Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I just have a little extra video for you today because I saw this thing
on GunBroker this morning, and it's kind of wacky.
So quick reminder, today's video is brought to you by "Thorneycroft to SA80",
Jonathan Ferguson's fantastic book on the history of British bullpup rifles that is currently being sold on Kickstarter.
Check out the link in the description text below to see all the cool stuff we have available for that.
Now, as for this alleged Berthier,
this kind of reflects back on something I get asked fairly frequently, which is how common are faked guns?
Like how how cognisant, how wary does a person have to be to not get taken in?
And the answer is kind of depends on your price point and what you're looking for.
On very high-end guns, we're talking $10,000 and more, then you really need some specialist knowledge.
But for the lower end guns, things that are more common, often it doesn't take that much knowledge,
and a little bit of critical thinking, critical assessment, to spot things that are fake.
And this is one of the fakiest fakes that I've seen in quite a long time.
So this is listed on the site as "French Berthier M16 Lebel carbine with bayonet",
which is a little bit of a tip-off to begin with because there is no such thing as an M16 Lebel carbine,
or a Berthier Lebel carbine, they're two different things.
Anyway, ... the first picture you can actually see that there is a clearing rod in the gun and that jumped out at me.
And that's really the biggest thing that got me to take a closer look at this,
because original actual clearing rods in Berthiers, like this guy, are fairly rare to find.
So I go in and I take a closer look, and I realise ... something's not quite right about this.
And the second picture it becomes very clear that something is definitely not right, because the stock isn't the right contour,
there are bits of the magazine well sticking out. The hole for the action screw looks very strange.
And when we get to the third picture, now it's really funky, because everything about the front end of this rifle is wrong.
So what appears to have actually happened is someone had a Berthier M16 barrelled action
without a stock, without furniture, without a barrel band or nose cap.
And they took Mauser parts and Steyr M95 straight pull parts and made them fit.
And ... in a way they kind of did a nice job of it, in that it actually fits.
That's not trivial, ... re-inletting a Kar98 (or some sort of Mauser, I don't know exactly what style of Mauser it was),
but re-inletting some sort of Mauser stock to fit is not trivial.
But anyway, if we look at this third picture here. First off,
... I wonder if the front chunk of the stock is actually a separate piece from the back chunk, the colouring looks different.
But what we can definitely see is that the handguard came off of an Argentine 1891 Mauser, or something very similar to it.
That is not a Berthier handguard at all.
If we go to the next picture, there's something wrong about the stacking rod.
It's the same style as a Berthier,
but it's got a bayonet lug on the bottom of it, and the Berthier bayonets used a plug in the middle.
I don't know if you guys can really quite see this, but they use a plug right in the middle of
(there you go), in the middle of the front of the nose cap.
They don't have the typical sort of bayonet lug hanging off the bottom.
And this one does, so.
This picture first off shows the handguard very clearly, that's not a Berthier handguard at all.
And then you can see that the style of the nose cap is different and that is in fact,
this appears to me to be a nose cap from an M95 straight pull an Austrian M95, Steyr M95 rifle.
Which is like actually it's kind of clever, if you're gonna pick something to put on a Berthier that
looks more or less like what the Berthier originally had.
And then what's really interesting to me is the listing says this comes with the original bayonet which is not numbered to the gun.
Well, the reality of the fact is it comes with an M95 bayonet.
And if we look at the picture, he actually included an up close picture of the bayonet
where it slots over the barrel. And someone has actually inserted a brass or a copper ring to bring the diameter of
the bayonet attachment down to the diameter of a Berthier barrel, instead of an M95 barrel.
So it looks like someone actually fitted this bayonet to fit on this rifle, which is kind of remarkable.
Now, if we take a closer look, that last picture here shows the front end of the gun.
On the Berthier the rod is sitting on the side.
And on this one ... well, ... either they took out or there was no bayonet plug and they use that hole,
and they must have drilled it down.
Or rather, actually if that's the ...
If that's the Mauser stock, there was probably already a hole there.
But at any rate, they put ... a cleaning rod where this bayonet lug originally was.
And I don't know off-hand what that cleaning rod is from, it's not a Berthier cleaning rod.
The listing says that the front sight has been filed down. In fact the front sight is completely missing and has been removed.
There's like everything about this rifle is wrong. In fact, if we look at ...
there's a picture that shows the side of the stock really well, and you can see a couple things here.
First off that it doesn't fully cover the bottom of the magazine.
The Berthier has this sort of pregnant looking sort of stock that goes down there to cover the magazine.
And this does not, because it's actually a Mauser stock which would normally cut across a little more straight.
And it's got two gigantic cracks running down the side of the stock.
And that's because the Berthier carbines have a substantial amount of recoil, and so they have a pair
of recoil lugs to help absorb that recoil and prevent the stock from splitting.
This Mauser has none. And so someone rebuilt this thing with that Mauser stock
and then went and shot it and, presumably, then the stock basically shattered into a couple of pieces because
it's a hefty recoiling little carbine that doesn't have the proper supports in the stock.
So I found this pretty fascinating. I occasionally run into things like Berthiers
where one or two parts will have been replaced, usually it's a barrel band or something.
Someone didn't have one and so they kind of just kludged something to fit.
This is the first time I've seen one where like fully half of the gun's components really
have been retrofitted on. And I don't know if the seller doesn't recognise that, or doesn't care.
But it was an interesting listing to look at, and I figured I'd bring it to you guys.
So hopefully you enjoyed that little diversion. This is some of the interesting stuff you occasionally find
on classifieds sections and advertising boards, and that sort of thing.
Anyway, it's also a good reason to have reference books.
Of course if you have a copy of "Chassepot to FAMAS" you would immediately, I hope, recognise the problems with this rifle.
And if you're looking to get more cool, fantastic reference books, particularly from Headstamp Publishing,
check out our currently running Kickstarter for "Thorneycroft to SA80, British Bullpup Firearms 1901 to 2020".
Thanks for watching.
[ sub by sk cn2 ]