Hey guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I'm here today at Rock Island
taking a look at a very interesting rifle.
This was manufactured by Manurhin in France.
It is a civilian, semi-auto only, licensed copy of the SIG 542,
which is the full-size version of the SIG 540,
which is the intermediate rifle that would replace
the Sturmgewehr 57 in Swiss service
with the Sturmgewehr 90 or SIG 550.
Do I have enough confusing numbers in there yet?
Let's go back to the beginning of where this thing actually came from, which is 1963.
And in that year SIG and Beretta teamed up to have a collaborative development effort
to create a small bore (it wasn't 5.56 at the time necessarily), but a small bore 5.56 calibre combat rifle.
They saw the writing on the wall that the days of the full-power infantry cartridge
like 7.62 NATO or 7.5 Swiss, those days were coming to an end.
And militaries were going to be looking for rifles more like the M16,
small bore, lightweight, that sort of thing.
So they decided to get together to come up with something, and it didn't work out well.
By 1967 ... this whole effort dissolved, the two companies split, went their separate ways.
Beretta took the work that they had done and used it to develop the Beretta AR70,
which is a subject for separate videos.
SIG took the work that had been done and used it to develop the SIG 530,
which was sort of a scaled-down Sturmgewehr 57.
It wasn't roller delayed, it was actually roller locked with a gas piston operating system.
And it was a relatively complicated and definitely expensive, a very Swiss sort of rifle.
And the Swiss military wasn't really all that excited about it.
It was too complicated, too expensive, and it became clear pretty darn quickly
that that rifle wasn't going to go anywhere.
They needed something that was substantially cheaper and simpler.
And so that led to the development of the SIG 540, 530 to 540.
Still in 5.56, although at the time they were experimenting with a variety of potential calibres.
There was a 5.8mm cartridge they were looking at, there was a 6.45mm cartridge they were looking at.
Ultimately it would become 5.56 NATO.
But, while they were doing this development what they came up with was kind of a cribbing of the AK.
It is gas piston operated, it has a two lug rotating bolt very similar to an AK,
it has a lot of stamped sheet metal construction.
And this would prove to be the successful rifle for SIG.
The 540 would be developed into the 541,
which ... would then actually be adopted as the Sturmgewehr 90 and become the SIG 550.
... They made a couple hundred thousand of them, and they are the current armament of the Swiss military.
However, while they were doing this development, they wanted to hedge their bets.
Because they were pretty sure that 5.56, or its comparative equivalents, were what the Swiss would choose.
But you can never be totally sure. And I will point out, as a good historical parallel,
this is why the US ended up adopting the Garand. Because through all of the Garand development
it looked like .276 was going to be the cartridge that would be used.
And the Pedersen rifle, the primary competitor against the Garand, was made in .276.
John Garand had the Garand in .276, but John Garand also hedged his bets and made a version of the M1,
(well, before it was the M1), he made a version of his rifle in .30-06 calibre.
And when there was an abrupt change in US military requirements
(thank you Douglas MacArthur), and it became necessary to have .30-06,
Garand was there ready with a rifle that was well developed. Pedersen didn't have one.
So the Swiss, whether or not they had any specific thought to that example,
they wanted to avoid the same situation, or rather SIG wanted to avoid the same situation.
Should the Swiss military decide that, yeah, they actually do want to keep 7.5 Swiss,
they wanted to have a version of this rifle available for it.
And so they basically just scaled up the 540 a little bit
to ... use a cartridge the size of 7.62 NATO or 7.5 Swiss.
They designated that the 542, and they made small numbers of those.
Now the Swiss wouldn't end up adopting it, but it was licensed out for commercial sale.
Now, (boy, there's a lot of backstories and corners that we have to touch on in this video),
Swiss law at the time made it very difficult for a Swiss company to export military arms.
And so SIG couldn't sell military contracts of the 540 or 542 internationally.
They could develop it for the Swiss military, but that's it.
So what they did instead is they licensed this design to Manurhin of France.
This was a company that after World War Two did a whole bunch of licensed manufacturing.
They made a whole bunch of Walther pistols: you'll find Manurhin P1s, which are basically a copy of the P38,
Manurhin copies of the PP and PPK pistols.
This was a very talented and effective firm.
And they got the license to make SIG 540s and 542s under license.
And the Foreign Legion actually adopted some of their 540s before the FAMAS was available.
And for civilian sale (because this was still legal at the time, semi-automatic rifles for civilian sale),
they made versions of both rifles.
However, French law didn't allow the civilian ownership of military calibres, or it was very heavily restricted,
so instead of making the 540 in .223 (or 5.56mm), they made the 540 in .222 Remington.
And instead of making this, the 542, in 7.62 NATO they made it in .243 Winchester.
Which is a really interesting choice. This I imagine would be an extremely pleasant gun to shoot.
This is basically 7.62 NATO scaled down to 6mm, ... that's a very intriguing idea.
So, only a small number of these were manufactured, they didn't sell very well.
Ultimately SIG would also get a license with FAMAE in Chile, who still makes these rifles to this day
and has had better success in selling them internationally than Manurhin did.
But now I'm getting ahead of myself.
Let's actually take this thing apart and let me show you what the SIG 540 family actually is.
OK, we have a lot to go through on this rifle, so let's start with some markings.
So this was manufactured by Manurhin, it was licensed from SIG.
And the Manurhin designation for this rifle is CSA, which I think is
Carbine, Semi-Automatic [MR], .243 Winchester,
because of course they didn't make this in NATO military calibres.
We have a serial number over here.
We also have a selector switch, which has this cool feature of a single port
showing you what the current setting is. Obviously this is semi-automatic only, so it's single and safe.
This has a proprietary scope mount on it, which is actually pretty cool.
There's a release button here, and a spring-loaded plunger in the back,
and a little triangular locking lug in the front.
So if I push the button, that unlocks the scope, and then I can just push it backwards,
lift it up, and it comes right off the rifle.
Now this locks in place using ... these angled surfaces, which lock onto this angled lug.
And then we have a hole in the rear sight block
that fits the rear peg on the scope.
This scope itself here is German, made by Hensoldt.
They made these scopes for a variety of different rifles,
but some of them were actually basically manufacturer marked for SIG.
So this is specifically a SIG 542 marked scope.
I believe that indicates that it will actually have a 7.62 NATO elevation dial on it,
which isn't actually quite the same as .243 that the rifle is chambered in.
But this is the proper scope for a SIG 542.
The magazine release is just a simple sort of an AK-style paddle lever.
We have a 20 round magazine.
Pretty sure this is the exact same magazine that you would use for 7.62 NATO,
and it also fits .243, so that's helpful and convenient.
As for iron sights, we have a nice square post in the front.
Adjustable for elevation to zero the thing.
With a couple of angled sight protectors on it.
The rear sight is very similar to an HK pattern rear sight.
It's a vertically rotating drum with four apertures,
we have actually a 50 metre, and then 100, 200, and 300 metre apertures.
And this is adjustable for windage.
So you can windage zero the rear, you can elevation zero the front,
and that's how you get everything dialled in.
This is gas-piston operated, and we have an adjustable gas block at the front.
So 1 is for standard use, 0 cuts off the gas system entirely for using rifle grenades,
and 2 is for use when the rifle is excessively dirty, or when you need more gas in the system.
We also have a very simple integral bipod on the rifle.
So there's a little stud down here that the bipod mounts onto.
You've got two legs, there's a little bit of pivot to the bipod.
The legs don't lock in position, so you can pull back against the legs because they'll ...
run into the mounting block here if you pull the rifle back.
But they're just spring loaded to stay out, so if you push into the rifle the bipod will collapse down.
And there's no adjustability, no special feet.
You can see that the foot of the bipod here is just simple bent sheet steel.
So kind of a utilitarian thing, this is similar to a lot of other rifles being designed around that period.
Some of the Berettas of the time have integral bipods, of course the Israeli Galils did as well.
Now as for construction of the gun, both the upper and the lower are just simple stamped sheet steel.
And internally this is actually relatively similar to the AK.
So I can pop this pin out, which allows me to pivot the upper and lower apart.
The ... rear pin is captive the front pin is not,
and for normal service you would not need to take the front pin out.
... I can pull that pin out, and then the lower assembly pops right off the gun.
Inside here is of course the trigger mechanism. We have the trigger return spring, right there.
We have the hammer spring up here, offset to the side. It is hammer fired of course.
Not a whole lot else going on there.
Note that up here we have just this fairly thin sheet-metal magazine well,
that is reinforced with two additional components welded in there.
Oh, and the pistol grip has storage inside, you can stick whatever you want in there.
Now, in order to take the bolt out what I have to do is release the charging handle.
It's the charging handle that locks the spring and operating rod up here to the bolt carrier.
And to do that I'm going to pull this little catch backwards,
and then I can pull the charging handle out.
And then the bolt and carrier
come out the back of the rifle.
And that, you may notice, looks very much like an AK bolt, obviously it's not interchangeable.
But that is your multi-lug rotating AK bolt.
This track is exactly the same in concept to an AK.
We basically have an AK pattern bolt carrier here,
just with the gas piston not permanently attached to the bolt carrier.
So that's unlocked. When the gun goes into battery the bolt rotates 90 degrees.
And ... it's going to rotate to there, that is the locked position.
The lower handguard is held in place by two little spring plungers connected to this,
so if you pull that back, you can then lift off the lower handguard.
Honestly, this is kind of flimsy, fragile feeling plastic.
It ... feels kind of cheap compared to the rest of the rifle,
and it's very distinctive of these SIG-Manurhin rifles.
I'm not sure exactly why they did that, but that's what you've got there.
The green is also of course very distinctive.
Now you can see the rear trunnion in there.
This has been welded into the front of the stamped upper receiver, again very much like an AK.
So we've got our locking lugs in there. You can see the back of the operating rod.
The gas piston and operating rod are the same component, this is where it locks into the bolt.
Now let's go ahead and take the rest of the upper assembly off.
On the SIG we can actually very easily take off the entire gas block, which is fairly unusual.
To do this we simply take this screw (it's not actually a screw), rotate it 90 degrees.
Note that this arrow is kind of pointing in the direction of which way the gas block's going to go.
So when the arrow is pointing that way, the gas block just slides right off the barrel.
You can see there's a semi-circular cut right there,
and the gas block itself
has a rotary lug in it, right there, that will lock it in place.
Also note while we're looking in here, those are your three gas settings.
So there's a small one, a large one, and a solid one.
And ... when you rotate the indicator at the front
you are changing which one of those actually feeds into the gas system.
So there's one hole down in there, that feeds up into here.
So that's what you're changing on the gas block.
Now that we have the gas block off, I can remove the gas tube.
It's just going to slide out the front like so.
And once the gas tube is off, that was the only thing holding the upper handguard in place.
So that comes off as well,
and presto, there's our barrelled action
... just with this sort of handguard retainer and bipod block.
So the way this works when it actually cycles
is that the ... spring tube is large enough to house this entire thing,
but right here on the trunnion, the diameter steps down so that only the internal guide rod can get through,
not the spring itself.
So the spring and op rod go to here, and then they stop.
And when the piston gets pushed back, the spring is held right here,
and the spring actually compresses as the bolt goes backwards.
So this looks like it's operating ... in tension, the opposite of a typical rifle mainspring.
But in reality they just flipped it and moved the spring
to be in front of the bolt instead of behind the bolt.
So there is a fully field stripped SIG Manurhin SG 542.
Really it's actually a very simple, easy gun to take apart.
This requires literally no tools to do any of this,
with I suppose the exception of a screwdriver to open the gas block.
But that can just as easily be done with the rim of a cartridge case.
You can actually take the gas system apart without having to separate the upper and lower assemblies.
It's easy to pull the ... entire gas block off for cleaning, which is a pretty neat and fairly unusual feature.
The whole thing is really just a very well thought out rifle which is why,
with really only a few fairly minor modifications,
it would go on to be adopted in 5.56 calibre by the Swiss Army
as the Sturmgewehr 90 as its new standard infantry rifle.
These are really quite scarce rifles today ... for two reasons.
First off, Manurhin didn't make all that many because there wasn't a huge demand for them.
And because importation of rifles like this was prohibited in the US in 1989.
So the only ones that are available are the small handful that came into the US before that.
Now these ... weren't exclusive to the US, frankly had they been they probably would have been in 7.62 NATO
because that wouldn't have been a problem to sell in the United States.
But these were sold across Europe, France and elsewhere.
And they are still around in Europe, as well as this small batch here in the United States.
So this particular one is actually out of the collection of Larry Vickers, which is cool.
The scope is a really cool add-on to it as well.
So, hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
Thanks for watching.