" is actually not the inventor, "Snabb" is a company name
it's a Swedish company the design itself was invented by a Swedish guy named Renberg and
What's interesting about this is he came up with a general system for adapting bolt-action rifles to semi-auto
And then he went around trying to market it to every country that he could think of, so while this is the only
Dutch Mannlicher conversion known of this type, there are other types of Snabb conversions to other guns
so you'll find pictures out there of a P17 Enfield conversion,
A 1903 Springfield conversion, an 1893 Mauser conversion,
A Krag–Jørgensen conversion... Pretty much any type of
Bolt-action turn bolt rifle, Snabb - the Snabb company - would be happy to turn into a semi-auto
Now they did this in the late 1930s the patent for this was filed in 1938 in the United States and
Clearly the idea was to find these countries probably mostly
Medium-sized countries where they had a nice, you know, a full army
But it was an army equipped with bolt-action rifles that didn't have the budget for
Brand-new semi automatics and what they probably were trying to do was convince them to take their existing rifles and pay less than
It would cost for new guns to convert their rifles into semi autos and thus for half the money you get all the firepower
Nobody fell for this because once you take this gun apart you realize that it is an incredibly
Nightmarishly complicated gun to... to disassemble, to clean, and even the action is pretty weird so
Without further ado let's step into disassembly.
Now I need to warn you: We spent about an hour getting this thing disassembled
So I don't have all of the footage of tr-- us trying to figure it out
We are going to pick this story up with the gun completely torn apart
And then we're going to slowly put it back together for you on camera, pointing out how it works along the way.
Okay I lied a little bit,
We're gonna take a look at the outside before we start disassembly so: What we have here is a bolt handle
this is completely new; the original bolt handle of the...
The Mannlicher bolt has been removed and as you'll see in a minute
The bolt has actually been extended at the rear. In addition, the receiver has been extended to the rear
So the original receiver would have ended right about here behind the bolt stop
And they've added a longer tube and a threaded receiver cap at the end
This bolt handle allows us to open the action
The original safety on this rifle would have been on the tail of the bolt
Which is now inaccessible, so a new safety has been added down here on the trigger guard. It is a push button safety
So "that's" fire, and "that" is safe
And it's a pretty simple system all it's doing is pushing a bar up behind the trigger to lock it in place
That's, that's all the safety does on this
The rear sight is still the original Dutch Mannlicher rear sight
Which is going to extend out like so
There is this button in the bolt handle
And that is the manual hold-open; that allows you to lock the bolt open
So if you pull the bolt all the way to the back and push that button in, it locks the bolt in place
That's important for disassembly as well as various types of manual handling
You actually have to have the bolt locked open, or at least held back, in order to remove the action from the stock
Note that these guns, all of the Snabb conversions, have this sort of thumbhole stock
Which actually looks very reminiscent of 1990s era
Assault weapon ban rifles in the United States
this is actually more comfortable than it looks and the reason this has to be there is because
You have to have such this, this lengthened
receiver tube you don't have space for a
Traditional style of stock, the pistol grip-- the trigger would be far, would be way too far in front
of where you would hold the rifle so you have to add a pistol grip of some sort and
I think Snabb figured
It was stronger to do it this way than just to have a plain pistol grip sticking out
That said, the-- there is a Snabb in the Swedish
Army Museum that does have just a standalone pistol grip on it.
And interestingly, this one has a butt plate that appears to be from a 1914 or 1917 Enfield
I believe, and it has a butt-trap that is
Unuseful there is no actual hollow behind the butt-trap door
Just solid wood and disappointment
And this was manufactured on a 1919 production Hembrug Dutch Mannlicher
Now with that aside, let's start our disassembly
Now this normally would feed from standard Dutch Mannlicher clips, however
The follower and the floor plate are missing on this particular one, there should be a little follower arm pushing up
Also, interestingly when we pull the barrel out you can see that
It's actually been re-barreled with a .303 British caliber barrel,
Now what's interesting about that is the case head of the .303 British is virtually identical to the the 6.5mm Dutch cartridge and
It allows .303 British to be used on the same bolt face as 6.5mm Dutch and using the same clips as 6.5mm Dutch
This came up in one case, well, this came up in one area because Indonesia
Actually re-barreled a lot of Dutch Mannlichers to .303 because they had access to .303 British ammunition
Why this particular Snabb has also been re-barreled in .303 British is an interesting question,
And I do not know why.
So here is the disassembled front end of the Snabb conversion; now we spent,
(Three other people and I), about an hour to figure out how to get it to this point
It's not completely disassembled
But this is as far as we're able to get it. So, what we have going on here is: We have two springs
There's one spring still in this tube
It runs on the outside of this bar so when I push this
You can see the whole fore-end moves
And it's a really stiff spring. Then,
Inside here we have this spring
So, we have this inner spring right here, if I can get to it
We have this inner spring and we have an outer spring right there
So the Snabb fundamentally is a "gas trap" action. This is just a cover. There's no gas port anywhere in this assembly
It's just a block to hold all the pieces in the right relative
space
This slides over the muzzle and as you can see when it's set up here
We have a little bit of extra space between the end of the barrel and the end of this gas cap; that is going to
Contain gas pressure when it fires, which is going to pull this whole assembly forward. Now, when this is on the gun
This tube comes out that hole and is held in place by
This little screw, right?
It's like that, and this screw pulls this tube forward whenever the gun fires
Now, we have this piece with ratchet teeth on it and because of the angle of this bend
This is actually how this piece is supposed to be made
when I pull this forward these teeth are going to pull down towards this tube and
You can see that working just a little bit; the spring in this is really strong, and I can only pull it a little bit
Now if you look down in that tube, it's cut out; and we have a second
Set of ratcheting teeth
That set of ratcheting teeth is connected to this rod; that rod is connected to
This, which is the bolt carrier
Bolt carrier is connected back here
to the bolt by these two ears at the back so the--
Make a long story short when this rod goes back, it pushes the gas-- the bolt carrier, and the bolt with it
So what's happening here is: This whole assembly gets pulled forward by the gas trap action
The bolt is locked in battery because the gun is firing which means everything's at its forward position, which means when this goes forward
It's compressing
That spring at the front
These this goes all the way forward until the teeth here lock on to the teeth on this inner rod
When that happens it's reached full travel
And then the spring here pulls it backwards because these two sets of teeth are now locked together
It pushes this rod backwards with it. This rod is connected to
the bolt carrier and the bolt thus pushing them backwards they will continue backwards a little bit on just
force and then the rest on inertia
They'll cycle all the way back
Eject the empty case and once they're all the way at the rear end of travel this spring, which is on this rod,
right there
Now this spring is compressed, and it is going to pull the bolt forward back into battery
We now see exactly why this was never adopted by anybody
Now normally the bolt in a bolt-action rifle is manually turned, by hand, to lock and unlock using
these two locking lugs and
one of the
Problems of a self-loading conversion is if you don't have a straight pull bolt, you have to come up with some other way to translate
Forward and backward motion into rotational motion of the bolt, so what Snabb did was actually add an extension to the back of the bolt
with three
Camming screw tracks, and then he's got this copper or brass lug on the back
These are not actually locking lugs, although they look like it; these are guide lugs, so they travel in the same path as the
locking lugs
at the front of the bolt and
Then these two rectangular cutouts are where they attach to the bolt carrier
Like so
So this is our regular
Cocking piece. It's going to get caught on the sear, and it's connected directly to the firing pin
You can see the firing pin is currently exposed and when I pull the rest of the back of the bolt
backwards, the firing pin
Cams back into the bolt; so this is how the firing pin is going to be while the bolt's traveling, and
This is going to catch on the sear.
The bolt is then going to continue forward under spring pressure like this
Thus pulling the firing pin nicely back, and then when you pull the trigger this whole thing drops,
and the firing pin protrudes and fires. Alright, reassembling this: I'm working on putting the gas system back together
So we've got the spring inside this and then it has a threaded-on cap
That is going to go
on the outside.
That goes on there, I'll just tighten that
So it's snug, then this screw, this guide rod and spring, connect to the bolt carrier here
We have now
Reconnected the bolt carrier here to the gas piston
There's a cap nut there and then two washers with a lock washer between them back here so now
when the bolt goes back
Which
There we go, when the bolt goes back it is compressing the spring inside this tube as this guide rod comes out.
And when that happens up here at the front you can see that inner rod
moving back and forth
and...
It is important when you put that guide rod back in, because remember the guide rod at the back is the same piece of metal
that has these teeth at the front, you need to make sure that the teeth are pointing upward towards this set of teeth because
It's very easy to put the guide rod in, rotate it incorrectly, and then with no teeth to catch on, the rifle
Won't ever function and you'll have no idea why;
Unless you actually understand
How it works and then take it apart to check on that.
So that is, among other things, the symbol of a not very good design in the first place.
Now that the gas system is completely assembled the next step to putting this back together is to put this front end
Back on the gas cap; this just slides on against friction
Like that, and then what prevents this from simply blowing off the gun the first time you fire is this end cap screw
Which is going to go on here.
And it has a little spring-loaded keeper right there
And we're going to pull this down
Rotate it up, and now it is nicely
Locked in position so now, when this cycles forward,
It pulls the whole action with it, which you probably can't really see because it is still a very strong spring
And now we can just go ahead with the final simple steps of assembly: We have a rear cap on the receiver
Which is just going to
screw on.
That covers up these two holes where the guide rods, the bolt
rods, can come out. That goes on there
It's important to note, when taking this in or out of the stock that the bolt carrier, this rod, is
actually underneath this piece of the wood
Right there
So you can't just drop the action in with the bolt closed
You have to actually lock the bolt open to put it in the stock
Right we have the action in the stock
Now we can put the trigger guard back in; it has two screws.
And last but not least the handguard
Handguard snaps on, put that down
And then last but not least, we have the sling swivel and barrel band, which is a two-piece assembly
Actually has a pair of very small screws
holding it together.
Put that there,
And back together
At this point you should be able to see, I think pretty well, why nobody purchased large numbers of Snabb conversions for their country, because
This is more like military sabotage to adopt this than improvement of your, your arsenal
Just to repeat in case it wasn't totally clear
This is a "gas trap" design: The forward end of the
barrel here has a gap that traps gas,
this goes forward; it pulls a piston forward with it; when the piston gets all the way forward it catches on a
Second internal piston, which it then pushes back forcefully and, well from a recoil spring,
which pushes the bolt back; the bolt is going to cycle to the rear and
Then another spring pulls the bolt forward to load another cartridge and lock it in place
That's why this is so complicated.
I do want to thank the Dutch National Military Museum for allowing me to take this gun apart.
This is the first time, not the first time I've seen a Snabb,
But it is the first time I've actually gotten inside one, and I had no idea it was as complicated as it truly is.
So, with that in mind, if you're ever here in the Netherlands, definitely make time in your schedule to check out the Museum:
It is a fantastic combined-arms military museum; airplanes, guns, tanks; all sorts of cool stuff and definitely worth your time to visit
If you don't have a chance to get to the Netherlands
And you're just watching on the Internet, if you appreciate seeing this sort of thing on the Internet
Please consider taking a moment to check out my Patreon page.
It is contributors there at $1 a month that make it possible for me to travel find these guns, and take them apart for you. Thanks for watching.