Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another
video on ForgottenWeapons.com. I'm Ian McCollum, and I'm here today at the Rock Island Auction Company taking a look at a registered, transferable AR-18 machine gun. That's what the 18 is, that indicates the full-auto version. And this AR-180, the extra zero on the end indicating a semi-automatic only, this AR-180 rifle, as well as a couple other AR-180 rifles that we'll take a look at later in the video. We're gonna go through really the whole family of original AR-18 and 180 rifles and accessories. So it's gonna be really cool. We will start with, of course, the basic history of the design. ... The rifle here is generally considered, generally thought of as like the budget version of the AR-15. This is made out of ... bent and stamped sheet metal components instead of forged and milled aluminium. So that view isn't entirely wrong, this sort of is the budget version, and that's kind of how it was designed. However, the design actually originates with the AR-10, not the AR-15. So "AR" in all of these design stands for ArmaLite,
which was the company that owned the rights to them. Eugene Stoner first designs the AR-10 for ArmaLite. (They, by the way, had rifles from AR-1 through 9,
or firearms, and I've got videos on a couple of those.) The 10 was the semi-automatic 7.62 NATO calibre military
rifle that they hoped to sell to a bunch of major military powers. As that trial is progressing,
and not really going all that well, one of the things that ArmaLite does is they scale the
rifle down to 5.56 calibre, and that becomes the AR-15. The AR-15 of course goes into US
military trials. Now during this time ArmaLite is experimenting with some ways that maybe
they can make the AR-10 a little bit less expensive. And they're going to do this by replacing just the lower
with ... a steel sheet metal bent or stamped lower assembly. That rifle is the AR-12 and
it never goes into production. But ... that's the designation that was set
aside for it, and it's a developmental project. Now as the AR-15 trials in the US military progress
ArmaLite ends up selling the rights to the gun to Colt. And Eugene Stoner leaves, you know that's
his baby, without it, what's he doing there? He goes to work for Cadillac Gage where
he will end up designing the Stoner 63. But what happens is this leaves
ArmaLite without their main design, which is the Stoner bolt "gas impingement"
(that's not really gas impingement) system. They don't have their chief engineer, you know, they
don't have Stoner any more. So what are they going to do? They want to come up with something that's still an interesting
product for the market, and they go back to that AR-12. They can't use the AR style gas system, the Stoner style
gas system, because they no longer own the rights to it. So they kind of redesign it and they go to a short-stroke gas
piston, very much like the German G43 or the Soviet SVT-40. And they put that on top of their sheet metal lower, and
now they're gonna go with a sheet metal upper as well. This rifle, still in 7.62 NATO, is the AR-16,
which is again a subject for another entire video. ... So we've got the AR-16 and
that's a cool potential product. But the AR-15 has proven that the 5.56 calibre is
proven more popular than 7.62 in a lot of places. And so in 1963 ArmaLite's new chief
engineer, a guy named Arthur Miller, scales the AR-16 down to 5.56
calibre, and that is the AR-18. So with all that we've finally gotten to this rifle. What they ended up with was a rifle that was
relatively easy and inexpensive to produce. It's not so much the cost of production necessarily,
it's the cost of the machinery to set up the production. ArmaLite was hoping to sell these rifles
to maybe second tier military powers. They kind of recognised that maybe this wasn't really the thing
for Great Britain, United States, Germany, France, you know. Well, they're not gonna be able to sell
them to Russia or China at this point. But they realised that this isn't really a first tier military
power thing, but if they can get an inexpensive rifle, and they can be able to sell this
complete manufacturing package, like we'll come, we'll help you set up a factory,
and you can build the rifles under licence. That's sort of the system
that ArmaLite was looking for. And this rifle sets that up pretty well.
It's got this nice well proven gas system. The bolt mechanism is taken right off the AR-15
because they didn't have to worry about any patents on that, so it's that like seven lug rotating
bolt very similar to the AR-15. It is a light rifle, it's under 7 pounds, you know,
6.25 to 6.75 pounds, depending on who you talk to and whether or not it's got scopes,
mags, ammo, sling and that sort of stuff. The standard rifles all have side
folding stocks, which is pretty cool. You've got an 18 inch barrel, so it kind of cuts a
balance between a full-length rifle and a short carbine. And they're offering this in
either full-auto or semi-auto form. Initially ArmaLite does do some production in California,
in Costa Mesa, California, where they're based. But again, they're ... really not a
production facility, they're not a big factory. So they'll make guns, but what they really
want to do is licence production to other people. And if they can sell them to the military, great, they'll set up
licencing that way, but they also want to sell them commercially. And so they set up a deal in probably 1966, or maybe early '67, with
the Howa company, which is a rifle factory located in Nagoya, Japan. Howa is looking for commercial contracts,
ArmaLite's looking for someone to make the rifle, good deal, they set up, Howa's
gonna start making rifles for ArmaLite. They'll be imported back into the US, sold on the
market here. And the deal hits a big snag because just, like, before rifles have even started shipping
I suspect, or certainly very early in the deal, the Japanese government ... makes a decision that they're
not willing to sell rifles to military forces that are at war. Well, the US is, and this kind of spoils a lot of ArmaLite's
plans to potentially sell these to the military market. So the deal with Howa will last until
1974, and when Armalite is able to they negotiate a new licencing contract, and this
time it goes to the Sterling company in the UK. And Sterling will manufacture the guns, and they'll
manufacture a lot more of them than Howa did. These guns actually were sent out for trials. But we'll talk about the final
ultimate production and results, after we take a look at the mechanics
of how this thing actually works. Overall the AR-18 or AR-180 is really a very
handy, lightweight, slim, it's a nice handling rifle. So if we start with looking at some of the
markings here. ... This is a Costa Mesa production, so this is made in the US in California, and
this is the ... first manufacture of the rifle. We have an ArmaLite logo here,
AR-180, the calibre, patent pending. And we have the actual manufacturing
mark over here, Armalite in Costa Mesa. The top of the grip is also molded with AR-18 ArmaLite.
There is no AR-180 grip mould, they just did these all as AR-18. There is a selector switch here which
is of course two position, and can't be rotated into safe if the hammer has dropped,
just like the AR-15. So I'll show you that in a moment. Full-auto would be in the back
if this was a select fire rifle. On the other side we have our bolt handle here,
which is kind of dog legged up to make it sort of ambidextrous so you can
reach it over the top of the rifle. We have a dust cover that
will snap into position there. And this front angled surface impacts
... the charging handle when you cycle the gun, either fire it or manually cycle it, and that will pop the dust cover open. It does lock open on an empty magazine.
We have our magazine catch here. Push that in, the magazine comes out. The mag catch has
basically a blade on it that locks into this slot in the magazine. The AR-180 and 18 magazines are identical to AR-15
magazines that have had this little slot added on. So these original ones are marked AR-18,
but you will also find converted magazines. Because converting them involves nothing
more than cutting a little slot on the side. The safety is ambidextrous, which is kind of cool. Now that the hammer is cocked I
can put it into safe, or semi there. All of these rifles come with
folding stocks, which is pretty cool. We have two spring-loaded pins in the top of
the hinge here, that lock into the stock itself. So you push these in and then
you can fold the stock over. On this side of the rifle
we have a little plug there and a plate on the side of the stock that has two wires
in it. So our little pointy plug is going to snap into there. And that locks the stock in position. To unfold
it there is no particular unlocking latch, just push and the stock pops open. ArmaLite also arranged to produce a scope for
these rifles. It is a 2.75x power by 20mm scope. So you see they've got their name on it there. There are two
different versions, we'll take a look at these in just a moment. But every rifle produced had a proprietary
scope base on the top of the receiver. So to take the scope off I'm
going to take this little plunger, I'm going to lift it up, and then I
actually push the scope back, and (there we go), and lift it off. So it has this
triangular sort of groove on the bottom of the scope, and this mounting bracket spot
welded onto the top of the receiver. We have a two position rear aperture
sight. This is the 100 yard aperture, and we can flip it that way for the 200 yard.
You have adjustable windage on the side here. That's going to just rotate this guy side to side. Elevation adjustment is done on the front sight
by screwing that front sight post up or down. Disassembly is pretty slick. This is
the rear extension of the recoil springs. So in order to disassemble the rifle,
we're going to push this pin in, push this forward, and then the upper and lower
will tip apart. The recoil springs pop out the back. So I can pull both of those out. We have two springs, each on its own guide rod. The upper and lower tip apart much like an AR-15. I can pop this pin out, like so, that allows me to
separate the upper from the lower. Looking at just the lower here we have a fire control
group made of pretty much all stamped components. This is actually our magazine hold-open right there. It's going to get lifted up by the
magazine follower and hook on the bolt. And of course, this is a hammer
fired rifle. So safe and semi only. There's the rest of your stamped sheet metal receiver. Moving to the upper assembly, we can pull the bolt
back to here and then pull the charging handle out. It is keyed so it only goes in one direction. Can then pull the bolt carrier out. There's your bolt. Looks very, very much
like an AR-15 bolt. And you may also recognise this as looking a lot like a couple
other bolts, like, for example, a British L85 bolt, a Singapore SAR 80 bolt, a G36 bolt, if you are
able to get your hands on one, a Mexican FX-05 bolt. The AR-18 was never a huge commercial
success. However, mechanically speaking, it was the ... basic model for a surprising number of
actually quite successful current-issue military rifles. This short-stroke gas piston,
7 lug rotating bolt style of design was really effective and really well liked.
Just not in the original AR-18 form. All right, next up. We can remove the firing pin by popping
out this pin. You're supposed to do this with a cartridge, I just have this Universal Disassembly Tool here. Hold the
firing pin in when you do this, because it is under spring tension. So once this pin comes out, you then have your
firing pin and its return spring that come out. Now ... this is very much like an AR-15, once that's out
we can then pull the cam pin which has a hole there. So normally when the firing pin is in place, the firing pin
retains the cam pin, and the cam pin retains the bolt. So here's our bolt. Very AR-15 like, although
you'll notice there are no gas rings back here, because this doesn't have a gas system in it
like the AR-15. And then here is our bolt carrier. Moving further along, once we
have removed the guide rods, these are what actually lock the upper handguard in
place, so I can now just lift the upper handguard off. You can see the two holes here where
the front of the guide rods lock it in place. With the upper handguard off we have access to the
whole gas system. So I can pull this back, and then pull out the middle part of our
gas piston here. I can then pull the ... front of the gas piston off. And then we can pull out the rear section of the gas piston
with its return spring. So there's that whole assembly. There is a gas port in the barrel here. The gas comes up,
comes out this little tube, where it then enters this blind piston. You'll notice that there are a couple holes here,
so once this piston moves backwards a little bit, gas can vent out there to reduce the pressure. Back here we have the working end of
the gas piston which goes through this centre hole in the front trunnion. The other two
holes being where the guide rods slot in place. This is going to go backwards and push the
bolt back in the receiver when the rifle fires. And if we look at the face of the bolt,
you can see that discoloured spot where the ... operating rod pushes on it right there. There is a completely field stripped, or almost detail
stripped except for the fire control group, AR-180. Now let's take a quick look at
what's different in the AR-18. The markings are almost identical on two guns. On the
semi-auto it's AR-180, on the select fire rifle we have AR-18. You'll notice back here we have a three position safety
selector that can go all the way over into auto, which this one, this guy, cannot. And then the serial numbers are slightly different. So
all of the semi-auto rifles have an S prefix serial number, and ArmaLite in California made 4,018 of these,
so this is towards the end of California production. The select fire AR-18s have an A prefix to the serial
number. Now despite the high number on this one, actually ArmaLite only made 1,171 full-auto rifles. Looking a little closer at the internals. Someone has drilled a hole in this, which is actually kind of
cool because it allows me to lock the recoil assembly in there, and open the gun up without
the ... recoil springs coming out. Anyway, on the full-auto gun there are a
couple changes to the fire control group. Mechanically everything is the same. The gas
piston is the same, the locking operation is the same, it's only the fire control group that
changes between semi and full-auto. And the one really visible change
is the addition of this auto-sear. So the upper receiver is different so that it
can mount this piece. The purpose of this is when the gun cycles in full-auto
the hammer gets held back by this, until the bolt is all the way forward and
locked. Then this gets tripped and it ... releases the hammer, which
can then fall and fire the gun. ... This is necessary because you don't want the hammer
to just to follow the bolt as the bolt goes forward, or else it will lose a bunch of its energy and
you tend to have malfunctions and misfires, so. There are changes to the hammer and some of
the other parts in the fire control group as well as the addition of that guy. Moving on to our next manufacturer which is
Howa. We have a much bigger manufacturer's mark, a bigger ArmaLite logo there, which is kind of
cool, AR-180, all the same basic information but laid out differently. And you'll see this is
manufactured for ArmaLite by Howa of Japan. Howa has a little bit of a
different serial number sequence. Once again they have S in front
of their semi-auto serial numbers. But they actually started at 0001 and went to
1000 with serial numbers on the upper receiver. After that they changed, they moved the serial number
to the lower, which is where it really ought to be by US law. And then they jumped from 1000 up to 10,000. So ...
the 1001st gun that Howa produced was actually 10,0001. And they went from there up to 12,915. So a grand total
of just under 4,000 AR-180s manufactured by Howa. Those first thousand by the way will also have a serial
numbered flash hider. A little odd, but that's how they did it. And lastly we have our Sterling guns made in England.
So these go back to the original Armalite style of you know, company logo and
marking here, 5.56mm still. And then we have manufactured for ArmaLite
again of Costa Mesa by Sterling, England. The Sterling guns all have a vertical serial number on the lower.
And they also kind of did their own different serial number thing. They noted where the last Howa number had
been, and they decided to start theirs at 15,000. So Sterling would make a total of 12,362 rifles, meaning
that their serial numbers run from 15,000 through 27,363. Sterling did also make full-auto AR-18s. Those have an
A prefix, just like the California guns, and they start at 10,000. I do also want to take a quick look at the scopes.
This was a factory option, these were made in Japan. There are two different versions. They're fundamentally
the same optics, they're 2.75x power 20mm lens. You can see even though the text is basically
the same, there's a slight change in font. The way that you can tell the difference between
the two is that one of them has a dot here and you read the range markings at the back, the
other one you read the range markings from the side. They both start with a 1 to 200 yard marking,
and then they'll move to 3, 4, and 500. Now the early pattern scopes have a
crosshair with a heavy vertical bar at the top. The later pattern ones have the same range markings, but
they are read from the back here. So 1 to 200, 3, 4 and 5, and these will have more of a simple double
thickness, or a variable thickness, crosshair. Ultimately Sterling would manufacture the
AR-180 until 1984 when production shut down. They sold the last few guns in 1985, and that was
the end of production of this style of the AR-180. I think the really interesting epilogue to this rifle is
how it really kind of was a failure as a commercial rifle. You know, 21,000 isn't a complete flop, but it's certainly
not the wild success that ArmaLite was hoping for. And certainly in military contracts
the AR-180 got almost nowhere. It was tested between 1964 and
1970 by the United States military, and it was found to be just kind of in general
decent but not as good as the AR-15. They liked the ... way the AR-15 handled heat
better, they liked the general handling better. I suspect the AR-15 ... just has the feel
of a sturdier rifle for whatever reason. And so no US military contracts
ever came to pass. It would only be in the years after that ... like all of its
mechanism would show up in a lot of other military rifles. Really starting with the SA80. In fact one of the
very early ... working test models of the SA80 as a bullpup as a ... proof of concept rifle,
was in fact a Sterling produced AR-18 that was converted into a bullpup
by Enfield to see if that would work. And then you'll see the mechanism
come up over and over and over again. So basically every rotating bolt, multi-lug, gas piston gun
that's in use today is ultimately a descendant of the AR-18. So we have the Steyr AUG, the SA80, the G36,
the Mexican FX-05, the Japanese Type 89, you know, the mechanism just
proliferated into a huge number of places. You could almost get to the point of saying
any military that isn't using the AR-15 is probably using an AR-18 variant
with just a few exceptions, so. So total production of the AR-180 was just
over 20,000 rifles. This is the semi-auto version, sold almost entirely in the United
States on the US commercial market. There were I think [1,171] full-auto AR-18s manufactured
by ArmaLite as well. Sterling also made some AR-18s, but those didn't come into the United States,
or at least not in any significant numbers. Sterling would attempt to market these
militarily, you know, to national governments. And they had a little bit of success in Africa. They sold
400 of the guns to Botswana, they sold 350 to Swaziland, they sold 1,000 to Nigeria. And this
is a mixture of AR-18s and AR-180s, and even AR-180S or 18S rifles, which are short-
barreled carbines, which are extremely scarce today. That'll be a subject for a different video
because I don't have access to one of those. But ... probably the most notable non-American
civilian market use of these was in Ireland, in Northern Ireland during the Troubles there. A
substantial number of ... AR-180s got smuggled into Ireland and they became iconic enough that they show up
in Irish pop culture and literature about that period. When you hear about the IRA and the
"ArmaLite", it is the AR-180 not the AR-15. So that happened. And ... these rifles continue to sell today.
They are popular collector's items today. They were actually reintroduced in 2000 as the AR-180B,
which replaced the ... stamped sheet metal lower with a moulded polymer lower and used AR-15
magazines, which was probably a good idea. Those didn't sell all that well, by 2007 they were out of
production. And that of course was under the new ArmaLite. The company changed hands a
couple times starting in the 1980s. In 1983 it went to Elisco Tool in the Philippines.
In '95 it was sold to a guy named Mark Westrom, who owned Eagle Arms and he
incorporated ... the ArmaLite brand name (which is basically all that it was
at that point) into Eagle Arms. ... You'll find AR-10s that he manufactured
and sold, as well as then later on AR-180Bs. Ultimately, the B, not very successful. People are
much more interested in the original all-metal gun. So, hopefully you guys enjoyed the video,
you learned something about ArmaLite. If you're interested in Rock Island
I will have links below to their Instagram and their YouTube channels,
you should definitely check them out. They have ... some pretty cool stuff both in
their auctions and on their social media pages. Thanks for watching.
O-qua tangin wann,
Another great video from Ian, Armalite was on the cusp of innovation during the time. Pretty awesome to see the scopes too