Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today courtesy of
Ader in Paris taking a look at a bunch of really cool guns.
And in particular today we have
a FUSTAN model of .22 rimfire calibre MAS 36.
Now, the French military developed and adopted
a .22 rimfire MAS 36 trainer
called the "
And they ... were produced during the occupation during World War Two,
but they were developed ... in the late 1930s.
And it is a rifle that was very much developed as a military trainer,
in so far as the sights are identical to standard MAS 36 sights, just with different range settings.
And in particular it uses a cartridge adapter where you have what is
essentially a 7.5 French sized steel case that you put a .22 rimfire into,
which you can then feed into the system.
It ... takes a lot of time, it's a pain in the butt to load and unload those cartridge adapters,
but once you have them it allows you to operate the rifle just like a standard military rifle.
Because your bolt throw is the same length,
the ... trigger is exactly the same, you can use stripper clips.
It's not an ideal competition precision rifle, ... it is much more of an ideal military trainer.
Now, this is the opposite, this is specifically developed
to be a competition precision target rifle based on the MAS 36.
And it's interesting that it actually comes from a development at SE MAS,
that is ... basically the ... developmental group at MAS,
which after the adoption of the military
they continued development on a rifle that didn't use those cartridge adapters.
It's not entirely clear if this was a government request,
or just something that MAS thought would be useful.
But this culminated in a 1942 pattern that never went into production.
They made some bits for it, but it never really went anywhere
until after the war, in 1947, there was interest from FUSTAN.
Which ... is the
or the Federation of Shooting Societies of North Africa.
The several North African nations being part of France at that time after World War Two.
Not for that long after World War Two, not once we hit the 1960s,
but for a period in the '40s and '50s those countries,
Tunisia, Algeria, were still part of France, governed as part of France.
And so there were French shooting societies there,
and they wanted a good competition rifle, and this is what they got.
So essentially about 200 of these were made.
This is actually the highest serialised known example of them.
And they were made from basically the leftover parts from that 1942 experimental program.
That's why there were only about 200 made, that's all they had parts for.
And FUSTAN was not a huge organisation.
So let's take a closer look at what they did,
because there are a lot of elements of this rifle that are much better suited to
competition shooting than the French military regulation pattern .22 trainer.
Let's start with a quick look at the markings here.
This is a standard MAS 36 receiver,
and it has that standard roll mark at the top, MAS Model 1936.
However the remainder of the marking is unique to this pattern,
It is "
And then serial number, number 196.
There are no other serial numbers on the gun, it's only the receiver there.
There's also no military acceptance stamp on the stock,
like you would expect on a standard MAS 36, because these weren't military guns.
Next, let's move to the action.
They have milled off the whole top of the rear sight block here,
and replaced it with a nice, adjustable, competition-style aperture sight.
Looks exactly like you would see in the US, ...
actually in the US you find these a lot on sporterised rifles, Lyman sights.
This is the same style, it does not appear to actually be a Lyman product.
Probably a piece made by MAS.
But it is a windage and elevation adjustable aperture.
In fact you can even unscrew the aperture itself, right there.
And so if you want a larger or smaller aperture,
you can replace that with whatever style you prefer.
Now the back of the bolt looks the same,
the bolt body itself is new because this does not have a magazine.
So the
had a standard stripper clip guide, standard 5 round magazine. This is a single-shot rifle.
Now it does have a full-length bolt throw to it because they used a standard receiver.
But if we look at the chamber area,
you can see there is room for just one cartridge in there.
And what you would do is just hand feed one .22 rimfire in there.
When you open the bolt, at the end of travel the bolt is going to pull this
sort of half-moon extractor back. That pulls the cartridge out.
There is no ejector. From this point you just reach in, grab the empty case and toss it out.
So open the bolt, and when you pull it back,
right there it's going to hit the extractor, pop the empty shell out.
In order to take the bolt out, it's actually pretty simple.
You take the back end of the extractor here, it's spring loaded and you just push it down,
and then the bolt comes sliding out the back.
And we can disassemble this just like a regular MAS 36.
We've got our firing pin spring, bolt plug.
The MAS 36 firing pin had an actual firing pin here at the front, they have milled that off.
And instead there is a two prong rimfire firing pin sitting inside there.
I think it is retained, it doesn't want to come out, and I'm not going to try and force it out.
But you have ... essentially two rimfire firing pins for better reliability
to make sure that every cartridge goes off.
This bolt retains the original locking lugs of the full-size MAS 36.
So even though it's rimfire, it's got two big ol' locking ... lugs there.
Unnecessary, but it's a simpler way to convert the gun.
And with that in mind, the magazine is fixed in place.
It doesn't come out because there is nothing down in there.
Now looking at some of the other features, starting at the back.
The butt plate is serrated, and it's not just cut with grooves,
those grooves are actually specifically angled.
So the ones on the top are pointing downward, and the ones on the bottom are pointing upward
to minimise the amount of slippage that this would have on your shirt,
or, more likely, your shooting jacket.
The bottom of the trigger guard is also serrated,
so that if you're holding the gun pointing straight upward, sort of in a resting posture,
you have a little bit of surface there to get a grip on it.
There is a standard sling here.
Now the sling itself is slightly narrower than a MAS 36 sling, but that's kind of irrelevant.
The sling bar on the back of the stock is the same as the military rifle.
The trigger is actually adjustable.
This is a pattern that wasn't on the original MAS 36,
but was on some of MAS's later developmental work that never went into production.
And it allows this thing to have a fantastically light and crisp trigger to it.
One of the problems with the trainer, the
is that it's got a standard MAS 36 trigger which frankly isn't all that fantastic.
In my opinion, even the FR-F1 trigger ... leaves something to be desired.
This, with its adjustability (there are a couple of adjustment screws up inside the stock),
allows you to have ... it's two-stage, barely, there's our take-up,
and then at the second stage it is ounces of pressure (to my finger),
and very, very crisp to let the trigger break.
So a fantastic competition-style trigger.
This is the sort of rifle you would use at, say, a 50 metre three position competition.
Moving forward we have a barrel band that is slightly different than a standard MAS 36
because there is no sling attachment on the side.
It only has a sling attachment on the bottom here.
This is sort of like the CR39 folding stock rifles in that way,
but it's not an interchangeable part.
And then we have a bit of a variation out here at the muzzle compared to a standard MAS 36.
The nose cap is the same, but the stacking rod has been left off,
because you of course don't need that for a competition rifle.
The barrel is significantly heavier in profile than a standard MAS 36.
The front sight is a bit different as well.
It is still a rather thick front blade,
but you'll notice it's tapered from rear to front
so that you get a nice crisp, clean sight picture with it.
And then the windage adjustment is this screw right here,
which allows you to pull the front sight in, or push it away,
from this side of what is essentially a pressed-on front sight ring.
So the rear sight is great, the front sight to me is acceptable, it works.
... Maybe not the best way to do this.
And then in place of a bayonet we have this rather large tube, with a threaded cap in the end.
This tube is hollow, and it's there so that if you want to
balance the rifle more to the front, you can put weight in here.
Typically in the form of lead shot. Again that's a competition rifle thing.
You want to get the balance exactly to your preference, this is how you can do it.
The
because you need that for duplicating the functions of the military rifle.
All of these rifles were made in one fairly quick batch in approximately 1947.
And then what's really cool is shooters from FUSTAN in '48, '49 and 1950,
won the French essentially junior league ... 50 metre rifle competition.
This wasn't a North African competition, this was a competition for all of France.
And these rifles were used to win it three years in a row.
So the ... effort that they put in to make this into a good competition rifle clearly paid off.
And just from handling it, it's pretty obvious that this actually would make a very nice target rifle,
especially compared to the military
So, with only 200 made they are really quite scarce today,
especially given that they went to North Africa, and most of them didn't come back to
mainland France ever.
There are only a handful of them still around, so very cool.
A big thanks to Ader for giving me the opportunity
to take a look at this one and bring it to you guys. Hopefully you enjoyed the video.
Thanks for watching.