[ Iron Horse "Thumb Operated Receiver" ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today we are taking a look at a
thumb trigger rifle from Iron Horse, out of Utah.
Now thumb trigger firearms have been around
for 100 or 150 years, they've never been super-popular,
but they are kind of always out there.
Someone will get the idea that,
"You know, there are advantages to using your thumb
to fire the gun instead of your index finger,
and we should try designing something around that."
Well, Iron Horse is the most recent company to do that, and I think as far as I can come up with,
they are the only people who have ever done it with a self-loading or semi-automatic rifle.
The company owner contacted me actually quite a while ago about this,
and was very excited about it, very proud of what they had come up with,
and suggested that I might be interested.
And I told him like, "You know, thumb trigger rifles come up,
and they inevitably kind of fade away without a lot of commercial success.
And I'm not sure you'd be happy with me doing a video on a brand new one that you are producing."
Well, he insists, and so we have one of Iron Horse's thumb trigger DMRs here today.
... They offer this in a number of different configurations.
You can get it just as a stripped lower receiver, but then they have a couple of complete rifles.
This being the DMR it has a relatively heavy barrel.
I went ahead and just dropped this scope and the bipod on it
so that it's in an actual usable configuration.
And let me first show you how it works,
and then we'll take it out to the range and see if it does what Iron Horse says it does.
To start with, the key ingredient here is the lower receiver.
The upper is completely standard and will drop onto any AR lower,
as one kind of would expect these days.
The stock is completely standard.
Of course obviously the big thing here is there is no trigger.
The magazine well, by the way, completely standard, takes all normal magazines.
It'll take whatever different calibres of upper you want to put on it,
presumably everything from 9mm up to .50 Beowulf, or anything else that you can come up with.
As I said, this is made by Iron Horse, multi-calibre. Not a whole lot going on there.
They do have a pretty cool logo engraved on the side of the magazine well.
Except for the trigger, the controls are pretty standard,
we have our normal AR bolt release and bolt hold open here.
The safety is down here and it is finger operated.
So red is fire, white is safe, and I can flip that back and forth nice and easily.
We have a standard magazine release there. The trigger is the weird bit.
So that, right in there, is actually the trigger.
And it's operated by your thumb, not your index finger.
You wrap all four fingers around the grip,
stick your thumb inside there in the back top of the pistol grip.
And when I depress the trigger completely, it drops the hammer.
So the fire control parts for this are unique to this design, the hammer here has different
geometry in order to work with the trigger, and obviously the trigger is non-standard.
Iron Horse gives a couple of different explanations for why this would be a good idea.
One of them is there are people who ... are, in the most extreme case,
missing their index finger, or perhaps have an injury to it.
And for them the thumb is an easier way to actuate a trigger.
OK, seems totally valid.
They suggest that in cold weather your finger is going to get stiffer than your thumb,
and your thumb will be an easier, better way to fire the gun precisely
... retaining good minute muscle control rather than a very cold finger.
Can't speak to that one really so much, I live in a desert.
They also suggest that your shooting precision will be better because
you are less likely to disturb the aim of the rifle with a vertical movement, like so, of the thumb,
than a rearward movement, potentially a side-to-side movement, with your index finger.
That one we will find out about in just a few minutes.
I will point out here, the trigger is still protected.
So we are used to having a trigger guard around the trigger.
Having these two sort of walls on the side of the trigger is frankly
probably better protection than a trigger guard that we are used to.
It's actually not that difficult for something to get inside the trigger guard of a normal firearm
and potentially press the trigger, especially if you are lying down in grass
or walking through a densely forested area with a bunch of branches sticking out.
This is going to be pretty well protected, better than a normal trigger.
So, interesting, that's a point in its favour.
But I think the real question everyone is going to have is: how does this actually shoot?
So let's find out.
I have a pair of 10 round magazines here,
and we are going to do a couple of groups on paper [at 100 yards].
I know Henry says you only need 9 rounds, but we are going to do 10.
What we are going to do here is one group of 10 rounds on paper
with Iron Horse's upper and their thumb trigger lower.
Then I'm going to swap it over onto a KP-15, actually a "What Would Stoner Do", lower.
Which will be the exact same upper, the same scope, the same zero, the same barrel, the same ammo.
Everything the same, except with a really nice KE traditional trigger.
And we'll see which group is actually any better.
One thing I do want to point out here that's a little bit funky.
Obviously there is the funky thing of where's my trigger? Oh right, it's on the back on the inside.
The other is that you actually have to have a relatively low grip
on the pistol grip because your trigger is up here.
And so, we get used to, especially with handguns,
of trying to get as high a grip as possible, and even on carbines as well.
And you have to fight that urge because you have to bring your grip down here
to be able to use the thumb trigger. So a little bit of a different proposition.
This is very much a two-stage trigger, there is a basic take up
and then you hit of a wall, and then a crisp release.
I don't think it's quite as light as my KE trigger, but it's not bad.
I had to pull that one a little to the left.
A little bit of dust getting kicked up here out in the desert.
Whoo! They've put a brass deflector on this,
but it's shorter than a normal brass deflector and it's not actually deflecting brass.
The brass is still coming pretty much back at me and almost down the collar.
In fact we are going to button up that top button.
Nobody needs hot brass down their shirt.
Whoo! That one would have gone down.
Alright, that's our 10 rounds. No malfunctions, happy to say.
These are in fact the very first rounds I have put through this rifle,
with the exception of about 8 rounds to get it zeroed with this optic.
So, no complaints for functionality so far.
Now we'll transition to the left-hand target, and see what we can do with a traditional trigger.
Assuming I don't take too much of a flinch from getting hit in the face with brass.
It's getting really annoying to have brass bouncing off my face after every shot.
Alright, my scope is not good enough to see these hits through the scope.
So, we'll start here, this is a surprise for me.
That is my KE Arms traditional trigger group. That is not too shabby.
That is just a hair over 2 to 2.25 minute vertical, and about 1.5 minute horizontal.
Total edge to edge is like 2.25 inches.
Now, let's see what the thumb trigger did.
Also not bad.
We got one inch ... that is like exactly the same size group statistically.
I think ...
Alright, so don't worry about these guys, this was from zeroing.
This, with the regular trigger, is a tighter group.
... Interestingly I had less windage dispersion than I did on the thumb trigger.
And, ... you can't even say that this was practice, or that the gun heated up,
because my larger group was actually the first one.
So, if anything, I should have had better trigger control,
better windage control specifically, on the thumb trigger.
That's one of the things that Iron Horse talks about is
because your thumb is just going vertical
you don't have this potential side-to-side press on the trigger.
Which clearly isn't an issue for me on a traditional trigger,
and I had a little bit of a larger grouping there with the thumb trigger.
I will say it actually was a very comfortable gun to shoot with the thumb trigger.
That took me a little bit by surprise. I had pretty low expectations here,
I didn't think there was going to be really any benefit, and ... I expected this result.
Honestly, I am very happy with this,
I thought the thumb trigger would actually be more of a problem for me.
In particular because it's a brand new concept that I've got a total of like
18 rounds through the system so far.
So perhaps with some practice you could get better with it.
Do I think there is a fundamental benefit to the thumb trigger concept?
In terms of precision shooting I really don't think there is.
In terms of disability or handicap? Potentially absolutely.
That's, like I said, not something that I can really speak to personally.
I do not see a thumb trigger taking over as a major concept,
I think it will remain a very niche sort of thing for people who want something different,
or who have a very specific physiological need for it.
Thumb triggers have been around for 150 years. ...
I actually have an example of one on the channel,
I will probably be doing another one at some point coming up before too long.
But they've been tried, they've never managed to take off as a commonplace thing.
And I think we see a good example of why that is,
I don't think they offer a specific marksmanship benefit.
So other than that, the rifle performed pretty well,
that's about as well as I can shoot anything.
So props to Iron Horse on that, the upper is good.
And the lower certainly works just fine, if it's the sort of thing that you are looking for
that you think is appropriate to your specific needs.
For everyone else though, there is a plethora of really good
traditional triggers out there that can give you results that I think are every bit as good.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed this video.
Thanks for watching.