Auto Ordnance Tommy Gun 1927-A1 - "The Chicago Typewriter"

hello everybody this is hammer striker here today i'm going to play a little tune for you on this instrument i've got here this very large well it's not a violin it's a tommy gun or is it a typewriter a chicago typewriter no number of different variations of this particular gun it's an iconic classic gun if you see one of these you recognize that whether you're a gun guy or not everybody knows what one of these is especially when it has the classic vent rip barrel forward grip the cuts compensator on the end of it it's it's an icon is it a particularly practical weapon not really there's a lot of things that probably do the job better but nothing does the job is cool well let me go ahead and do this i'm going to clean this up get get rid of this violin case and actually be able to go ahead and show you the details of this firearm so okay so i got the violin case put away and i mentioned in the beginning the intro that it's not a particularly practical gun so you might figure why do i have it because they're fun because they're cool this is one of those guns that if your budget allows it and it definitely is a bit of a budget buster this one msrp is for about 2600 and there's variations that start around 1 500 and go up from there depending on which features you want but it's not an inexpensive gun it's heavy it weighs 13 pounds this particular one and that's before you start hanging 45 acp off of the magazine well which by the way these were designed to fire from an open bolt so you can see it's unloaded because it's basically open to the air this version is a semi-automatic because i'm not made of money though to get a fully automatic one of these i imagine you'd pay over 100 grand at least plus you'd go through all the waiting periods so this does fire from a closed bolt but the gun was designed to fire from an open bolt it was designed as a fully automatic weapon the magazine releases here and it pushes up and it's not easy to operate with a grip you're gonna you're gonna pull up on it with one hand you're gonna operate the mag with the other it's a cumbersome gun to operate there's a lot of things as you work through this gun not to like about it but you still like it you still want one and they're still cool so the magazine goes in to put the drum in there's a little plate you have to put up in here to be able to operate the release at the top you have to lock the bolt back and then the drum slides in this way and it slides across and locks in place and you have to be careful not to push it in the wrong way because you can damage the flanges this particular one works well with the drum and the drums as i showed the drum they're kind of just a big round drum they come in multiple sizes they come in a 10 round size they come in a one box size and a two box size yeah you can get a hundred rounds of 45 acp hanging off of this thing if you want on top of an already heavy gun therefore you're going to want some sort of a forward grip this one comes with the iconic finger groove grip that you hold on to there is also a more military version of it that has the horizontal grip a little more classic rifle looking but of course if you're going to get something like this and you've already decided you're going to have something impractical you want the look some of this is just about how this thing looks and how it feels when you actually use this grip the gun actually sits in well you've got to get a hold of the grip here and then you've got the back grip and the stock tucks into your shoulder it's actually very easy to shoot this thing with the sight on it which is a pop-up military style site which is going to be very difficult to line the front and rear sights up for you but it's kind of a peephole and it got a kind of a peep slot there and it's adjustable up and down and then just a front blade not the best sites in the world but actually they were quite easy to see they're far enough apart they're distinct enough and it lines up with your eye and like a pistol that's down the center line of your body it's lined up with your eye i was actually able to see the sights while on this and well enough to actually shoot it quite well the bolt to operate is operated by this ball at the top and it's noticed it's got a slit through it and that's to allow you to sight through the bolt and the bolt is heavy cycling it is heavy and this bolt does reciprocate but which are holding this thing properly obviously you wouldn't want to hold it like this you're not going to have anything up there so your hands are going to be down here on the grips and that's going to be cycling on the top and it's not going to get in your way when i was running this with the drum mags it ran flawless when i ran it with the stick mags i had a bunch of trouble with it and that is one of the characteristics of these is their temperamental and you kind of have to tune and optimize and play with them a little bit and i know i could send it back to car and get them to tune it but i'm going to tune it myself one of the other things you'll run into is there are certain variations that can only run stick max if you get one of those variations it's very difficult to convert it to a drum mac so if you're wanting to have the drum mags get the ones that come with the drum mag get it get it already set up with the drum mag and then in theory you should work reliably with the stick mag but again i may have to tune a little bit i may have to tune the feed lips and the way the magazine sits a little bit to get it to set properly this is the 1927 a1 this is a t1b model now they've got a couple variations as i mentioned this one's got a 16 and a half inch barrel and with that permanently installed cuts compensator ends up being 18 inches so as you see it here this is legal to purchase for anybody that can own a rifle there's nothing about this that gets into the nfa they also have a 14 inch version of it that comes out to 16 and a half with the permanently installed cuts compensator and that's also not an nfa weapon so it's a little bit shorter i wanted the slightly longer one to you know get that full look get the vent rib barrel and everything they've got an sbr version of this it's got a 10 and a half inch barrel now that falls under the nfa so you know you're doing paperwork and trusts and all that and waiting months at a time to get to get your rifle there's also a pistol variant of it now one of the variations that this particular one has is you see this button there's a button on the stock if i push the button the stock comes off and now you've got the heaviest most cumbersome pistol you've ever handled in your entire life because it comes this way from the factory and i didn't modify it it's still not an nfa weapon and i can operate it without that stock on it as a pistol like this or i can put the stock back on it by just simply sliding it back into place so this is the kind of the high-end version of it with all of the cool features which when i purchased this i was wanting it really because it's cool i'm could go hunting with this it would be an effective hunting weapon i'm not going to i've got much better weapons for that purpose but nothing beats this for a range day you've got a big heavy gun that's firing 45 acp it's kind of a heavy but slow cartridge which doesn't recoil very badly even in a pistol by the time you put it in this rifle this it feels like shooting at 22 but it's just a lot more fun very limited recoil very little rise especially with that cuts compensator it stays right on the target so you can just sit there and pull the trigger and you use the entire bull's eye of the target and waste the rest of the target very easily with this thing now i mentioned the drum magazine possible capabilities the stick magazine comes in a 30 like this one right here and it also comes in a 20 and there's a 10 round kind of cuts off right about there so that even if you're in one of the restricted states as long as there's not some other scary feature of this thing that makes it illegal for you you can actually have one of these because you can have the 10 round drum you can have the 10 round magazine and be compliant with those draconian restrictions that some states have from a maintenance perspective and i'm actually not going to disassemble this on video because it's a whole process you pop the stock off there's button on the back you have to pull plates out turn things up and down springs want to fly and everything's heavy and cumbersome it's a very cumbersome to maintain gun but it's once you get it apart it's easy to clean everything just comes apart internally the bolt comes off it's a big heavy block of steel for the bolt on this thing you clean it and put it back together and the same thing you got to kind of hold everything just right if there's enough interest in disassembly and reassembly one of these things i'll do a separate video on that because that video alone could be a 10 15 minute video just getting this thing apart good getting it cleaned and then getting it back together again so if that interests you comment if i get enough interest in that i'll go ahead and do that but i don't want to make this video a half hour video today the trigger on this is actually pretty decent it's it's a nice reasonable travel it is along the lines of a battle trigger but a little bit lighter it's actually turned out to be surprisingly to me quite a nice trigger it has an odd safety the safety rotates and it's quite stiff you can see it goes there's a detent almost not quite a detent but it feels like there is a kind of sticks and then fire and of course if this were the full monty version fire would be really fire in this one it's semi-automatic so they're just cool but from any kind of a practical usability and ar style safety is very easy to operate with your thumb but with this one trying to get up here with your thumb you have to push it down and then kind of rotate it around and if it doesn't go in you may have to bring your thumb down and give it one more push same thing it's almost a two-step process to put the safety on and it can be easy as you see it slid out of my hand it can be difficult to get a hold of it and flip it around so there are a lot of things that are kind of cumbersome and there's very few firearms that i would have that some of these cumbersome things the cumbersome disassembly the weird safety the magazine sensitivity would not make me go away from them i didn't mention the length of this thing so it's 41 inches long from the back of the stock to the end of the cuts compensator in this particular configuration so you've got a three and a half foot long gun pop the stock off it it's 31.5 inches so you're you're really close to three feet long gone it's long not only is it heavy it's long there is an aluminum receiver version of this that is about nine and a half pounds there's also a couple other variations so let's say 2600 isn't enough money you got more money to get rid of you don't quite have the 100 plus that it might take to get a full auto but you want to spend more than 26. they can they can take care of that for you there's a couple different tiger stripe variations of it where they have the similar to what you see in the desert eagle they have a gold tiger tiger stripe where the base is gold and the stripes are black i'm sorry silver they have a silver tiger stripe and the base is is silver and the stripes are black but they've also got a volt gold variation where it's like a two-tone gold and now you're up into the 4k territory so it's really easy to spend money on these things you can also get versions of it that come with the larger drum you can get it with the violin case that i've got there but it's easy enough to get that violin case after after market the big thing to do if you're wanting one of these and you want to be able to run drums you're better off just getting one that comes with a drum that way you know it's configured the magazine release and everything here is configured correctly to support the drum other than that there's really it's just how much money you want to spend and what features do you want they all function basically the same whether it's the pistol variant or whether it's the sbr or you've got the same magazine release the same basic functionality the only thing you may find different is this is walnut trim you can also get them with the black polymer and you can get them with the horizontal either in the walnut or the black polymer for the grip where it's more military style as i mentioned earlier so lots of variations lots of way to spend your money whichever version you pick if whether you're looking for the aesthetics of it or whether you're wanting to just kind of keep the price down or have it be a little less cumbersome you're going to enjoy it at the range and everybody who sees it who gets a chance to fire it is going to enjoy it at the range i've got a magazine with some snap caps in it i'm going to see if i can get it to chamber these things and if i can i'll actually demonstrate the trigger so i put the magazine in i'm gonna have to put it down to do this i turn it over when i pull the bolt back that's what it wants to do with snap caps so i'm going to do off camera i'm going to get a snap cap in the chamber therefore i'll be able to actually show you the trigger it's a little bit temperamental when it comes to the snap caps because they're so light and they're not really a true proper round so i have it in fire put my finger on the trigger there's a little bit of take up and then a really kind of a indistinct break when the trigger breaks there's really no way to know or feel a wall it just as you bring it back it just breaks and then it stops right there so there's very little over travel it's actually quite light it looks heavy and it actually probably weighs a little heavier but it's so smooth that it actually feels kind of light i'm going to try to get another snap cap in there show you again that time it didn't pick one up so i'll again off camera i'll get a snap cap in it and i'll show you the reset because what i'll do is i'll i'll pull the trigger back hold it get a snap cap in and show you the reset okay so i got a snap cap in it i've pulled the trigger and i've reset it so i'm all the way back and i've actually had a hard stop there's the reset it's not the shortest reset on the planet but for a gun like this it was designed for the military it's actually a pretty decent reset and then just a hair travel and it breaks again and it breaks so smoothly so it's got quite a nice trigger and i wouldn't hold the snap thing against it these these aren't designed for snap caps and even though these are high quality snap caps they're still not quite right they don't have the white ray right weight they're not as smooth and the way the feed ramp works on this thing let me get the magazine out of it get rid of that snap cap it's actually i pull the book back just a big tunnel you can see it right there it's just a big open guide so there's not really a true feed ramp it's just a big tunnel that's milled into the receiver that leads up into the chamber and the bullet just kind of rides up on that into the chamber it's designed really since it was full auto to be just moving and moving quickly and just cycling ammo through there riding up the tunnel so when you turn it around on its side you put lighter things in it like snap caps and things like that it's just it gets temperamental which is part of the reason why it can be magazine sensitive everything for that type of design needs to work right whereas you take a classic rifle most rifles feed straight into the chamber like an ar style or they've got a defined feed ramp that the bullet kind of centers on and then rides up in and doesn't have an opportunity to really get disconnected from the bolt which is what i see see seems to happen to this when it malfunctions as the bullet gets separated from the bolt turns a little bit sideways and doesn't want to go into the chamber so to kind of wrap up a lot of times i'll talk about the what would you use something for what's it good for this one doesn't have a practical purpose quite honestly it really doesn't it was designed for the military but even the military really didn't use it so why would i want it i want it because it's cool it's one of those guns that's been on my list forever of a gun i wanted to have it's iconic it's fun to shoot yeah it may be temperamental i've got other guns like that that are kind of temperamental and iconic and i get a little oil on the stock but you'll see it's a very nice walnut stock and it does have a sling swivel on the back so that you could put a sling on it if you actually wanted to use it practically that's not why i bought that this and honestly that's not why most people will buy this so i'm not going to be able to give you a list of practical uses for it even though it's a firearm and anything a firearm can do this can do this you're going to buy one of these because you want one of these for what it is for the history and just because it is what it is you're not going to buy these this because you actually have a good quality practical purpose to put it to if you like our videos please give us a thumbs up i know it's a dirty thumb but this has got some dirt in it check check us out on facebook patreon twitter instagram we're kind of everywhere share the video and have a great day thank you you

Channel: Hammer Striker

Views: 43,072

Keywords: home alone, al capone, godfather, WW2, cutts, finned, T1B, T1-B, Ma Barker, Bugsy Malone, Bonnie, Clyde

Id: 8ueV6CkAwqE

Length: 18min 38sec (1118 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 25 2020