Hi guys. I'm Ian, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
We have another cool one for you today out at the range, we have a British Farquhar-Hill rifle.
These were used briefly by the British air corps during World War One.
And we'll have a good time taking it out to the range today.
These are semi-automatic, very early design, use a drum magazine,
and not a whole lot of these made.
So, .303 calibre British.
[First, a good look at the rifle]
[And a size reference]
You can see as a size reference the Farquhar-Hill is a little bit longer
than a standard World War One Enfield, a little bit heavier,
has the tactical wooden front grip on there.
[How about the magazine?]
So with the Farquhar-Hill today, we're going to be using .303 S&B ammo.
This was generously provided to us by LuckyGunner.com,
so check them out if you need to get some yourself.
So the way this drum works, there's a little tab here,
and you have a dummy follower round.
And then we have a button on the back,
or a switch on the back, that slides up and down.
That switch extends and retracts the catch on the magazine.
So there are no feed lips on this mag. What you do,
take a round, put it in here,
pull the switch up,
push the round in, and then bring the switch down.
That loads the round into the mag and holds it in place.
When you're ready to fire, you mount the drum in the gun
and then switch the magazine, push this back up.
That unlocks the ammunition in the drum into the gun.
If you were to open this up while the drum is out of the gun, all the ammo just flies out.
[Not that we'd do that, of course...]
[Heh.]
[That should be enough for a test firing]
Alright guys, we're going to try some shooting with the Farquhar-Hill.
One of the interesting things here is this actually has magazine catches on the front and the back
So I insert the magazine,
and then I need to actually release the cartridges.
And now, you see the first one pops up into the feed-way.
[... and the bolt release?]
Alright, so you guys may remember from the video on the ZH-29 that it had this weird system
where you pull the trigger to close the bolt? The Farquhar-Hill works the same way.
So first I pull the trigger once, that closes the bolt. The second time I pull the trigger, it fires.
This is a really pleasant gun to shoot, I'm actually very surprised by it.
The recoil is really gentle, and the dual spring setup that Farquhar came up with
for this gun works really well. This dumps the brass out just [bloop] right into a nice pile.
Ejects cleanly, loads cleanly, I'm really impressed with this gun.
So you wouldn't want to load the mags for this in the trenches of Flanders,
but I certainly wouldn't mind having it as a shooter. This is a nice piece.
Thanks for watching.