Hey guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com
I'm Ian McCallum and today we are taking a look at this Yugoslav M76 designated marksman rifle.
this is in effect a Kalashnikov scaled up to 8mm Mauser
and it's similar to some cousin guns like the Romanian PSL.
A lot of the countries in the Soviet Union sphere of influence
did not in fact have the opportunity to get the technical data package to build SVD Dragunov rifles.
And so instead, they took what they did have, the Kalashnikov, and scaled it up.
The intention with this rifle was not to make what we would m aybe consider a sniper rifle today - something capable of really minute, fantastic accuracy,
but with a relatively low rate of fire. The idea was to have something that could be integrated into a typical squad
to give a balance. Something that was more accurate than an AK or an SKS,
equipped with a telescopic sight so that you could actually identify targets at longer ranges than is possible with iron sights
but something that would also function in sort of a multiplicity of roles because it does have backup iron sights on it,
it's semi-automatic, it has a detachable box magazine
and it's capable of a much higher volume of fire than a bolt-action, true, sniper rifle.
So, that was the justification of the M76. Like I said, this is basically a scaled-up AK.
So let's take a closer look at it and see how it evolved from the Yugoslav AKs that went into production in the mid-1960s.
The M76 was manufactured by the Zastava factory in Serbia
Which also made a wide variety of other AKs.
So they started with the M64, which interestingly was a rifle that they didn't actually get a technical data package for,
they reverse-engineered the M64 from captured or obtained milled receiver type 3 AKs
and they made a number of changes to it
to suit their own preferences, most significantly
they actually added a proper
last round hold-open feature to the gun. Now today when we see Yugoslav AKs, what we're used to seeing for a hold open is
this flat surface on the back of the mag that the the bolt hits and stops.
So the the gun does lock open, it tells you that it's empty
but when you pull the magazine out the bolt slams closed. Well on the early M64s
there was actually a true, proper, hold open device that would keep the bolt open even after you retained the magazine.
However, they got rid of that feature. It was perhaps a bit too complicated,
it also meant you couldn't use standard AK magazines in those guns and that was probably seen as a problem.
Anyway, I'm digressing a bit, the M64 evolved into the M70 still with a milled receiver, and it was the
M70 that was the basis for the M76.
Now to adapt this to 8mm Mauser they stretched the receiver out,
I will touch on this briefly at the end of this video, but this receiver is actually american-made. It's not an original
Yugoslav one, so be aware of that. There are some
slight contour changes that this doesn't perfectly match the original receiver.
Anyway,
beyond that the design is all the same as the AK.
So, where guns like the PSL added a thumbhole style of stock to copy the Dragunov, the
Yugoslav designers retained a pistol grip, and a
separate shoulder stock. I think this is a quite comfortable gun to carry. I think it's more comfortable than the Draganov or the PSL, personally.
Let's go ahead and take the scope off and take this apart.
So it should be noted that while this attaches in the same way as a Russian scope -
we have a mount here with a locking lever
that just tightens down this rail and then of course we have a rail on the side of the gun
- The rail here is dimensionally completely different from the standard Russian rail.
So Russian optics will not fit on the rifle.
This Yugoslav optic - this thing is in poor shape - this Yugoslav optic will not fit on a PSL or a Draganov.
This is the ON-M76B scope,
this is the third iteration of this scope and it's the one that was on all the rifles when they came into the US.
This started off as just the M76, which differed in that it had an infrared detector built into it
That was something that was a little finicky you had to charge it
but it would allow you to determine -
It didn't let you see an infrared - but it allowed you to determine if there were infrared light sources being used in the area,
which would indicate that someone was using night-vision most likely.
That wasn't actually all that important they decided, so where the M76 had that functionality,
the M76A - they got rid of those bits
but the housings for them were still built into the scope, and then eventually the
M76B version of the scope - they got rid of, you know
they made a new housing for the scope that no longer had the mounting points for the infrared detector elements.
This is a 4x scope. It is illuminated with tritium. And so they all have these pretty cool radioactive symbols on them,
however, tritium has a half-life of approximately 10 years and the tritium elements in these scopes are all dead.
Unfortunately, I don't know of anyone who has come up with a good way to
bring them back to life, but that may happen at some point.
What we have here is a pretty simple system, we've got
windage adjustment on the left side, we've got an elevation adjustment on the top.
This is a BDC cam. So it is
graduated out to 1200m there, and if we look on this side you can see this is the cam
for 7.9mm M76 sniper ammunition
Zrak, Z-R-A-K, the company that made this scope did make a variety of other cams for it,
so you could get the BDC cammed for 7.62x39, or 7.62x54 rimmed, or 7.62 NATO.
They made a wide variety of
rifles and scopes to fit them all, so the scope itself is the same across the board, just has a different cam.
Looking at the reticle itself,
what we have is pretty typical of military rifles of the period, you'll recognize this off of a PSL or a Draganov scope as well.
We have a center pointer with
windage hash marks on either side. We then have a rangefinder in the lower left -
That's based on the height of your presumed human target - 1.75 meters
so you put feet on the bottom line and
then the top line that the person reaches to tells you how far away they are - if they are 1.75 meters tall.
So 200, 400, 600 or 800 meters.
Now as for the rifle, we have a 10 round magazine for it
They did make the M77 for export which is basically the same rifle in 7.62 NATO
They did also make a version of this in 7.62x54 rimmed
Well, though that one didn't seem to get much adoption kind of anywhere.
We will find serial numbers on several of these parts:
This one is a little difficult to see, but there is 3-7-6-1-1
Mine is not a matching numbered gun, unfortunately.
We have a serial number on the side of the bolt as well, so you can see this one doesn't match
There is a serial number in the stock, this one's been sanded down a bit and also doesn't match
And there is also a serial number in the scope base which should match and again on mine does not.
Okay, getting back to disassembly. This is just like an AK, we're going to pull out the recoil spring
Bolt carrier comes back
lifts out
This is really just a massively oversized AK. We can pull the bolt out as well
It's just a really big AK style bolt
We have a receiver that is identical to a standard AK receiver
It is milled,
it does use the same style of attachment for the buttstock as the fixed stock 7.62x39 AKs
Yugoslav AKs, the M70s
So there's one long screw that plugs the stock in, it's got a little hollow socket in the back of the receiver
Fire control group is standard AK; semi-auto only, even on the original military guns
Lifting up the handguard lever here, we can take off the handguard
In here, we have a three position adjustable gas regulator
This is almost identical to what would be used on the M91 that would eventually replace this rifle
but you can see small medium and large gas aperture
Now what's a little interesting here is I've seen two different versions of this:
So on this particular rifle the front of the gas tube just has a little tang on it that
sits in that notch
to lock the gas plug in position, and it'll fit in any of them of course.
What you'll see on the M91 and what I've also seen on some M76s is a separate
flat spring that's attached to the gas tube, so that you can actually adjust this regulator without having to take the gas tube off.
On this example of the rifle with this setup,
If you want to change positions
you actually have to remove the top cover, remove the spring
remove the bolt carrier and gas piston so that you can then remove this, so that you can adjust the gas system.
Not nearly as convenient
I suspect this has to be the early version of
that system. That said '2' is generally the standard firing position on these rifles
'3' is for if the gun gets fouled, or you have low powered ammunition, and '1' is for if it is
particularly hot, you have over-powered ammunition or if you have extra back pressure on the system because you are using a suppressor;
because these rifles were built with a long slotted flash hider here that includes
interrupted threads on the back for attachment of a suppressor, and those were actually issued and used by the Yugoslav army.
It does also have a bayonet lug on it
This was intended to be a potential
squad combat weapon and they wanted the ability to mount a bayonet.
The story of the M76 in the United States is a bit of a complicated one, so the first batch of
M76s were imported
before the assault weapons ban in the mid to late 1980s, and those guns were arranged to have been
manufactured without the auto sear. Now this design was never intended to be a machine gun
it was never actually a machine gun. However, it kept the auto sear because
that part works as an effective out of battery safety in a semi-automatic version of mechanism like this.
However, the auto sear is considered a part
representative of a machine gun - a receiver that has the capability to accept that auto sear is
considered a machine gun by the ATF.
So that first batch of guns that came in were manufactured specifically to not include that part. They came in, all was good.
After the assault weapons ban, another company decided to try and import guns, and what they did was they sent a sample of the standard
M76 - complete with auto sear - to ATF for approval.
Recognizing that it wasn't a converted machine gun,
like it was never a machine gun in the first place, and ATF actually went ahead and approved the rifle.
2000 of them came in, they were all sold, ATF went back about six months later,
and changed its decision, declared that they were in fact machine guns because they had machine gun receivers, because they were machined to accept auto sears
The guns were all collected up. The receivers were destroyed, customers were refunded, fortunately.
The company that did it took a
significant chunk of money on that.
But the result was then there are a lot of
part kits available for these because the receivers got chopped up, but not the rest of the gun,
there was no need to do that, no requirement to do that. So receivers were manufactured by a couple of different companies
and parts kits were assembled by a couple of different companies, and that leads to a bit of a variety of
Who made what using which setups
in here in the United States today. So this particular one was assembled by Century
They don't have the greatest reputation for doing such a thing, but this rifle seems to work pretty well
in fact
we're gonna find out exactly how well it works because tomorrow we're gonna take this guy out to the range and
do some shooting with it. So,
join me again tomorrow to take a look at this out of the range. And in the meantime, thanks for watching.