[ Prototype Findorak PDW ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at CZ
in Uherský Brod in the Czech Republic,
by the generous invitation of CZ,
to take a look at some of the cool guns in their
factory reference collection and show them to you guys.
Now, what we have today is actually not
a product of CZ, but rather of a
company called Czech Weapon Systems, which was a competitor to CZ.
This dates specifically from the late 1990s.
It was designed by a gentleman by the name of Ladislav Findorak,
... who was really actually quite a talented designer.
And it's interesting that this gun seems to have had quite a lot of potential,
but just didn't quite make it, not quite ... at the right place at the right time.
So the idea was to meet a Czech military tender for a very compact submachine gun.
The request was something that weighed no more than 1.4 kilos,
which is on the order of about 3 pounds.
So a very small PDW, really the same sort of thing as the vz. 61.
Now this tender would not ultimately result in anything specific being adopted,
but Findorak developed this gun for that project.
So in 1999 this was presented to the military.
Stories differ a little bit on exactly why it wasn't accepted.
The official version is that it didn't pass the extreme conditions testing,
mud, sand, water, something like that.
Findorak apparently ... thought he was the victim of politics, essentially,
and that the gun had plenty of potential and was rejected for other reasons.
What the true story is ... we probably never will know.
But it has a really interesting mechanism to it.
So let's take a closer look at it.
Now there were a couple of versions of this made.
The one we have here to take a look at today has a side-folding stock
that's reminiscent of like a miniaturised vz. 58 folding stock.
However, there was also a version with a top wire folding stock like a vz. 61 Skorpion.
I believe there was one with a fixed stock as well.
A couple of different types of front hand guards.
These are very much prototype firearms,
and so every single one of them is a little bit different.
On this guy in order to open the stock we push down here, and then that locks open.
It has an extremely short length of pull to it,
which ... makes it very difficult to shoulder properly.
We do have a little aperture sight back here, and a fixed front post.
There is a really nicely positioned magazine release right there, 15 round magazine.
It looks like this was set up to have the potential for an ambidextrous magazine release.
The Czechs have been fans of ambidextrous controls for quite a while.
The pistol grip ... feels good in the hand to me.
The magazine well is intended to be your front grip, so you've got a ... grip like this.
On this side we have our selector lever and markings,
and they are really hard to read, but I think you can see them there.
The top one up here is semi-auto, the middle is full-auto,
and the bottom one with the red dot is safe.
Normally you would expect the red dot to be fire, in this case the red dot is safe.
And the only other marking we have on here is a serial number
that appears to have been given to it by CZ.
Because that looks like a CZ-style serial number, but this wasn't actually manufactured by CZ.
Now the charging handle is definitely not ambidextrous, it's on the left side of the gun.
And it allows us to cycle this open.
And the first thing that you notice upon cycling this is that it is remarkably smooth.
You look at a gun like this ... and you kind of expect it to be
I want to say you kind of expect it to be low quality,
because it's very compact and it seems like awkwardly small.
But then just running this thing like,
"Ooh, maybe there's more to this than meets the eye."
So disassembly is quite simple, we have one pin right here.
And, if I pull that pin through (it is captive).
And that allows me to take the whole top end of the gun off.
We have the recoil spring, and there is a guide rod fixed in place back here.
And then just a top cover with the rear sight.
This, by the way, is a rail that I'm sure could accept some sort of optic.
It's not Picatinny, but that would be an easy place to mount an optic,
which would really do well on this thing.
Now the bolt mechanism comes out the back.
Very smooth rails in there, we have a hammer-fired action.
The semi-auto disconnector is actually down here, there we go.
And then there's the hammer.
So it's a hammer fired mechanism, really fairly simple down in there.
You just have front and rear hooks, and an ... auto-trip essentially.
The ejector and the barrel. This is chambered for 9mm Parabellum, I should have said that earlier.
Now when I first saw this, I was rather excited by it because this is a lever-delayed action.
So we can pull this apart into three pieces.
And we have the accelerator lever, essentially the bolt carrier, and the bolt itself.
A firing pin there, spring loaded.
That's just the bolt.
This kind of odd charging handle is riveted into the ... inside of the bolt carrier.
So the way this works is when the bolt is fully in battery in this configuration,
this lever extends down out of the bottom of the bolt. There we go.
And this surface on the lever is resting against this surface right here in the receiver.
This is one big milled steel block.
So when you fire, the cartridge is going to push back here on the bolt itself.
That's going to attempt to start moving, but it's stuck on this lever.
So what happens instead is that lever is going to push the bolt carrier on top backwards instead.
And the bolt itself can't start moving until the lever has retracted all the way up here,
and is now out of contact with the frame.
So at this point the bolt can cycle backwards.
But in the meantime it takes time
for the inertia of this upper block to be overcome and accelerated backwards.
And that gives time for the bullet to travel out of the barrel and pressure to drop.
So at this point it can travel backwards.
The recoil spring is going to return it forward where it will pick up a cartridge,
chamber it, and at the end of travel the bolt is going to come to a stop here.
But the recoil spring is pushing on the top element.
So the top is going to continue travelling forward,
which is going to press this lever back down into place
locked against the frame once again, ready to fire a second time.
What this allowed Findorak to do is dramatically reduce
the ... velocity of the bolt and the required mass of the bolt,
so that he could fit a 9mm Parabellum ... delayed action
into a very small little package. It's a really clever design.
OK, I am of course really curious to see how this actually shoots.
A little tiny PDW, but with a really neat lever-delayed system.
Lever-delayed actions are quite rare.
There we go.
Alright, let's give it a whirl.
There we go. ... Oh, let's see, safe.
Start with just semi-auto.
Not a particularly comfortable shoulder stock.
Fortunately, it's cold enough out here that my cheek's pretty much numb.
So let's try a little bit of full-auto.
Last round.
Actually remarkably easy to hit with. Let's reload this and try a little bit more full-auto.
There we go.
And ... yeah, we're on auto.
I think I'm on auto. I am on auto. The gun's not happy for some reason.
Alright, so we're starting to get malfunctions here.
Which probably has something to do with the fact that this is a literal,
what, at least 40 year old, one-off prototype that never actually went into production, but.
Yeah, the trigger's not resetting.
I really like the lever-delayed system in this, it keeps the rate of fire fairly low.
For something this small, normally you would expect like a really high rate of fire.
But we're getting (it'll be hard to tell until we go back and look at the video),
but 600 or 700 rounds a minute I expect. And it's controllable.
The sights are virtually impossible to use like they're all blurry, maybe I need glasses.
But it's really more of a "look over the sights at the target" sort of deal.
But easy to shoot, doesn't climb too much.
I'm able to keep doubles on target, at least.
I was trying to figure out some way to reset the trigger and keep the round in there, but.
Semi-auto works.
Alright, I don't know if it's going to work,
we're going to give a mag dump a try here for you guys.
A big thanks to CZ for giving me the opportunity
to actually take this thing out on the range and shoot it.
That was not something I expected they'd be cool with, and they were like,
"Yeah, guns are meant to be shot, let's go see if it works!"
So a big thanks to them, check out the description below for all of CZ's social media.
And let's see if this will go.
Ah, nope!
Alright, if it's not going to run there, let's try it in semi.
Oh, that's interesting.
I got an ejected case sitting right up there.
It fell out, I was going to show it to you guys, but it fell out.
Yeah, right up there on top of the trunnion.
Alright, I think we can see why they went with the EVO 3 instead of this.
And we're out.
Well, hopefully you guys enjoyed the video, we did get some working full-auto at the very beginning.
Thanks for watching.