Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today we're going to
take a look at a pair of FAMAS rifles.
What we have here is the original
military pattern select-fire F1 pattern of the FAMAS,
and the civilian manufacture MAS .223.
So a little bit of background:
Saint-Étienne originally manufactured the FAMAS for the French military,
and they then were ... very interested in getting commercial exports for the rifle.
They ... would have been happy to sell it to any other country that was interested.
Now the problem was it was a very expensive rifle.
If you compare it to the other things that were available at the time,
you're talking about double the cost of another typical military 5.56 select-fire rifle.
And there were a few small contracts made for the FAMAS, but generally not many.
Especially not in the F1 pattern.
Saint-Étienne would go ahead, and work on simplifying the rifle, and they came up with
kind of the economy version where they got rid of some of the fancy stuff,
like the bipod and other ... features. And they sold a few of those as well.
They ended up modernising it to a 1 in 9 twist barrel for 62 grain NATO ammunition,
and sold some of those to the French Navy.
As well as a few sold internationally on to various other militaries and security forces.
But in general, the FAMAS F1 didn't really get beyond France.
Now, one of the other things that Saint-Étienne did in an effort to sell more of these guns,
"Like, we've got the tooling all here, thanks to the French Army paying for it.
How else can we make some money on this?"
They made two civilian versions, they had the MAS .222 and the MAS .223.
At the time that this was being done in France, which is like the 1980s,
in France a civilian could effectively not own a firearm in a military calibre.
You sort of could, but they were very heavily regulated, and essentially impossible to get.
However, you could have the same rifle in a non-military calibre much more easily.
And thus we see rifles like the civilian FAMAS, also the SIG-Manurhin 540s,
being manufactured for civilian sale in .222 Remington.
Interestingly, there were some guns like the SIG-Manurhin 542 that were made
commercially in .243 Winchester in order to not be in 7.62 NATO, but that's a separate issue.
Anyway, Saint-Étienne made a commercial semi-auto only
.222 Remington version for sale to civilians in France.
And they also made a .223 version semi-auto only for commercial sale primarily to North America.
About 300 of the .222 calibre rifles were made, and about 250 of the .223s.
Those .223s went to the United States and to Canada where you will still find them.
And there is a tremendous amount of interest in them here
as you'll see if you watch what they go for, which is kind of mind-boggling these days.
So what I figured we would do, since I have access to both of these side by side,
let's take a look and see how the civilian semi-auto version
is different from the original military one.
Should be interesting, let's dig in.
Alright, just to start, these rifles both use the same magazine
which is a proprietary FAMAS magazine. It holds 25 rounds, straight.
These are prone to damage, they are not particularly thick.
They, like the original AR-15 mags,
were sort of intended to be disposable, or at least inexpensive.
And so if you do have these (the magazines are more available than you might expect
because there aren't a ton of the rifles around to use them),
but ... first off if you're buying them,
always make sure to look at the feed lips, and make sure none of them are dented.
And if you have these, be careful with them, take good care of them,
and then they will treat you well.
A quick look at the markings.
These are essentially the import markings that are on the MAS .223.
So it was manufactured by Saint-Étienne,
Manufacture Nationale D'Armes De Saint Etienne, made in France.
They were imported by Century up until 1989,
when the assault weapons import ban went into effect
and prevented stuff like this from coming in.
On the opposite side we will see the actual designation, this is a MAS .223.
"SA" is for semi-auto, that's the serial number, and "B" also indicates that it is semi-auto.
The ones you find in North America are all going to have SA prefixes and B suffixes.
And they'll have serial numbers under about 250.
The .222 one of course will say MAS .222.
Now the real deal FAMAS is the FA, that is Fusil Automatique, or automatic rifle.
MAS, which is Manufacture d'Armes de Saint-Étienne.
5.56-F1, "F1" is the military designation, or the pattern of the rifle.
And then you'll have a serial number down here.
The French military rifles were done in blocks of 100,000 with letter prefixes.
So the military ones, you have A, B, C, and D prefixes, and then there are a number of others.
SP, ... this is basically a factory production F1 pattern rifle that did not go to the French military.
Next up we have the most important difference, which is of course select fire versus semi-auto only.
On our semi-auto rifle you can see that the rear fire control group here
just has this big open ... hollow space in it.
This is a much simplified fire control group, because the standard F1 pattern
has a 3 round burst mechanism built into it, so there's a lot more stuff that goes in.
I will pull these out in a moment and show you what they look like inside.
But just from here, you can actually see that they have
designed the receiver to be slightly different.
This tab at the front of the fire control group is not symmetrical.
On the full-auto one it's offset to the right, and on the semi-auto it's offset to the left.
And that prevents you from taking this fire control housing,
and just dropping it into a semi-auto rifle.
The FAMAS safety is located inside the trigger guard,
kind of like an M1, except that it is a rotary safety.
And on the F1 pattern rifles, we have semi-auto on the right indicated by a "1".
And full-auto on the left indicated by "R" for [Rafale].
And then of course you can choose burst or unlimited full-auto
from the selector lever at the back.
On the semi-autos
we have those same markings, although they don't highlight them.
So there is a "1" right there,
and there is an "R" right there, because they used the same lower polymer piece.
However, the selector lever is semi-auto either way.
So whichever way you turn it, semi-auto,
and then of course back towards the trigger is safe.
Now we have a pair of visually distinctive features on the F1
which are both there for rifle grenades.
The French liked rifle grenades, they used them extensively with these rifles.
And so we have basically a range-setting device here.
This is largely the same idea as on the MAS 49/56
where the further out the ... rifle grenade is held,
the less time it's going to be accelerated when you fire it, and the shorter the range.
So ... for a longer range, you adjust this stop backwards,
it's got a little depressor button right there.
And that is why this has these grooves in the barrel, those are stops for the grenade launcher.
And if you look at them up very close, you can see range numbers there that are set for tens of metres.
So it'll go from 60 metres out to ...
150 metres.
Now to go with those grenades you need a sight.
There was some experimentation with top mounted sights,
but what they ended up doing for the production rifles is a sight here.
This is both front and rear sight of the gun.
You would hold the rifle on its side, (let's see if I can demonstrate this).
So this is horizontal, if I want to fire the grenade I'm going to lift the rifle up like this.
And I'm actually going to push the grenade sight out to the other side,
lift [the rifle] up until the grenade sight is basically horizontal
and pointing at what I want to hit.
And there are two settings of it, there is that setting and that setting,
for two different types of grenades that were used.
On the civilian semi-auto version, all of those features have been removed.
I think not so much because of any legal issue, but because they're just an extra cost.
And why put them on there? Civilians aren't going to be using rifle grenades, right?
So the two mounting points for the grenade sight have been filled in just with solid plugs.
The barrel is smooth. This is a non-mobile element.
Now on the full-auto rifles this actually also acts as the rear support for the bayonet.
Now what they did on the semi-auto rifles is they actually made the muzzle device
larger in diameter than the military one, just a tiny bit,
so that even if you wanted to put a rifle grenade on it, it won't fit over the muzzle device.
That meant, because they did actually sell civilian bayonets with these,
the bayonet had to be slightly different.
So the way this works is the bayonet has two big supports.
It's got a locking bar, right there, that keeps it from coming off.
And it's got a little locator tab, right there, which lines up with this notch in the muzzle device.
So this is one of, those bayonets that fits on top of the barrel.
And to put it on you just slide it on like that, ... depress that lug. This is a little finicky.
There we go, and bayonet's locked in place.
Well you take that military bayonet, and you try and put it on the civilian rifle,
and it's not going to work.
So we have a civilian bayonet which is otherwise identical.
But these muzzle rings are just slightly larger, and it will fit on.
These are really hard to distinguish from the military bayonets
if you don't have like a tape measure or callipers to measure the diameter of those muzzle rings.
The easiest way to find them is that
they were typically included with the rifle when it was originally sold.
So if you find someone who has a semi-auto FAMAS
with the original package of spare parts and cleaning kit,
it may well have a bayonet, and that's the easiest way to find one of the semi-auto bayonets.
For what it's worth, the bayonet was actually developed for the MAS 49/56.
And there are actually two slightly distinct patterns, a 1956 and a 1958.
They differ a little bit in blade design.
They are both usable on the 49/56,
and they are both equally interchangeable on the military FAMAS.
Next up, let's take a look at the sights.
This is our semi-auto, we have a rear aperture sight, and a nice precise narrow front sight post.
And that's kind of all you need, right? ... There's your sights.
Well the military version goes a little bit further,
and it has luminous sights for using at night, so that flips up there.
The issue being an aperture sight is not so great in the dark, it doesn't let a lot of light in.
So instead we have a rear notch sight with two luminous dots.
And then on the front of the rifle we have this front luminous sight
that slides up into place.
... So there's the downward position where it's hidden from view, and you snap it up,
and now you can use it ... with that rear notch.
And these ... backup night sights, are not included on the semi-auto rifles.
Next up, on the F1 you will see ... these two holes in the back of the buttstock,
which are not in the civilian version.
Now those are actually a recoil buffer,
and that was included to sort of tame the recoil impulse on full-auto.
So we can pull the stock off, and you can see that lever right up there.
So ... that is a buffer assembly. This one's not put together, obviously,
but it will be in a moment, there we go. It's going to sit like this in there.
And it is going to absorb the impact of
the last remaining energy from the bolt on its full travel.
So the civilian stock doesn't have it.
There is the plug in the front where you would install the thing,
but you can't really adapt a civilian stock to it.
You can actually kind of see the mould mark where it would have been drilled out. ...
Conveniently, the F1 stock is totally interchangeable.
So if you find an F1 stock ...
it will drop right on your MAS .223 or MAS .222.
And I should say, in semi-auto that buffer really isn't necessary.
It might give you some trivial improvement in handling, but really not a big deal.
Conveniently, we now have the buttstocks removed from these rifles
so I can take out the fire control groups.
If you haven't seen disassembly of a FAMAS, it is super cool and easy.
Note that the captive fire control group pins are ... non-symmetrical,
just like the fire control groups themselves.
So if I pull that pin out, it is captive, and then I can just lift my fire control group out.
Note this has hammer, sear, disconnector, that's it. That's what you need for semi-auto.
The F1 has all sorts of extra junk sitting in the back.
And that is the 3 round burst mechanism, should you want it.
Note that the full-auto one also has an auto-sear,
or a safety sear here, which the semi-auto does not.
So this was redesigned ... to comply with ... French and American and Canadian
semi-auto standards, so that you can't just swap fire control groups over.
And once again, you can see that the cuts for the fire control groups are asymmetrical
so that, again, the two fire control groups can't interchange with each other.
That pretty much covers the differences between the two rifles.
There are a couple of features that I want to point out that are present on both of them.
One of those is a trapdoor compartment in the pistol grip.
This is for carrying a little oil bottle.
These came with all of the semi-auto FAMAS rifles,
as well as of course coming with the military ones as well.
So if you find someone who has the original package of accessories
this should be in there, and that just sits nicely in that trap door.
It's got a good heavily leveraged spring lid. That thing's never falling open, not a problem.
They also have a winter trigger guard system.
So you can take ...
the sheet metal trigger guard, and lift it up off that little peg, rotate it around.
Note that there is a little divot in the plastic for it.
That gets the trigger guard out of the way so that you can use the trigger with heavy gloves.
They would get away from this on the Navy version, the G2 pattern FAMAS,
by giving it a whole-hand handguard instead.
And in addition to that, the bipod legs are exactly the same on both the military and civilian guns.
In fact you can take the upper handguard assembly off.
There's just that one pin holding it in place, pops forward, lifts up.
This will also directly interchange to one of the semi-auto rifles.
In fact, if you find yourself one of the PGMP handguard assemblies
that has a [Picatinny] rail on the top ... for optics,
that will also drop directly onto a MAS .222 or MAS .223, which is pretty cool.
And I would just remind you guys, one of the cool design elements in the FAMAS
is that the barrel and the bipod legs are both free-floated.
So the way this thing works, there is a tube extending from the receiver here,
and that's to support the charging handle itself, and the charging handle tube.
But if you look at that from the front, you'll see that it does not actually contact the barrel.
So the front sight is fixed to the barrel, the rear sight is fixed to the barrel.
Note that the rear sight is not actually touching the charging handle tube.
This, by the way, is your elevation zero.
So you take the handguard off to ... change the mechanical zero of the rifle.
Anyway, this lug right here on the front of the charging handle block,
that is what fits into this bracket, and that's what supports the handguard.
So the bipod legs are in effect supported by this bracket,
which is connected here to the receiver,
and to this extension tube, and does not actually touch the barrel.
So you can drop this thing onto the bipod,
and you can actually put pressure on the bipod without affecting your point of aim.
So one of the cool things for anyone who owns a semi-auto MAS .222 or .223
is if you want to have it look like a military pattern rifle,
you can take the military style stock with the recoil buffer in it, you can drop that on.
And you can take any of the upper assemblies, say a PGMP with an EOTech,
and we can ...
drop that on as well. This is a little more finicky because it
has ... a more precise lock-up down here because it does have an optic actually on it.
So there you can turn your MAS .223 into
a semi-auto lookalike of the military rifle, which is pretty cool.
It's a lot easier to do than on a lot of other styles of semi-auto rifle.
It doesn't get you the barrel, but everything else is there.
So a big thank you to Woody's Weapons and Sienna Armoury for giving me access
to these rifles to take a look at.
It is not very often that you run across either of these, especially the original F1.
Those are extremely scarce here in the United States because so few of them did get
outside of ... French military hands.
So hopefully you guys enjoyed the video. Now if you find yourself out looking for a MAS .223
you have a pretty good idea of how it's going to differ from the original military pattern.
I should point out, in practical terms for actual handling and shooting,
all of these changes are basically nil.
Even things like the recoil buffer doesn't actually make much difference in practical terms.
In fact, I believe Bloke on the Range has a video where they are trying out
the gun with and without the recoil buffer, side by side.
So if I can find that video, I'll include it in the end cards here.
Anyway, hopefully you guys enjoyed it.
Thanks for watching.