There we go.
Got a failure to feed, it engaged,
there we go.
Do one more. Alright, we'll do one more.
That new clip latch style on the 1918 here, definitely holds this in more solidly than the 1917 did.
And the trigger is a little lighter than I was anticipating.
Alright, let's fire another clip. Going to slide this in here,
you want to make sure the clip goes all the way in. And then there's not really anything locking it in place here.
It's held in by this bottom cover, so if you shake it
you could get the clip to fall out during the loading process.
To avoid that, make sure you just keep the gun horizontal while you're doing this.
Give it a nice little smack to engage this locking tab,
and then
pull the bolt back, let it forward, and you're loaded and ready to go.
Couple of times this has given me failures to feed on the very last round in the clip.
What's happening is it's engaging the hold open. There we go.
Whoo-hoo, that's toasty hot.
Hold the bolt release down.
That works too.
Alright, 5 rounds for the 1917.
Easier to load.
Locks open when empty.
So what's kind of interesting here, when we load this, and this is the same on the 1917 and the 1918,
we're going to pop the magazine open, and by the way, this is exactly where the bolt locks open normally.
So when you fire it dry that's what it's going to do, and then
(a little awkward doing this backwards here, there we go),
then we're going to put the clip in,
close the cover, clip's loaded. Now if we look at where the ... cartridge is sitting,
(sorry, get this in frame, there we go), you'll see the bolt is actually ahead
of the base of the cartridge. So in order to actually load this
I have to pull the bolt all the way back, at which point the top cartridge pops up,
and then goes into battery.
- Alright, so we got both of these things here at the same time, how cool is that?
- It's pretty cool, you can't say that happens often. - No, not so much.
I don't know when the last time one of these was fired at all was. - Let alone beside one of these.
- Yeah. So which ... do you like better? - It's a tough decision, they both have their advantages and disadvantages.
The rifle is a bit easier to shoot to be honest. - It is, it's softer shooting, recoil's a little softer, muzzle doesn't climb as much.
- The one downside though is the clips, or the lack of availability I should say.
This one takes this proprietary clip, Ian there gets to use a nice Berthier clip, which are relatively easy to find now.
- Now what's interesting, and we were noticing this as we've been doing some shooting,
the clips were intended to be disposable. - Yes.
- And they actually do deform. Using the clips deforms them because, well, we'll show you close up in a minute,
but basically you're forcing the cartridge out through the feed lips, and they kind of get bent up.
- Yeah, because the rim's travelling through there, it's fanning it open to the size of the rim.
- Yeah, so ... some people are going to say well Berthier clips are like impossible to find.
Well, compared to those things, these are no big deal. - Good luck finding one of these.
- It's definitely worth realising that if you have one of those original clips you are going to damage it by using it.
- You will. You got to be careful and just keep an eye on that. - Exactly.
- And you'll discover this for sure when you get it a little bit too bent and it starts causing malfunctions.
- Yes, because it will start causing...
- Yeah, it already has on us today, so. Alright, so we should do some shooting with these, and not just yabber about them.
Maybe. If I can get this one to load. There we go.
Good? - Good. - Alright, start us off.
- Whoo, eating brass.
- We kind of constantly have last round feed malfunctions on these things.
It's like the cartridge goes slightly nose up and a little bit forward, and then the bolt hold open engages,
stops the bolt, so then you have to grab the bolt hold open, disengage it, and then you can feed the last round.
That's on both guns, so it's clearly not one specific clip. Because they're even totally different clip designs.
- Yeah, so it's definitely something in the design. - Yeah.
- Very nice. Now the advantage of the 1918 is that I have another clip here to shoot.
- Exactly, and I have to go cry, or reload that. - Yep.
There's our last round feed malfunction. Actually here, let's show the camera this.
So that's what we've got. You can see the cartridge kind of noses up and goes forward.
And in order to solve this we have to pull the bolt back, but of course now
the bolt hold open is engaging.
And it's an interesting quirk of this design that the bolt hold open is located
forward of the base of the cartridge.
So this is actually farther forward than the bolt would be when it's feeding.
Which is odd, ... it will probably occur to me why they did that, but at the moment I'm not sure of it.
So what we have to do is pull the bolt back, there we go.
And now we can fire the last shot. Would you like?
- I'll take the honour, thank you.
- Last round.
Yeah, alright. So this is the clip that we've been using, this is the only clip we have.
If you look at the top here, you'll see the feed lips are actually pretty kind of bent out of the way, out of the centre.
On this, this is the better side of the clip, these feed lips are bent more inwards.
So what's happening here when we feed we've got this curved surface, the curved indented area,
that's what's controlling the rim of the cartridge. These clips actually work really well,
they hold the cartridges nice and firmly, nice and stable.
But (I'll use this side because it's already getting bent),
when they feed out, you can see that the rim of the cartridge pulls the clip all the way open like that.
Now when I do this by hand it's kind of self-centering in this middle section of the clip.
The problem is when this is actually feeding into the gun
the cartridge is actually pulling out the top of these feed lips at the same time,
and that's contributing to it bending ... the feed lips,
really ... getting the curvature out and bending them straight.
... This is something that's definitely I think worth knowing for owners of these guns with original clips.
These clips are hard to find, and they're expensive when you do find them.
So you should know that you will potentially damage them by using them. There are reproductions out there as well.
The reproductions as manufactured don't actually fit guns, which is unfortunate,
but you can make them fit, tweak them, grind on them a little bit. And so for owners who want to shoot 1917 RSC rifles
definitely I would recommend using the reproduction clips, if you have any way to get ahold of them.
Now the same thing does also happen on the Berthier style clips.
Berthier clips are a little bit more flexible in the first place, the metal is a little bit thinner,
and I think they might be a little bit more resilient to this. They're certainly a lot easier to find,
not super-easy any more, but way easier to find Berthier clips than RSC clips, so.
A big thanks to Paul who owns both of these rifles and was willing to let me take them apart
and take them out shooting and bring you guys this cool footage. So thanks Paul.
And if you enjoy seeing this sort of thing on-line, do consider checking out my Patreon page.
It's support from viewers like you, a buck a month over there,
that makes it possible for me to travel, find guns like this, and bring them to you guys.
Thanks for watching.