Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian, I am here today at the Rock Island
Auction Company taking a look at some of
the guns they're going to be selling in their
upcoming February of 2017 Regional Auction.
And today we're taking a look at a Remington 700.
Now, you might be thinking, "Yeah, but we've got a lot of electronic technology these days.
We've got smart phones that can do all sorts of amazing, unbelievable things.
Why is it that we're still stuck with chemical primers
and nothing more intricate in a firearm than a coil spring?"
Well, Remington tried to address this.
From 2000 to 2003 they sold this version of their Model 700, the Remington EtronX.
Or the way it's spelled, the "etronks", I suppose.
And this was an electrical firing system, which actually is really cool in concept.
So ... what the system is, basically this is a Remington 700 bolt-action,
well-proven, well known, been around for decades.
And all they did was change the fire control mechanism.
... Although actually, there's kind of a lot involved in that.
So let's start at the cartridge.
In order to make this even quasi-viable, they had to make the cartridge at least reloadable.
If it was single-use only, non-reloadable ammunition,
there was no way the American gun-buying public was going to be willing to support it.
People, for better or worse, and I'd kind of say it's often not that practical of a concern,
but people have this concern about ... they want to ... be guaranteed
that they'll always be able to get ammunition for a rifle.
Now in the case of something like this, if you buy a couple of hundred rounds
that's really kind of a lifetime supply.
If it turns out they stop making ammunition for the gun, well,
start shooting something else, and save your ammo on this
for the actual hunting trips instead of the practice time.
At any rate, in order to do their best to get around that issue,
Remington made sure that this used all standard components except for primers.
So it used the same bullets, the same powder, and the same brass cartridge cases
as their regular Remington 700.
And this was made in three different calibres: .220 Swift, .243 Winchester and .22-250.
Now the primer that they used, as I said it was a proprietary primer,
and instead of being an impact sensitive explosive chemical,
it was actually basically a 1.5 kilohm resistor.
So when electrical current flowed into the primer it heated up.
Pretty simple actually, not that much more complex than a chemical explosive.
Then ... instead of having a firing pin and a coil striker spring in the bolt,
they replaced it with basically a conductive electrode, for lack of a better term.
Basically just some way to transmit electrical power from the battery,
which is located right here in the buttstock, through up to the chamber.
So this is actually fired by a capacitor.
In fact it's interesting, the maximum rate of fire of this rifle is one shot every 0.6 seconds.
Now you can't really work the bolt and try to fire faster than that because it is a bolt-action rifle,
but it takes 0.6 seconds for the 9 volt battery in the buttstock
to charge a capacitor up to the necessary voltage in order to actually fire.
So by having an electrical system you get a couple of benefits.
Now on paper, let's go through them,
on paper your trigger is no longer a mechanical thing, it's now an electrical thing.
So you can set whatever level of force you want to activate the trigger.
Now ... in theory you could drop this down to micrograms of pressure,
to the point where you could literally breathe on a trigger and have it fire.
Being more practical, Remington allowed an adjustable trigger
that went from 0.5 pounds up to about 2.5 half pounds.
And you could set it wherever you liked in that range.
The other advantage you get is something called lock time.
Now ... the problem with this rifle is that lock time doesn't really matter much.
It was big deal for, say, flintlocks and percussion guns.
And the idea of lock time is the time that elapses between
when you actually pull the trigger and when the bullet actually starts moving.
So a flintlock, for example, has a very long lock time, because you pull the trigger,
and then the flint has to come forward, and then it makes sparks,
the sparks then have to ignite the primer charge,
which goes sizzle, sizzle, whoof if you see it in slow motion.
And then that fire goes through the fire hole into the main charge of powder,
which then ignites, and then the bullet gets going.
So it takes a lot of really good follow-through in order to shoot a flintlock accurately.
With a modern cartridge firing gun, your lock time is the time it takes
when you pull the trigger ... you're dropping the sear,
and you then have a striker or a hammer that's accelerated by a spring
right into a ... primer, ... the primer detonates, and then the main charge fires.
This happens very quickly, so quickly that it's not that big of a deal.
What Remington did with this rifle was reduce the lock time by something like 97%,
down to just a couple of milliseconds.
Which is awesome, that's not a bad thing, it's just
it's an answer to a question pretty much nobody was asking.
Especially in the form that they have here, which is basically a hunting rifle.
The only people who are really actually practically concerned about lock time
are the really serious benchrest shooters,
who are shooting these 25 pound single-shot rifles off of concrete sleds, that sort of thing.
For them, lock time makes a difference.
For the rest of us, not so much.
And that, coupled with the fact that Remington priced this the MSRP was $2,000, which was
exactly double that of a regular Remington 700 at the time.
It ... really is an answer to a question that nobody was asking.
Who's interested? And when you combine that with this
kind of knee-jerk paranoia about any electronics in a firearm,
well, it led to the gun being not very successful, let's put it that way.
Alright, so we've got our new Remington EtronX here, let's see how it works.
There are a couple things we're going to need.
We're going to need a 9 volt battery to power it.
We're going to need the safety key. This is very important,
do not lose the safety key because this is your rifle's on/off key.
If you lose it, rifle no worky.
So, we actually start by installing a battery.
The battery goes under the butt plate.
A pair of Phillips screws.
There's the battery compartment. It'll take our 9 volt battery, negative and positive.
Battery fits right in like that,
and then we'll put the butt plate back on.
Oh my! It's blinking at me there: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
Now the owner's manual has a guide to the various error codes
that this rifle can give you by way of its signal LED.
And if I take a look at five blinks in a row, it tells me that this is
the error for having installed the battery with the rifle in the fire position.
So here's our manual safety, and sure enough it's in fire.
So the fix is apparently to cycle it into safe and then fire,
no I'm sorry, I have to turn the rifle on, and then cycle it through.
So here on the bottom of the pistol grip we have a little lock,
and I have my key, and I need to put that in and turn it on.
Then I can cycle this to safe and back to fire, and it should stop blinking at me.
Excellent. OK, now we're ready to go.
There are a couple of things about this rifle that they make sense when you think about them,
but you just don't expect it. Because of course you are used to handling normal rifles.
For example, when I unlock this it's nice and light, there's no spring tension,
and in fact I can close the bolt without any spring tension either.
And ... when you just do that the first time you think, "Oh, something must be broken in there."
And then you realise there is no striker spring.
So this whole cock on open versus cock on closing,
you don't ever cock this rifle because it's electronic.
You can see a little electrical contact right there.
Another interesting little feature is the sound of the trigger.
So I'm going to lean in really close and see if you can hear this. It sounds like a mouse click.
I don't know if that came through on camera, but
you don't have this sharp mechanical reset and click like you're used to on a normal gun,
because of course, again, there isn't any.
There are no springs attached to this, it's just a little electronic switch.
In order to remove the bolt I have to press up this little tab, and then pull the bolt out.
We've got that.
So we've got some gunk in the breech face there, but it looks like it has a normal firing pin.
It actually doesn't, that's not a firing pin so much as it is an electrical contact.
It's heavily insulated so that it doesn't discharge power out into the bolt body
or the other metal parts, but only directly into the primer.
And ... that's a ceramic insulation, lasts about 7,500 rounds,
at which point it will have basically been electrically burned off,
and you'll need a new firing pin.
Of course, ... if you put 7,500 rounds through a normal Remington 700,
you'll probably end up needing at least one replacement firing pin for that as well.
Now the way this worked in practice was that the light stayed off
until you had a round chambered and the safety in the fire position,
and then the LED would come on.
And after you fired the LED would go off.
So basically this light came on to alert you anytime you had a live round in the chamber ready to fire.
And then when you're done shooting, turn the rifle off,
take the key out - that preserves your battery life, and go about your business.
You would clean this like any normal rifle.
Now I know some people are going to ask about all sorts of various apocalyptic things.
So first off, Remington did harden the electronics in this against
things like heat, cold and humidity.
So they did in fact make this a pretty resistant, resilient firearm.
You really didn't have to worry about the electronics failing on you in typical field use.
Now I know someone's going to ask, "What about an EMP, would that knock out your rifle?"
And the answer is I don't know, and I don't particularly care.
And I think it's kind of a preposterous situation.
I can't frankly imagine anybody who would pay $2,000,
buy a Remington EtronX, and have it be their only firearm.
So in this one in a gazillion chance that in fact
the Russians decide to launch an all-out nuclear war and start with an EMP strike,
and then you happen to survive, and you need your hunting rifle afterwards,
and you only have this rifle, then I suppose EMP might be a problem.
I think I am more concerned about what happens if I'm, well, struck by lightning
while being attacked by a shark and a polar bear at the same time.
That's probably a slightly more likely scenario.
And also one in which I would need my Remington EtronX,
and might not be able to use it if I got struck by lightning.
So in practical terms this thing worked just fine.
It was simply a problem of being in a question, like I said, that no one was asking at the time.
So the question is why would you want this rifle today?
And there are a couple of reasonable answers.
One is, it's a cool piece of firearms history now.
Sooner or later we will get electrically controlled firearms,
and they're going to be pretty cool.
If our smart phones are any indication, by the time people ... figure out how to do it, and are willing to do it,
(and yes, I admit there are some legal issues surrounding
semi-automatics with electrical firing systems,
and the definitions of machine guns and all that),
but sooner or later we will figure out a way around or through those problems.
And when we do, electrical firearms are going to be pretty darn awesome.
And at that point, this will be that cool first generation thing that's really cool to have.
Now, it's also still actually a feasible rifle.
I did some browsing around online sites, places like GunBroker, before I filmed this video,
and it turns out, yeah, you can actually still get the ammunition.
You're going to pay probably $1 to $2 a round, as of the beginning of 2017 when I'm filming this.
You pay a buck or two a round, which for a hunting rifle,
that's really not that much different than what you're going to pay for any sort of decent
soft tip hunting ammo in any cartridge for any normal gun.
So you could at one point, up until apparently fairly recently,
you could also get the EtronX primers.
They are substantially more expensive than regular primers,
but you could get those in flats of 100, or cases of 1,000.
And that would let you reload plenty of ammunition.
So for a hunting rifle this is still totally viable, I think.
You don't need ... to have crates and crates of ammunition
stocked away for the apocalypse for your electric hunting rifle.
I suppose if the apocalypse happens you can find some other gun to use instead.
So I think they're pretty cool.
I think they're a ... gun that's on their way to being forgotten now.
So if you'd like to get this one, it is actually in a lot with a second Remington EtronX.
Most of the guns in this regional auction are batched together in groups.
If you take a look at the description text below,
you'll find a link to Rock Island's catalogue page for this one and its sister.
Take a look at their pictures, the other guns that come in the batch,
price estimate for the whole lot.
And if you decide to take a swing at it yourself, you can place a bid
right there on Rock Island's website, or on the phone during the auction live.
Thanks for watching.