Hey guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I'm here today at RIA, taking a look at an extremely cool pistol.
This is a Chinese Type 64 silenced or suppressed pistol.
It may look like a Makarov with a funky sort of silencer on it, but it's not.
This is actually a mechanically totally unique built from scratch pistol design
intended specifically to be a suppressed pistol.
It has a lot of really cool elements to it.
Now, this was developed in 1964. It was first issued by the Chinese military,
granted as a very specialized sort of item in very limited numbers.
First issued in 1965, they were used in the Vietnam war as far as we can tell.
And it actually only lasted a couple of years before it was replaced by a different design,
but we'll touch on that in a moment.
To start with, it has a nine round single stack magazine.
And it uses interestingly basically .32 rimless a 7.65x17mm cartridge,
which is basically identical to the dimensions of .32 ACP.
However the .32 ACP is a semi-rimmed cartridge.
It has just a little bit of a rim sticking out from the base of the case that it uses to head space.
The cartridge that was designed for this takes that rim off makes it completely rimless
head spaces on the mouth of the cartridge as do all standard modern cartridges.
And really simplifies some of the mechanics involved, the .32 ACP is a dated cartridge.
Now, ballistically this is virtually identical to .32 ACP.
It's a 74 grain bullet at 790 ft/s.
There was ... if you read some of the the websites about this
they'll talk about how it was only effective to like 15 meters
There's a bit of a misunderstanding going on there,
the Chinese also did make a version of this cartridge
with basically a frangible bullet in a plastic sabot.
And that was intended for basically like airline security use,
where you could fire it inside something like an airliner,
and not have to worry about it penetrating the skin of the aircraft
or presumably going through the bad guy into a good guy.
So there's a little confusion that cartridge was used in this pistol
but the standard ammunition was just as effective as .32 ACP, nothing like a 15m maximum range.
Anyway, I would like to definitely pull this apart and show you exactly how it works inside,
because it's all totally unique which is awesome.
Seriously, this thing just looks incredibly cool, whoever designed this had a fantastic aesthetic sense.
So, a couple things to point out before we dig into the mechanics.
The only markings on this are a serial number on the breach block and the frame.
This ... I'm sure serial number started at 100,000 and this is gun No. 67.
I've seen a couple, and they pretty much all have like two and three digit serial numbers,
they did not make many of these.
There is also a serial number on the magazine which doesn't quite match on this one.
For controls we have a manual safety right there
which is also going to lock the slide in place, prevents the trigger from doing anything.
With the safety disengaged we have a double action trigger pull,
you can manually cock it there, you have just a little bit of an exposed nub of a hammer.
The suppressor here has its main body in line with the barrel of course
but then it also has the secondary expansion chamber under the barrel
to make it a little more quiet to give it a little more volume.
But that does not interfere with use of the sights. So
You have sights set up right on top of the slide there like so, pretty typical sights.
This configuration actually reminds me quite a lot of the very recently produced
SilencerCo Maxim 9 which has the same sort of idea
in sort of an equally sci-fi but in a different way sort of look.
In fact a lot of elements of this pistol remind me of the Maxim 9.
It's not mechanically the same, but a lot of the setup is similar, which I think is simply
because the basic principles for developing an integrally silenced pistol ...
you know, are the same for both guns.
All right, we have one more control here, and that is this toggling switch in the breech block,
And what this does - I'll show you how it works uh in just a moment,
but what this does is locks the breech block.
Now it does it in an interesting way where I can always ... (cock the hammer there)
no matter what I've done with this latch I can always open breach,
however it will only cycle when fired if it is in this position with a little A visible there.
If you put it over into this position on the right, you can cycle it manually
but the gun will stay shut when it fires,
which means you don't have the action noise of that which doesn't sound like a lot.
But if that's the only thing that you're hearing
because .32 ACP is a very small volume case,
and it's not going to produce all that much noise to begin with
and this suppressor is probably pretty effective at quieting it down.
That leaves this action noise as a pretty substantial thing.
And so they wanted to have the option to lock the pistol.
If you use that of course it means every time you fire,
you have to then manually rack the action to eject the spent case and load a new cartridge.
But that's just the trade-off of having a suppressed pistol.
We have a heel magazine release, this looks very much like a Makarov magazine,
but it is not quite directly interchangeable.
We have a screw that holds the suppressor assembly in place here,
and I am actually going to screw that slightly in, there we go.
That is a set screw, and when it's threaded out, it prevents this from moving.
but when I screw it in, then I can unscrew this over the top of it.
The trigger guard here does fold down once I've got this out of the way.
All right, and then, almost there.
All right, then I can pull the suppressor off.
So that is the actual barrel, it's it's only a three inch barrel in this thing.
If we put the suppressor body lined back up,
that's how far the barrel actually goes in the suppressor.
Now we can take this all out,
this stack of ...
stuff ... it's actually going to be easier to go from the front.
Front section is threaded on.
So here is our stack of baffling material,
however we have the secondary compartment down underneath.
I can take out this plug,
(there we go)
and down in there we have this interesting situation
where there is a spacer that divides that chamber in half.
So there's the separator plate,
the top chamber above it just acts as more space for the initial volume of gas,
However if we look at the front there is a little vent port that runs down into the bottom,
which is where gas comes into this metal mesh in the bottom chamber,
so it's actually deliberately split into two pieces you know for a good reason.
And this acts to take the gas after it has gotten past the initial set of metal mesh,
and then once it gets to here it gives it just yet more space to go into
to presumably attenuate the sound even more.
Now if we take a look at this stack of baffles and such
we have the threaded plug at the front,
there is then a metal cap to line up this guy,
we have a pair of rubber ... these are in fact rubber, rubber baffles,
whether these were originally wipes? I am not sure.
If they were, they've been fired enough that they have solid, you know, holes through them.
Although it's worth pointing out that these are not 32 caliber holes,
so this will still seal around the bullet a little bit when you fire.
There's another sort of alignment spacer at the back.
And then we have ... that brass mesh is very tightly packed in there and doesn't want to come out,
but what we have here is a big roll of brass mesh
which will take a substantial amount of time for gas to infiltrate this
this slows down a lot of the gas coming out of the pistol.
This sort of mesh is very common on early suppressor designs.
If you look at the US M3 Grease Gun suppressor,
that's how it works and lots of other suppressors from the period.
All right, that was the suppressor, how about the pistol itself?
We will start by removing the recoil spring.
So when I rack this you'll notice there is a guide rod right up here above the chamber,
also reminiscent of the Maxim 9
And to remove that we have this screw,
but it doesn't unscrew you just push it in rotate it 90 degrees and it unlocks,
and then, you can see this plug right there is what would normally lock into that little socket.
So we can pull that out, that's the recoil spring.
Now the breech assembly the bolt will only come back to here and then it stops,
we actually have a little locking catch holding it in place,
so what I need to do is take this screw
which also does not unscrew it's just a spring-loaded lever basically.
And what I want to do is rotate it forward about 45 degrees, and then ... there we go.
Then I can pop the breech block off
So what that screw is actually doing is taking the this sort of horseshoe-shaped lug
and rotating it forward like that.
So when it's in the upward position, it blocks the bolt from coming off the back of the gun,
which is important when it's cycling.
But I can hold it forward, and that does allow the breech block to come off, so.
The other elements in there are pretty simple,
we just have the hammer right there, this is hammer fired. That's actually pretty much it.
I should point out we have a pair of locking recesses right here,
that is how the slide lock actually works.
So what we have here is basically ... well, basically like an AK bolt.
We have this round lug on the stem of the bolt,
and that is going to move and interact with this round track in the breech.
So this ... the bolt would actually be that direction,
when the breech comes all the way forward it forces this AK bolt to rotate,
and when it rotates, those two lugs lock into position behind these two or in these two recesses,
that prevents the gun from cycling because the bolts locked in the closed position.
However if you manually pull the breech block back,
what you're going to do is use that cam pin ...
(Okay I've got this upside down, that's how it ought to be)
If you pull the bolt back manually that cam pin will force the bolt to rotate like that,
and then it can cycle.
So, that's what it's doing when you have it set to the slide locked closed position.
Now if you switch this lever
what you're doing is basically locking off the back end of that cam track
which prevents the bolt from being able to rotate which means that it stays in an unlocked position
which means the pistol will cycle as a simple blowback.
So the confusing part here for some people I think is going to be the idea that
this has locking lugs but it's a simple blowback,
and that's because if the locking lugs have been engaged the pistol does not cycle manually,
they're literally there to lock the thing in the closed position, and to not allow it to move.
Now one might question whether this is actually ... like is this actually a more effective way to do this
than just to ... say use this catch on the safety to lock the slide forward,
because that's how a lot of other suppressed pistols have ... you know,
a non-semi auto, a manual operation mode,
just physically hold the slide shut and don't let it move.
That would work just fine, the Chinese put a lot more engineering development into this concept
in order to give it an automated sort of ... a mechanical locking system on the inside like this.
I've reassembled the bolt back in there,
and so when this is set to semi-auto mode, you can see that the locking lugs don't move,
... the whole bolt head, the whole bolt itself doesn't move.
If I flip this over, now you can see that the bolt is able to rotate down into those locking lugs.
So, in this position, if I pull this back,
I'm using the breech block here to actually rotate the bolt before it can open like that.
If it's just back pressure as in simple blowback handgun pushing on the bolt
that doesn't cause it to rotate and so it won't cycle,
even though I can manually cycle it very easily.
Here's the Type 64 all field stripped.
I think this is extremely cool
for the the complexity that went into its design that didn't really need to be there probably
and we kind of see that with its replacement.
All right, one last thing I want to show you guys is the holster that came with this pistol.
Although holster is maybe a little generous,
this is more like a belt attachment for the pistol,
because this holster does not cover really anything important to the gun.
So it leaves the trigger open, it leaves the muzzle open, it leaves the ejection port open,
there's actually an ejection port cut into this holster.
It has a clip, so that you can actually carry the thing on a belt.
And it does cover the safety, so you can't activate the safety.
But you could presumably leave this in double action mode,
whip it off your belt, and fire the thing without having to take it out of the holster,
which for a sneaky pistol like this is intended to be
that I suppose makes some sense for its application.
But that's the holster that it came in.
As I mentioned earlier, this pistol was only used for a couple years before it was replaced.
It was replaced by the Type 67, 1967.
And basically what they did is they cut the weight almost in half.
This thing weighs like 1.8 kilo, it's about a 4 pound pistol, it's a very chunky dense pistol.
With the Type 67, they simplified a lot of things. They definitely simplified the suppressor.
They certainly would have made it cheaper and easier to manufacture
and they also cut the weight down by about half a kilo,
bringing it down to about 2.3 pounds or [1.05] kilos. So, a lot of ... some definite improvements.
The Type 67 doesn't look as cool,
it doesn't have kind of the swoopy sci-fi lines of the Type 64 here,
but it does make a lot more sense, so.
That is the story of an exceptionally cool pistol.
I am very happy to have gotten a chance to film this.
You might wonder by the way how on earth does someone get one of these,
well the answer is you get this by being Mitchell WerBell III
who is the guy ... who founded SIONICS and partnered up with Gordon Ingram to
... basically to make the MAC-10 a commercially successful enterprise.
He is an extremely colorful character with all sorts of real and maybe fictitious exploits
but this pistol actually came out of his family collection.
He passed away actually ... boy, like 35 years ago,
but it would appear that some of his guns have stayed in the family until just recently.
So, hopefully you guys enjoyed the video. Thanks for watching.