Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I'd like to welcome you to
the break room at Inter Ordnance/Royal Tiger.
The reason I have asked you here today for this meeting is
I wanted to show you a cool, uniquely Ethiopian pattern (sort of) of the Lebel rifle.
Now Ethiopia received military surplus and purchased military arms from
virtually every major arms producer in the world for a period of like 80 years.
From the 1870s all the way through, frankly, the 1970s into the 1980s.
And so these two are part of the batch that have been,
and are continuing to be, imported by Inter Ordnance out of Ethiopia.
And what's cool about these rifles is these Ethiopian surplus warehouses, basically,
have a smattering of every conceivable type of surplus you can imagine.
Including Lebels and also Berthiers.
So in the current shipment they brought in basically all of the
usable condition Lebels, and it was 100 rifles total.
Of those hundred, 11 were of this shortened configuration.
Now if you just looked at one of these out of context
it's hard to recognise what it might be, other than a Lebel that has been badly altered.
But, seen in context, knowing that this is about 10% of the Lebels that were in Ethiopian stores,
I think that puts a really interesting perspective on it.
So for comparison's sake, here is a standard full-length Lebel.
Which actually goes out a little beyond, so if I just line up the muzzles there,
you can see that this is about 6 inches, 5 or 6 inches, longer
than this Ethiopian, shall we call it a cavalry rifle, or a short rifle configuration.
This makes sense, the Lebel is really a pretty bulky and long and awkward rifle.
The French recognised this, they cut it down into an even shorter carbine version for World War Two.
But clearly some of the users in Ethiopia wanted something handier,
whether it was for horseback, or for use in trucks.
Because, honestly, I don't know exactly when these conversions were made.
They could have been any time from the 1890s.
These are both antique rifles, this is an 1890, this is an 1891.
We don't know when the conversions were done.
But what's interesting about them is while they all share the exact same basic configuration,
and this overall length to within a relatively small fraction of an inch,
there are a number of interesting differences between every single example.
Because they were all obviously converted by hand, not through a factory process.
So I figured while I have access to a bunch of them
I would grab two pretty good representative examples,
and show you some of the various details that change,
and some of the things that are the same on all of them.
Alright, let's start by taking a look at the markings on one of these.
What we have here, the receiver is actually in really quite nice condition on this one,
nice clear "Manufacture D'Armes de Saint-Étienne".
So this is a Saint-Étienne manufactured rifle.
It's a Model 1886, which is a Lebel.
M93 which is a series of updates that the French did to the Lebel in 1893,
and they upgraded virtually every single rifle they produced.
So you'll effectively never see a Lebel that isn't an M93 update.
On the barrel here we have the serial number.
A few of these guns were matching, most of them were not.
There is, of course, also a serial number on the [bolt],
so this particular example is not a matching one.
On the opposite side here we have the production date, in this case 1891.
And we have a series of Amharic or Ge'ez (they are Ethiopian) markings.
All of these short configuration Lebels had these sorts of markings.
And unfortunately I haven't had the opportunity to translate them all,
but they're relatively similar.
I think most of these are Property of Menelik markings, but don't quote me on that.
Now if we take a look at the rest of the rifle, starting at the buttstock.
Nothing back here changed, this is all standard Lebel.
The rear sights are intact and unmodified.
They haven't been messed with, which is both good and bad.
It is interesting that on a number of the Ethiopian carbine-ised guns
that have shown up, ... in fact you saw them on this channel on previous videos,
some of their shortened versions of the Commission Gewehr 88,
as well as the Gras carbines and musketoons,
they often just completely removed the rear sights and left the guns with only front sights.
Well, in the case of these short rifle Lebels, they left the rear sight intact.
Now that's good, it does have a rear sight. However, they didn't modify any of the range markings.
And because the barrel has been shortened,
and the front sights vary substantially from example to example,
these will not shoot to the exact range as indicated on the rear sight.
Some of them might shoot to point of aim, they might be reasonably zeroed
with just the basic battle sight. Some of them may not.
It's really hard to tell because, like I said, the front sights are of varying heights.
So we'll take a look at that in just a moment.
The rear barrel bands are standard for the Lebel,
and they're in the original position with the original retention spring.
And then the front bands have been moved backwards with, as we saw,
a ... new placement for the existing nose cap retention spring.
So the nose cap was moved back.
The inside of a Lebel stock here has a big round hole in it,
which is the magazine where the cartridges stack up.
On some of these they actually went and added a wooden plug in the end of the stock,
which is nice, keeps dirt out of there. And it helps make sure you don't get
a cartridge jammed up at the front end of the magazine.
This one does have a wood cap.
You'll notice that the stacking rod is missing from the nose cap.
On other examples, like this one, you can see that there is no end plug.
And so we can just see the magazine spring
kind of starting to poke out a little bit there at the end.
And then the front sights vary significantly.
So some of them have the original front sight
moved back and re-soldered or dovetailed into the barrel.
This one has a new production front sight that is more of a barleycorn shape.
... More like a Mauser than like an original Lebel sight.
Just for comparison's sake, here is a 1916 pattern,
a late upgraded Lebel front sight.
And a couple of them have these, a couple of them have the early pattern of sight.
And a few of them have radically new sights like this one,
that has been obviously fabricated by hand.
And is ... not soldered or dovetailed onto the barrel,
but attached with this band wrapping around the barrel.
So there's a substantial variation in front sights on these guns.
And then in addition we have a variety of the sort of typical things
you will find on Ethiopian rifles.
The screw here holding in the ejector is broken off.
On this example the rear tang screw is a replacement,
so you can see it doesn't quite look factory there.
And on the top it's sort of hammered over like a rivet.
Here are the Ethiopian markings on this second example, just for reference sake.
A little bit different than what we see on the first.
There are a number of different written dialects
in Ethiopia from different regions of the country,
and you'll find a wide variety of different types of markings on different Ethiopian rifles.
I think these are pretty cool. Obviously they're French rifles,
so I'm inclined to think they're interesting.
I also rather like short rifles, and this is a neat modification of an existing pattern.
So hopefully you guys enjoyed taking a look at this.
I figured this was my one opportunity to film them,
and sort of get the concept on the record here
before they all go off to their various new owners and are never reunited again.
Oh, I should also point out: there were 100 Lebels that came in,
and ... 11 of them were in this configuration.
There were also about 70 Berthier rifles, ... a few carbines, mostly 07/15s.
And of those, 3 were of this same style.
They were 07/15 Berthier long rifles that had been cut down to this length.
... Approximately the same length as a French 1902 Indochina pattern.
And obviously for the same purpose, and with the same sorts of variations
in stock configuration and replacement front sight and that sort of thing.
So, hopefully you guys got a kick out of the video.
Thanks for watching.