Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at the Morphy
Auction House, where we are taking a look at
a double-barrel, bolt-action, hunting rifle.
This is chambered for the rather large .416 Remington Magnum cartridge.
And normally, if you are looking for a big-bore African hunting rifle,
you have two different options for types of gun.
You can get a double-barrel gun, or you can get a bolt-action gun.
And there are pros and cons to each.
The big thing with double barrels is that they allow you an immediate follow-up shot.
And that's a big deal if you are hunting something that is
really significantly dangerous to your own health.
However, in this case we have both features together.
And apparently this comes from a Hungarian hunter by the name of Joseph Szecsei,
who in 1989 had the, what I am sure is the rather unnerving experience,
of being charged by three elephants at the same time.
And he came back from that with the notion that
he really wanted a gun that had a little more capacity to it than a double barrel,
but also had a little more rapid rate of fire than a bolt action.
Hence a double-barrel bolt action.
So, what we have here are two triggers and two barrels.
Hence like a double barrel you get two immediate shots, one with each trigger.
So, in addition to having a follow-up shot, if for some reason the first cartridge doesn't fire,
you have one immediately accessible without having to do anything to the gun.
Then, should you need more than two shots, you have the capacity of a bolt action.
You run the bolt, and it will eject both cases and load two new cartridges.
And then you have got two more shots at your disposal.
So this is really a cool mechanical system,
because it is one that we just don't really see anywhere else.
So, let's take a closer look, let me show you how they actually figured this out.
The marking on the barrel, unless I am pronouncing this all wrong,
is Szecsei & Fuchs, Fine Guns out of Innsbruck, Austria.
And the serial number on this particular one is only number 4.
It is marked with the calibre here on ... the centre rib of the barrel, .416 Remington Magnum.
They do offer these in pretty much any calibre you want up to .470 Capstick.
The 300s, the 400s, you name it.
This is set up with a quick-detach scope, and currently on it is a 1.25-4x Swarovski.
And before we take a look at the action, I am going to go ahead and pull the scope off
so that we have a better view into the action.
But this attachment system is actually pretty cool.
The scope has two claws down here on the right side of the receiver.
And then on the left side are these two little levers
that flip down when you are not taking the scope off.
But you can flip them up, rotate them around, and unlock the scope.
Once you do that, the whole thing just drops off the side.
Alright, now we can see into this action, and
the big question of course is how do you rotate two bolts at the same time,
presumably in opposite directions?
Well, the answer is you don't.
We are all used to front-locking bolts, lugs at the front,
because those have certain advantages for machining,
and then theoretically for action strength.
But if you want to have locking lugs at the rear,
you can easily make the action a little bit stronger to accommodate that.
And rear locking lugs have other advantages, for example, when you have two bolts.
So, what Szecsei did is he has a 6 lug (there's 3 on top, and there's 3 more on the bottom),
basically a rotating collar at the back of the bolt assembly.
That locks into the receiver here,
and it means that the bolt heads don't have any lugs, and don't need to rotate.
So, you can have a much simpler system at the front,
which is ideal for setting up a double-barrelled system like this.
When you rotate the bolt down,
those 6 lugs engage back here, and lock the whole thing up very nicely.
Naturally, there's a manual safety on it right there. That locks both triggers.
Front trigger is the right barrel, rear trigger is the left barrel.
We can then take the bolt out by depressing this button, which drops the pair of bolt stops.
And this just slides right out the back.
It's beautifully made, obviously, ... there are your two bolt faces.
Note that the extractors are on opposite sides, as are the ejectors.
So when you open this it will eject two cases,
and it will eject ... the left case flies off to the left and the right case flies off to the right.
There's nice jewelling on the whole thing.
There's your bottom three locking lugs.
Back here you can see the pins for both strikers.
So when you pull the trigger,
you've got two sears basically, two trigger engagements right here, a left one and a right one.
And, of course, the whole reason to have a bolt action is so that you can increase the capacity
by having a magazine, and this is a removable magazine.
So there's two little button on the sides to allow you to take this out.
Two stacks side by side, each one of these holds 3 rounds.
So total capacity for the rifle is 8.
... 8 rounds of .416 Remington Magnum is really quite substantial.
That should take care of pretty much anything that you're going to get yourself into.
The rifle itself weighs 13.3 pounds without the scope.
It is fairly heavy, but then again you don't want a really lightweight .416 Magnum.
They got that weight by using steel where they had to, and titanium where they didn't have to.
So there is apparently quite a bit of titanium in the various parts of the gun, just to reduce weight.
It does have express sights on here, as well as the optic.
A couple of leaves that flip up for different ranges.
And matching front post sight, of course.
You know, these are custom made guns, these are boutique guns,
so whatever sort of sighting arrangements you want, Fuchs is happy to build I'm sure.
One question I am sure will come up in the comments, so I'll just answer it now would be,
"Well, what if I take one shot and then I want to cycle the bolt, does that work?"
Well, yeah, like obviously it would, it would be just like opening the bolt
on a single barrelled rifle that you haven't fired a round out of.
So if one round is fired and the other isn't, and you open the bolt,
it will eject one empty case and one live round.
And when you closed the bolt, assuming you have cartridges in both magazines, it will load both.
If you only have cartridges in one magazine, it will only load from that one magazine.
There's really nothing super mystical about this,
it's just a really cool application of two systems simultaneously.
So this is manufactured by a company called Fuchs Fine Guns in Austria,
and the gun itself is called a Szecsei & Fuchs.
(And I apologise to all Hungarians out there, I am sure I am mispronouncing that.)
But, these are really high-end rifles available in all manner of finish levels,
engraving, gold, you name it. They are catering to that sort of audience.
However what's also really cool about this is
they make a couple of different variations of it as well.
So, in addition to a side-by-side pattern,
they also make an over/under pattern double-barrel bolt action.
And while the focus is clearly on African hunting, that's where this has really a functional use,
they also make them in miniature versions.
So they have a version they call the Humming Bird,
which is available in .17 HMR rimfire, .22 Long Rifle, I think .22 Magnum.
A couple of little small rimfire cartridges, and is a double-barrel bolt-action design.
So that's really cool. To me that's almost cooler than the huge hunting rifle version
because ... it's just neat.
At any rate, I don't have one of those rimfire ones to show you.
However, we do have this .416 Remington Magnum side-by-side version here.
So if you're interested in picking this thing up for your own hunt,
or just because it is so mechanically cool,
take a look at the description text below.
That will take you to ... ForgottenWeapons.com, where I have a link to the Morphy's catalogue.
Take a look at their pictures, and description, and price estimate, and all that sort of good stuff.
Both for this Szecsei & Fuchs, and also for all the other cool stuff that's in their upcoming auction.
Thanks for watching.