Hi, thanks for tuning in to another episode of Forgotten Weapons. We have a really cool rifle out today.
This is a ZH 29. This was a
developmental Czech
semi-Auto service rifle.
These were designed in the late 1920s obviously as you can tell from the name.
They were first produced in 1929.
These went to a couple different countries. They were sold to Ethiopia
they were sold to China and they were also sold to Siam. This particular one was in the Chinese order,
Didn't see much actual use. It's in really nice condition. We're gonna do some shooting of it today.
We're going to show you some close-ups of how the gun works. It's got some real interesting unusual features, and I think you'll enjoy it.
You can see that this gun the bolt is totally exposed here on the right hand side on,
The left hand side you've got just the receiver. The way this works is the bolt actually locks sideways into the wall of the receiver.
It will lock open when the magazine is empty and here's an unusual feature,
the way you close the bolt is actually to pull the trigger
and then the second time you pull the trigger it will fire a round, if there's a round in it.
The magazine that these guns use is actually pretty much identical to the ZB-26 and ZB 30 magazines
That the Czechs were building around the same time.
These guns came with five and ten round magazines
We have a ten rounder here,
And they were in the field they were to be reloaded using stripper clips.
So kind of like the Lee Enfields and a lot of other guns of the era; while it has a detachable magazine
It's primarily intended to be used with the same magazine all the time and reloaded via stripper clips.
One of the other interesting features here this gun the barrel is actually not parallel to the receiver.
You can see that the rear sight is right smack in the middle and the front sight is offset
And that's an artifact of the side locking mechanism.
These guns are all semi-auto only these guns didn't have any capability for full auto.
You can see we have a safety lever here zero for safe locks the trigger and
one for fire.
One thing that makes these rifles fairly distinctive looking is this aluminum section of the handguard.
This was actually added just to make cooling more effective. The aluminum soaks up the heat from the barrel and the fins help
cool it down .
Nothing real special just a chunk of aluminum on the front end instead of all wood.
So one of the features here you can see that is something people discuss even nowadays,
there are actually dual ejectors on this gun. You can see the two plungers in there. If
one fails, you still have one in there that will eject the cartridge.
So at the time these were developed this was
marketed as a
standard military service rifle, so this would have been in competition with things like the us M1 Garand
In fact one of these in .276 Peterson was submitted for U.S. Army trials. It wasn't found to be satisfactory,
obviously the M1 one out.
First trigger pull closes the bolt,
The next one fires.
It locks open when it's empty. It's reloaded with stripper clips.
Five rounds in... this bolt closing with the trigger is not the safest thing I've ever seen in my life.
One pull to close it.
This is a nice feeling gun. The sights are a little bit low,
you really have to pull your head down on the stock to shoot well.
And I think I really want to make sure I don't touch that chunk of aluminum out there.
There you go a ZH-29.