Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum and today,
we are going to take a look at a Daudeteau rifle.
This was a french design that was intended to compete against the Lebel rifle for the French
Army; was also very seriously considered by the French navy
Came really, like that close to actually being adopted by the French navy
As well as being tested by a bunch of other countries including the United states at one point
Now the designer of this rifle was gentleman by the name of Louis Marie Daudeteau who was born in France in 1845
He was pretty active in the Franco-Prussian war he led a group of Volunteer Soldiers Volunteer, Militia
I believe he was also active in the conflict of the Paris commune
Had a substantial military background and was quite the inventor
and I think what would have been called at the time a mechanic, a guy tinkering with
mechanical designs for stuff
He submitted a whole bunch of different guns to the French military establishment for consideration
Everything from conversions of the Gras rifle to various types of magazine feed
He submitted some test machine guns some semi-auto rifles or at least one semi-auto rifle
so he was a pretty prolific designer and
Eventually he came to the realization that none of his
conversions of the Gras going to gain any ground the Gras was an obsolete rifle and what the french military was
Would eventually move to would be something completely different from the Gras so he moved on to doing some kind of oddball designs
Most interestingly to me anyway in 1890
he actually developed a bolt-action rifle with a three position selector switch very much like the Mondragon of
1894 that would come later in Mexico
It was a design where you had a safe and a fire
You know setting on the selector switch that functioned as normal but also had a rapid fire selector
Setting and on that setting the rifle would fire as soon as you close the bolt which meant you could
Basically it's kind of like slam firing in 1897 pump shotgun
you didn't have to mess with the trigger if you wanted to fire as rapidly as
Possible you could set it to rapid and then just cycle the bolt as fast as you could
interesting concept
Never got adopted by anybody for reasons that are kind of obvious same reason the 1894 Mondragon never got adopted by anybody
Anyway by 1891 he realized that really his best his best chances were going to lie with a fairly conventional
Rifle and that's when he developed what basically was this rifle
It is a bolt-action. It has a lot of similarities with the Lebel and the Berthier
Biggest difference,
There are two main differences one is that it has a stripper clip fed box Magazine holds five rounds and all of the different iterations
of this rifle shared that magazine design and
It uses a six point five millimeter cartridge, which I have a modern example of right here
Now at the time this was pretty controversial
And what's...what I find really kind of entertaining. Is that it's exactly the same sort of controversy that we still see today
with people discussing five five six versus seven six two nato cartridges
And how the bigger cartridge must be the better one because it must be more ballistically effective
It's got to have more killing power because it's a bigger bullet
Well that may not be true
And that was exactly the same argument that was going on back in the 1890s when Daudeteau was attempting to market this rifle
In reality his six point five millimeter bullet which by the way was cartridge number twelve. He went through a long process of
iterating new cartridge designs for the rifle and
Different versions of his guns used different cartridges this one the most successful was cartridge number Twelve
It's a six and a half millimeter cartridge
Fires a hundred and forty seven grain bullet at like twenty three hundred and sixty feet per second
That's nine point five grams at Seven Hundred and Nineteen
M/s. So for the time pretty high velocity a good small bore cartridge
And it was several hundred feet per second faster was about a hundred meters per second faster than the french span
military Standard eight Lebel cartridge, so for Daudeteau
His cartridge what he saw was that his cartridge
Was more Lethal because it would destabilize and tumble when it hit a target and caused a pretty
Significant wound which we now know today is entirely true . That's exactly what does happen
He also knew that it had it was flatter shooting because it was higher velocity and a lighter bullet weight
So you had to you were less dependent on adjusting your sights
The range at which you could just line up the sights and pull the trigger and get a hit was longer than with the
Eight millimeter Lebel Cartridge, and
Lastly it had better penetration, so this small diameter high velocity bullet would go through more
obstructing materials
Be they fortifications or personal armor than the eight Lebel would, in fact in 1894
He was challenged by a guy who was making Metal cuirass armor
For French troops this guy had this design that he had found to be completely impervious to rifle rounds
and so he challenged Daudeteau to try it with one of these rifles and
While the eight Lebel cartridge on this cuirass produced a six millimeter dent in the metal
The six five Daudeteau went clean through the cuirass and then went through another one point six eight
Meters, like five feet of wooden backing that had been put up behind the armor
So this was a excellent penetrating cartridge
unfortunately for Daudeteau the French bureaucracy and
Military establishment was the the bureaucracy in the French military establishment is pretty legendary
And there was a lot of attachment to the Lebel rifle
of course by
the 1890s, they manufactured a huge number of these rifles and
People were attached to it careers were dependent on the Lebel being the good rifle
and it being a wise decision and
So ultimately when this was tested by the army despite doing really well in pretty much all of the objective Criteria
It was dismissed and dropped from competition because it didn't have a magazine cutoff that was a nice
Technicality that was able to get it chucked out of the competition
The Lebel of course did have a magazine cutoff you could hit the switch and leave the magazine full and single loaded
interestingly the Berthier did not
Anyway, I'm getting a little bit distracted from the history of this particular gun there are three main models of these the A the B
And the S. The A came first and production began at the that Saint Denis Arsenal outside of Paris in 1893
the earlier Prototypes all of
Daudeteau's earlier guns have been produced by the Saint Chamont arsenal which is kind of about West Southeastern France
but S.F.A.P. the Société Française des Armes Portatives was a
Manufacturing conglomerate a cooperative establishment that was set up outside of Paris and this was one of the first rifles that they actually produced
So they started with the model a which is basically this same design
Bolt action they made both
full-length rifles and carbines the rifles had straight bolt handles the Carbines head bent bolt handles
And then they varied slightly in obviously length and weight
The D model was introduced in 1894 and it was basically just a simplification
To make the guns a little more a little easier a little more efficient to produce
I know one of the elements that I changed was the extractor. I don't have a
good description of how the extractor was changed and unfortunately, I don't have
An a or b here to show you but I do have an s and the s is kind of interesting because there are only
a couple hundred of them made and
it turns out that these were actually a series that were manufactured for the French navy so
The French Army as I said had tested these the navy also tested them the navy was pretty interested
specifically the Navy was interested in equipping colonial Marine troops with these rifles and in 1895 1896
They bought a couple hundred of them and ship them to Indochina for pretty extensive field trials
This would be as close as these rifles ever got to actual adoption
At the end those trials ended not because the rifle was bad
but because those colonial Marine troops ended up being incorporated into the french army and
Because the army and the Navy were separate bureaucratic organizations once while they had a chance of adopting a rifle like this in the navy
Once they were part of the army. They were subject to army procurement, and they got Lebels or Berthiers
so after that trial apparently some of these rifles were shipped back to Louis Daudeteau and
What my understanding is he actually his family kept a bunch of them and after world war two they needed money to rebuild
I believe their destroyed house and property and so they sold a bunch of these rifles, and that's how
The ones that are in the United states stay like this one ended up over here
so we're sold for funding after world war two, so
pretty cool
why don't we go ahead and take a closer look at this guy and I'll show you the differences between it and the Va
Because it does look very similar
Starting off with some of the markings here on the top
We have a shield with an s on
The a and the d models you'll find an a and a b or a or b in that shield
Below that we have a serial number which is
144 and this is a mismatched gun so the bolt has a different number
I believe serial numbers on the s models go up into about the 600 s and then we have a crest below that on
the right side of the receiver
We have a stylized cannon right here has seen from the top and Saint Chamont marking that was
One of the French ordnance factories and while this gun was manufactured at Saint Denis it appears that it was actually
fitted or
Some of the last steps of assembly were done at Saint Chamont probably because this was actually being done for a french navy contract
Here on the left side of the front of the receiver. We have SFAP that's Société Française des Armes Portatives
French Society for portable Arms and
Saint Denis which is the location of the arsenal where it was manufactured and
Lastly on the back of the receiver. We have Daudeteau's
Name is signature there, and you'll find out on all of these rifles
The rear sight is going to be very similar to that of the Berthier carbines
Nothing really particularly special going on there if we look on this side
We can see that the steps on the rear sight are 2 4 6 8 and
1,000 meters
the front sight is a V style barleycorn which is kind unusual for French military arms of this period
The Lebels and the Berthiers had very narrow square posts in the front
And then we also have some typical French
elements on
The muzzle around the nose cap we have a stacking swivel
Here are stacking rods that you can stand several of these rifles up together
And then we have a clearing rod you'll notice that there is no slot in the head of this Rod
It's not actually meant for cleaning it was meant for knocking out a stuck cartridge. Case should you get one and that's threaded
down the stock and
Disappears into the receiver, they're threaded in place so that it doesn't come out
The front sling attachment is this very typical ring like you would find on the Berthiers
Alright, then the action itself first. I do want to point out an interesting quirk of this particular rifle
And this is known this is not the only one like it. This is known on other S pattern
Daudeteaus this is actually in a Berthier stock so
Normally the the line of the stock would be flat across here this one has this kind of pregnant belly look
That was originally there to fit against the Berthier's 3 round magazine
Just for Comparison's sake here is in indochina Berthier with that exact same stock
That does make sense given French indo-Chinese use of these guns this
Probably had a broken stock at some point and Berthier's stocks were available and so one of them was probably
Fitted to the gun as a replacement in Indochina on
The back here we have our safety. This is the fire position
This is actually for disassembly you can see how that's camming this spring-loaded piece out
Slightly what that does is pull out the bolt release
And allow you to remove the bolt much simpler by the way than the Lebel and the Berthier where you have to actually unscrew
The screw that holds the bolt head in to the bolt body, and then take them apart separately this much simpler system
And then all the way up like that is the safe position, so when it's in safe, you can see right in here
It actually locks the bolt in place, so I can't open the bolt and if I pull the trigger
The safety Lever Here holds the striker holds the cocking piece in place
One additional interesting feature of the Daudeteau system is this little lever right here?
When I lift the bolt, you'll see that that lifts that retracts inward
That is actually there to help the magazine function
So I take this out you will see that there are actually two
Spring-loaded catches in the magazine and it's a little difficult to tell from this angle, but this one is up top
that
Is the the feed lip basically that's as far up as a cartridge can go and so the bolt
The cartridge will come up to here sit in position and then be pushed forward up into the chamber by the bolt
However, we also have
This one down below that is an interrupter
So the first cartridge is sitting up here the second one is held down in this position
much like a mosin nagant works the reason for this is that the cartridge has a
Fairly substantial rim it's not as bad as eight Lebel
but it definitely does have a rim to it and
Having an interrupter like that
Ensures that you won't ever have problems with Rim lock because the rim of the top cartridge is
Far enough above the second round in the magazine they can't interfere with each other that is a very important element in
Thoughtful on the part of those at all
Unfortunately on this bolt there. There is a screw that connects the bolt head
So the bolt head is removable if you need to replace the extractor or anything
unfortunately on this one the top of the screw has been sheared off so I can't take it apart to show you but
we do have a vent hole right here, and
when this is in the gun that
Vent hole lines up with this notch in the receiver
And that's there so that if you have a ruptured case gas will vent out here instead of going back into the shooters face
It's a good safety
element
Just for comparison sake here is a eight Lebel cartridge. This is a modern pretty partisan one and here is a modern recreation of
6,5 Daudeteau
6,5 by 53 and a half millimeter for today's production these are actually
Relatively easy to make out of 7,62 by 54 rimmed russian brass and by the way
This this is a 54R converted case
The neck the shoulder here will actually move up a little bit the first time this round is fired
Because it will be fire formed in the Daudeteau chamber
so normally shoulder would be a little bit farther forward however you can see that this cartridge has
substantially less taper than Lebel the original versions did actually have an extractor groove in the brass this one doesn't because it's made out of
54 Rimmed brass, but while this wasn't a perfectly rimless case it was
Substantially better than 8 Lebel in addition to having a much smaller diameter bullet although overall
They're basically the same, same size cartridge
So well Daudeteau didn't end up having any luck with military adoption of his rifle despite being tested by French, Army French
Navy the us, China Japan
Romania Chile Mexico
Probably a couple other countries as well
he did actually have a fair amount of commercial success as a sporting rifle these were marketed by Manufrance and Saint Etienne and
They were in the catalog for sale to civilians there until World War 1 and were
reasonably popular guns both in the 6.5 cartridge
And then in other cartridges as well the gun was also manufactured in a variety of other sporting cartridges
You can get this in 405 winchester you get it in 303 British. You can get it in eight millimeter Lebel
as well as other cartridges, so
The primary trade name of this was Ryval or Rival . I suppose pronounce Frenchly and
under that guys there there were pretty successful guns there were very nice hunting guns and people really liked them quite a lot, so
not a bad second-Place sort of finish if
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This is the first in what will be an on-and-off-again series of videos on French rifles
I have a whole bunch of those that I'm excited to bring to you guys
So figured we'd start with this one that didn't quite make the military cut thanks for watching