Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at Rock Island
taking a look at a CETME Sport
with an extremely unusual buttstock on it.
This is the stock that was developed for the CETME Modelo 1958 or Modelo B
for specifically vehicle crew and paratrooper use.
And, oh boy, I can very clearly see why this didn't go into extended service, and why this is so rare today.
So what we have here is actually a CETME Sport rifle.
This is one of the guns that was imported for the Mars Equipment Corporation in the 1960s,
... in fact the very first imported batch of CETME rifles.
And there's a little bit of a mix going on here because this rifle is a CETME Model C,
which means it was ... built for 7.62 NATO.
Where this stock was actually issued on CETME Modelo B rifles,
which were ... chambered in ... what's called the 7.62 CETME cartridge.
Which is dimensionally identical to 7.62 NATO, but loaded to a lower pressure
because the early CETME rifles had ... originally been designed for a substantially lighter pressure cartridge,
and the Spanish had some issues just trying to run them with full-pressure NATO ammunition.
It could be done, but the guns didn't last all that long.
So what would ultimately happen is the Modelo B was adopted in 1958,
including small numbers with these stocks for vehicle crews and paratroopers.
By ... 1964 they had developed the Modelo C version in 7.62 NATO.
And by the early 1970s they had basically updated everything that was in service to the new C pattern/style.
So, let me show you this thing up close, because that's a very interesting stock.
Alright, there are our receiver markings.
This being a Mars import gun, they did also put scope mounting points on the receivers.
There's the marking on the gun on this side.
So this is actually, even without that really interesting buttstock,
this is a genuinely very valuable, very collectible, very early CETME rifle.
Note that we have the early CETME pattern of rear sight here,
which is a sort of a four aperture rotating system.
... Germany, when they adopted this rifle, of course would go to a drum
that rotates on the vertical axis.
OK, now the stock here looks like an AK underfolding stock,
however it is actually a top-folding stock.
And the butt plate is locked in place by this catch right there.
So to deactivate that you actually have to pull this spring latch backwards,
and then you can rotate the butt plate (we actually want it to go that way).
And then you have to press both of these releases, and then you can fold the buttstock.
It's going to go up over the top like that.
Now the issue that we have here is this stock is very short,
however the length of pull is actually totally standard.
So, if I compare this to, say, a Polytech underfolding AK,
(which is a straight copy of the Chinese Type 56),
you'll see that I've got the triggers in the same place
and the buttstock is at the same length. That's the length of pull.
And that would make you think that, OK, this is actually going to be a reasonably comfortable rifle to shoot.
The problem is with the location of where your face needs to go to get the sights.
And that's like here. And you'll notice on the AK
you can put your face there without any problem, not quite so much on the CETME.
Alright, let me see if I can demonstrate this. Hopefully you guys can see what's going on here.
The length of pull like I said is fine, the problem is your cheek wants to sit right here.
So in order to get a sight picture (let's go ahead and use one of the apertures),
that gives me a proper sight picture. And I literally have ... the stock button up my nose doing it.
And the back of the receiver here, which has to be this long to accommodate the recoil buffer
and stop the bolt from coming out the back of the gun,
that thing is resting right on like the lower orbital bone, right in my cheek.
I really can't imagine actually shooting this thing with a proper sight picture and cheek weld.
And I'm really not sure what the designers were thinking with it.
The other cool element on this particular CETME of course is the hand guard.
A number of these rifles that were imported were imported with this metal handguard
with a folding bipod built into it, which gives this a very FAL-like appearance.
This is something that was also adopted in limited numbers by the Spanish military.
And so when Mars imported CETMEs they got a mixture of wood handguards,
which is what we would come to expect on a CETME Model C,
and these metal bipod integrated handguards.
So this particular rifle (which, by the way, is out of Larry Vickers' personal collection),
this one with the metal handguard and that over-folding stock
is a really cool combination of kind of exotic CETME features.
Now the [buttstock] here is interchangeable across any standard pattern of receiver,
it's just attached with these two push pins.
In fact, there should be no reason that we can't just take that off and show you.
So if I pull these two pins
like so, this will just come off the back of the receiver.
It's got a recoil spring in there. It has its own captive recoil spring guide rod,
and we have a recoil buffer built into this end cap.
So this is just a replacement end cap that will go on any standard CETME,
or, I suspect, HK pattern rifle.
In fact, you can see down here that they started with a standard piece of end cap sheet metal,
and then instead of attaching the regular wood stock,
which has plenty of room for the recoil buffer in it (or plastic stock),
they went ahead and added this extra extension at the back to house that recoil buffer.
While I have seen pictures of this stock, as far as I can recall,
this is the first time I've ever actually seen one of them in real life, and it's pretty cool.
... In some ways it's more fun to see the stuff that was not very well thought out
than some of the things that were thought out.
Because if it was thought out well, it ... tends to become pretty darn popular.
And it's this kind of thing that becomes rare and exotic. So hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
Thanks for watching.