Going hot!
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am joined today by Chris,
who is a former Marine Corps armourer who works for Bear Arms down in Scottsdale.
This is the Bear Arms reference collection Browning M2
So we just took a look at the internals and the history of this, and how it works yesterday.
If you didn't see that video, you should go back and check it out.
Today we're going to do some shooting with it. But you may notice there's no barrel in it.
This is a serious piece of equipment,
this isn't just another AR that you go down on the range and do some shooting.
There's some basically mechanical ... safety checks we have to do first.
And that would be setting the headspace and the timing of the gun.
So ... start us off here, what are the headspace and timing?
- So headspace is going to be essentially the distance between the breech face of the bolt in here
and the actual chamber of the barrel itself.
And we have a headspace gauge, which is that piece right there.
It has a go side and a no-go side.
We're going to pull this charging handle back a 16th of an inch once we've got the barrel in there,
and check that the go side goes in, and the no-go side does not.
- So the idea with this is the barrel is removable, which is important for moving this thing around
because it's like 100 pounds with the barrel in the gun.
And not only is the barrel removable, but the barrel is adjustable,
so you can actually adjust the headspace.
Now on normal firearms the headspace is adjusted once at the factory.
They put the barrel in, set the headspace,
and fix the barrel in place with a cross pin or some other mechanism.
And that's so that you don't have to deal with this every time you want to go shooting.
The idea with these guns is that they wanted to be able to continue to use the barrels
even if they were shot a lot and the headspace started to change.
You just readjust the headspace and you can keep shooting them,
because that's a really expensive, huge, stellite-lined barrel.
So we'll go through that process, and then we also have timing.
Now timing is something we generally also don't have to deal with on a normal gun, what is that?
- Timing is essentially going to be the time at which the trigger is actuated and fires the gun.
And we need to make sure that that's not going to happen too far out of battery essentially.
So if the bolt is open too far the gun won't be able to fire.
- OK - We don't want that to happen.
So we have another go and no-go gauge that we'll use to determine that.
- OK, I'm going to let Chris take over here and show you exactly how that process is done.
- The first step of headspace and timing is going to be installing the barrel.
In order to do that we're going to pull the charging handle back just slightly.
There is a barrel-locking detent you can see through a window here on the side of the gun.
And as we pull that back to the right spot it should look - a little bit further - just like that.
And then we'll be able to thread the barrel in,
like so, until it goes all the way.
And once it's all the way we're going to back it off two clicks.
One, is it right in? One, two, alright.
We backed it off two clicks, and that's our starting position for headspace.
- Now you're actually using the [carry] handle there as a click indicator, right? ...
- Essentially, yeah. - That's pretty cool.
- So ... I usually grab it right about here
because it gives you a little bit more texture to grab onto and move it.
And then next thing we're going to do is we're going to pull this back about a 16th of an inch,
and we're going to take our go side, says "go" right there,
and shove that in. And it does not go in.
So we're going to need to adjust the barrel a little bit further.
So if you can put that in the window again, I'm going to back it off another click.
Try it again.
And that went to the ring. So that's what we want.
We want it to go all the way to that centre ring of the go gauge.
We turn it to the no-go side.
I should put firm pressure on it, enough to leave a mark in your hand,
but ... you don't need to jam that thing in there.
And it should not go in, just like it is.
Alright, so that's our headspace done.
Now what's left is going to be timing.
To do that we remove the back plate of the gun.
And put that off to the side for a second.
And we have a timing wheel in here, it's this right here.
Now to start the timing, what we do is we turn it 15 positions clockwise.
So I'm going to push that 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15.
Alright, so we're going to start right there.
We take our go gauge side, right here.
And these are angle cut, and they need to be angled this way
as we put them right here between the receiver and the barrel itself, just like that.
What we're going to do is attempt to fire the gun.
So I pull up on the trigger bar - nothing happens.
So I'm going to back that up one click, try again.
Nothing happens, back it up one click, try again.
And we're just going to keep going down one click at a time, until I can get that gun to fire.
- Now you basically already had this set, didn't you?
- We did, yeah, I just wanted to show you the full process.
- It's probably going to be approximately 15 clicks.
- Yeah, probably. Right about.
We keep doing this until we get a fire.
There it goes. So once we got it fired I'm going to take that gauge out real quick,
and we're going to recharge the gun, put it back forward again.
Alright, we're going to put the no-go side in, and turn this two more clicks.
So we already went several clicks back to right where it's fired,
but we want to be in the middle of the timing schedule.
So we turn it two more clicks, and we're going to put the no-go side in now.
So we put the no-go side in,
and then we're going to again attempt to fire the gun.
It should not fire on the no-go side.
Then we just double check it by flipping it back to the go,
and attempt to fire - it fires.
So that's the gun headspaced and timed, we just reinstall our back plate.
Gun's ready to go.
Alright, so we're just going to go over a quick loading procedure real quick.
First off, open the top cover.
We grab our belt and make sure we have the female link,
so we want the two end link going this way.
We never want to see one link on that side.
So, we're going to place these just on the other side of the pawl here,
and line it up just like so.
We can go ahead and close the cover at that point.
... Right now it's on the semi-automatic mode right here.
So we're going to put it onto full-auto by pressing that button in,
and rotating this around to lock it in place.
And at that point we'll grab the charging handle, run it once, run it twice.
And now the gun is ready to fire, just flip the safety off and you're ready to go.
- Alright, just one last note. We have this on the pintle locked in horizontal elevation.
... If you have this pintle on a vehicle, which is what it was designed for,
this is the travelling mode so that the gun doesn't bounce around.
And I, just to get started on this at least,
I want to know that I'm not going to be sending rounds up over the back end of the berm.
So we do have a giant mountain as our backstop, but still a little control is a good thing.
So take the safety off. Going hot!
You can certainly tell there's a lot of power coming out the end of that thing.
This jumps around even on a really remarkably stable sort of mount.
So, yeah, I think we'll try this with the elevation unlocked.
Alright, now we can move this thing.
That's an interesting gun to try and keep your sights on target with.
It really bounces around, even as heavy as this thing is.
I said this already, but ... we effectively have six legs of a mount here,
and it's still bucking and rolling when you shoot.
Especially with the tripod elevation unlocked.
Well, I hope you guys enjoyed the video. Thanks for watching.
[ But I still have some more shooting footage... ]