Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another
video on ForgottenWeapons.com. I'm Ian McCollum, and I'm here today at the Morphy Auction Company taking a look at some of the guns that they're going to be selling in their upcoming April of 2019 firearms auction. And today we have something that you very rarely get a chance to see. And that is a Soviet AVS-36 automatic rifle. ... Normally here in the US we like to think of having been the first country to adopt a standard semi-automatic service rifle, you know, for every soldier. Not just a specialist weapon like the RSCs or like the Federovs. Well, we did do that, but we weren't necessarily the first, because the AVS-36 is actually the first. It predates the actual US production
and adoption of the M1 Garand. Now the AVS-36 would prove to have some problems and
it would be replaced after just a couple years in service, but this is the first rifle in the path that would lead to millions of
SVT-40s being produced in the Soviet Union during World War Two So the designer. Sergei Simonov (or Simenov,
I think it's Simonov, hopefully it's Simonov), ... actually started off his career apprenticed
to two of the most famous and most notable Soviet firearms designers that there
were at the time, Degtyarev and Fedorov. In 1918 he went to work as, well, basically an assistant. A floor
sweeper sort of guy for ... one of the Russian arms factories. And showed some serious talent. He was curious,
he was interested, he was smart, he was clever, and he ... became very interested in firearms design.
And this caught the attention of Fedorov and Degtyarev, and so they kind of took him under their wing and helped
tutor him and helped develop his skills at firearms design. Now the Soviets would start this process of ...
formally adopting a self-loading rifle in the mid-1920s. And in fact there was a series of rifle trials in 1926,
in 1928 and 1930 with a whole bunch of entrants. This is akin to a lot of the semi-auto
rifle trials that were going on at the time. You know, lots of experienced designers,
guys like Fedorov, Degtyarev, Tokarev as well. And then also lots of names that you've never heard of, guys like Raznov, Kuznetsov and Bezrukov
who ... were all entrants in the 1928 trials. None of these trials produced a weapon that
was actually considered sufficient or acceptable. As was the case in pretty much all of the
self-loading military trials around the world. The US as well, we would go through
a bunch of trials where the result was, "None of you guys are good enough. So go back, build
some more stuff and let's try again in a year or two." ... And in fact Simonov had submitted a rifle
to that very first 1926 trial, but it wasn't so great. In fact, it was so not great that it wasn't even let
into the trials. It was kind of rejected out of hand. "We're not even gonna waste
our time testing this thing." But he went back and he started tinkering and he kept
working, and in 1930 he had a much improved design. And by the end of the trials a lot of the
other contenders had been knocked out. And I should mention, a lot of those early trials guns,
in fact most of them, were recoil-operated guns. And one of the things that the ultimate winners of this
whole process (which would be Simonov and Tokarev), the thing that they really did was they
started using a gas piston operating system. And in fact, they used a gas piston system that
would go on to be, well, it's still used to this very day. It was the system that would be in the SVT-40,
it would then move on and be in the German G43. The Germans adopted it because it was a really good system. It would go on to be in the Armalite 18 or 180, AR-180, and we
see it in a wide variety of 5.56 calibre service rifles today. And this is pretty much the oldest iteration of it in
an actual service configuration. So that's pretty cool. Now, overall, this gun has some issues.
This is clearly an early generation self-loading rifle. And you'll see that when we take it apart. In fact,
why don't we go ahead and just take it apart right now? Before we can take this apart, I need to show you some of the
stuff on the outside, because there's a lot to go over on this rifle. So first of all, I should point out, because I don't
think I did before, that this is actually selective fire, full-auto and semi-auto. It does
have a selector switch on the back. And as part of attempting to make this somewhat controllable
they put a quite significant muzzle brake on the front. So we've got that. We then have a
cleaning rod on the side of the gun. You'd see the same sort of thing on the SVT-38,
although they did drop it on the SVT-40. There is an adjustable gas block on the front, so you can tweak
the amount of gas that you're getting to match your ammunition. This metal handguard is here because the gas piston is right in
here and this is where it vents excess gas each time it cycles. So that's why you see this metal
section on the SVT and AVS rifles is that you don't have wood up here that's going to
get charred and damaged over time from that gas. Moving backward. This is actually part of
our gas piston and we'll see that in a moment. You'll notice that this an Izhevsk manufactured gun.
They were all produced at Izhevsk. We have a pretty typical rear
sight here, good for 1,500 metres. Date for this particular rifle is 1939. Although it had been
technically replaced by that time, production hadn't ended entirely. A little bit of a close-up on the Izhevsk marking there. On the opposite side we have the serial number, which is two
cyrillic letters and then 127. This isn't an entirely matching gun, as you can see from the different
number on the bolt handle. We do have a stripper clip guide for
reloading, as well as a 15 round magazine. These look very similar to the magazines from the Tokarev,
the SVT-40. They are not actually interchangeable because the magazine hold open tabs are not in the same place.
On the SVT that's central mounted, on the Simonov rifles it's offset to the right. So unfortunately you
can't take these mags and use them in your SVT. Although you probably wouldn't anyway because
these mags are extremely rare and difficult to find. This gun actually has two of them, which is pretty cool. Locking system is basically identical to the Tokarev. It's a nose-in,
rock-back magazine with just a simple lever release at the back. There was a sniper version of the AVS-36,
that's what this rail on the side is for, mounting I believe a PE, or maybe a PEM scope. Continuing back, we have a sliding
dust cover on the back end of the gun. This one's in kind of bad condition, it probably needs to be
bent a little bit back into shape because it's a little floppy. But the idea here is you can push this thing to the front and
it's supposed to stay in there just from a little spring tension, and that closes up this open
slot in the side of the receiver. And then when you cycle the bolt handle, it slides back like
that to allow, well, the bolt handle to cycle back through here. And ... it's a manual dust cover, so when you're
done shooting and you want to close the rifle up, you have to put it back in position manually. At the back here we have our selector switch. The top
position is semi-auto, the bottom position is full-auto. It kind of helps to pull this out just a little bit to lift it out of
its locking notch, and then you can snap it down or up. It's remarkable how simple ... the function of that
lever is, which we'll take a look at in just a moment. The safety is this lever at the back of the
trigger guard, and that's also extremely simple. All it does is physically block
the trigger from going back. And then lastly we have a couple markings on the
stock. We've got the serial number repeated again, and then we have this acceptance proof. Old school Soviet Union there, CCCP and
a hammer and sickle inside a laurel [wreath]. Alright, now we can take this apart. And it's a pretty simple
process, there's only one screw that you have to take out. So start by removing the cleaning
rod, just to get that out of the way. The upper handguard is held in place by this locking pin.
Rotate it 90 degrees and then it will come out, like so. Now this is a loose pin. There's no good place to put
this again, which is one of the downsides of the design. But like I said, this is a very early semi-auto rifle. Now with that pin out we can slide this ... back. That comes off the gun, and
this is just the upper handguard. The metal that you see out here is actually continued all
the way back. This is fully metal shrouded on the inside. And then it locks into place
around the rear sight block back here. There's the back end of your gas system. There's
a gas block here, gas is going to come up into there, you can control how much goes through
with that plug. And then when it cycles, when it cycles this is going to get pushed backwards
like that, and it's going to push this connecting rod here, which attaches to this block. So when this cycles,
this whole block gets pushed backwards. (I'll use the rod at the front
so you can see it, just like that.) There's a little return spring right
under there that pushes it back. And this acts just as basically a connecting rod. So this block pushes on this top of
what is actually sort of our bolt carrier. When this cycles it's going to just push back like that. This block pushing on this surface right here.
You can see how they interact there. Now to take apart the rear end we are going to take this selector
lever and we're actually going to pull it out away from the gun, lift it up 90 degrees, and then it will also come out. And then, oops, there goes our receiver
cover which is under some spring tension. This you may notice looks fairly similar
to the Tokarev, just a spring guide in there. That is a solid spring guide by
the way, it is not telescoping. That's just a rear receiver cover with a stripper clip guide. It's a
fairly complex piece, but it doesn't actually do anything additional. Coiled wire mainspring, which is cool. Alright, continuing on. Note that
we have still not used any tools. We are going to pull the bolt back, bring it back to
here and then it just lifts out of the gun, set that aside. Now, ... that's your basic field stripping.
However, we're gonna go one step farther and we are going to take the
magazine well and trigger guard off. There is a secured screw here. So what I
have to do is actually push that centre button in (there we go), like that. That prevents this screw from
coming loose while you're shooting, which is important because this
screw actually has multiple functions. Right. Once that screw comes out then the
trigger guard is actually hinged right there, so I can pivot it up like that and then slide it out. And then the ... stock lifts off the action. Alright, we have a lot to look at here.
So let's start with the locking system. There are actually three different locking
surfaces in this rifle, which is pretty kind of quirky. So we have a locking flap here, sticks out of the bolt. We have
a similar locking flap right here. They're not symmetrical but they
... each come out one side of the gun. And you can see a locking recess
right above my finger, right there, and one on the other side, right here. This rifle is striker fired, not hammer fired.
And this is the back end of our striker. And when that gets released, which by the way
happens when the bolt goes all the way forward, when the striker is released and pushes forward its body is actually going to force both of
these locking wedges out of the bolt body, which forces them to lock in the receiver. This one can actually open up farther
since the receiver is not there to hold it in. The firing pin then protrudes
from the bolt face and it fires. And you might look at this and say, "That doesn't seem like all that much locking surface for
a rifle in 7.62x54 rimmed, a true full-power rifle cartridge." Well, you would be right. You might also notice this
square recess and think, "Wonder what that does?" That is actually the most
significant primary locking surface. Now before we go into the receiver, notice
that there's this angled section on the top. We have a two part bolt and carrier, although the bolt
is actually the main component here at the bottom. And we have this second piece, which I'm going to call
the carrier because that's what it would typically be. The carrier is on the top. The carrier is what has the recoil
spring acting on it. The recoil spring sits right in there. And when this goes forward, this wedge is
actually going to act to force the locking block up. That locking block is right here and it travels vertically. You can see it right there, lifting up
and dropping down inside the receiver. What happens is, if we see the top of it right up there, it's actually completely surrounding the bolt. So when it travels the top has to go up, and the
bottom then can lock into the bottom of the bolt. The way that's actually accomplished is that this angled
surface pushes the ... the top of the locking block up, which forces the bottom of
it to engage into this surface. So as long as this piece is forward the locking block must
remain elevated, because this wedge is holding it all the way up. And then, when the gas piston cycles, it's going to
hit this top semi-circular portion of the bolt carrier, which is going to force it backwards. That is going to re-cock the striker
(this is a tricky thing to do by hand), it's gonna re-cock the striker right there,
which allows these two locking flaps to come in, and it also brings this back out of the locking
block, which allows the locking block to drop down. That frees the bolt and allows the whole
bolt to reciprocate backward and cycle. I can show you that in action. Note that there is
no hammer in here. We just have a ... sear, right ... (... it doesn't have a spring on it right now), so there's a sear right there that's going
to catch the striker and hold it in place. But we'll get to the trigger mechanism
in a minute. When I put this in, there we go, that drops in there. This whole thing is going to go forward, the sear is going to catch on the striker tail right there. You can see the striker tail stops. Top of the bolt carrier continues forward. This gets really stiff right here, because at this
point that wedge has to push the locking block up. So there's the bottom of it.
When I push this all the way into battery you can see that locking block
is going to move up. There we go. Now it's locked in place. And in fact, because we don't
have the trigger mechanism in place, it let go of our sear here. And so now we have both this block holding the bolt in and
we also have the two wedges, flappers, on the side of the bolt. Then of course, this is going to come
backwards which pushes this back. ... (Let's do it like that, and then, there we go.) This is quite tight to lock and unlock. So, then this comes back
and cycles like a regular firearm. Now we can take a look at the fire control
group, which is also a very interesting one. And ... I mean this thing just comes basically completely
loose, so let me put that back where it's supposed to be. By the way, this block is the pin
that holds the ejector in place. So we've got a couple other items
inside here that I should mention briefly. ... The big one, the main one is the ejector right
there which is going to kick empty cases out. That is spring-loaded and on a pin, so that when
the bolt goes forward the ejector goes down. This block is hit by the bolt and that's
what actually pushes the ejector down. You want the ejector to be very hard so that it
doesn't bend or deform when it's kicking cases out, but if it's hard it tends to be brittle and you
don't want the bolt slamming into it every time. So instead the bolt hits this block, which is connected
to the ejector to push it down when the bolt goes forward. So that's that part. We then have this tab right here and that is the bolt
hold open. So that is being pushed up by this tab on the back of the follower. So that
when the magazine is empty that presents itself, pushes this up, which then hits the bolt and
stops it, hence locking the gun open. This pin right here goes all the way through, connects
to this block. In fact, I can push it a little ways out so that you can see that starting to come out there. And that's just what holds all of these pieces in place.
And then we have this guy right here, which is the sear. So as the trigger bar here goes in and
out, that sear is going to go up and down, which is what allows the gun to fire. At the other end of this bar is this block which acts as a semi-auto disconnector. So when this is in the upward position
and exposed inside the receiver here, when the bolt comes back it's going to push this down which causes the trigger to reset. If you look at the trigger here, you'll notice
that we have an angled wedge on the bottom, we have an angled wedge on the top, and
there's actually this open space in between. That open space is there so that when this bar is pushed
down by the bolt, the trigger snaps back forward and resets. So all that the selector lever is doing is actually
taking this bar and sliding it up and down. When it's in the upward position that
disconnector is in the receiver and functioning. And so when you pull the trigger back,
that upper triangle acts on this little lug, which pulls this back, which drops the sear and fires
the rifle. And then when this comes down like that, there's now ... nothing holding the trigger
in place, the trigger resets forward, and then this gets pushed back up
when you're ready to fire a second round. When you push this into full-auto it drops this down (and by the way, this screw hole is ... for the
screw that holds the trigger guard in place, so this screw comes up into here and it actually acts as
the bottom. It prevents this bar from going too far down. That bar gets sandwiched between the trigger
guard screw here and the selector lever here.) So in the full-auto position we are now using
the bottom triangle to actually fire the gun. However, the disconnector has been dropped down
outside of the receiver and no longer does anything. So as long as you hold the trigger
back with this selector lever down, this stays backward, which
means the sear stays down. ... (There we go.) Stays back, sear stays down, and the gun will
keep firing until you release the trigger or you run out of ammo. Now the trigger guard itself is essential to
make this loose floppy thing actually work, because the trigger guard has a pair of flat springs.
It's actually one long flat spring that does two jobs. So first off, the front end here is
dovetailed into the front magazine well block. So what we're gonna do is put that in there, and
then you can see that this kind of pivots in like so. I'm going to bring the trigger back, and this is the position that this whole
thing is in when it's actually working. So we have a flat spring here that is constantly pushing the sear up,
which ensures that the gun doesn't fire when the bolt goes home. And then we have this spring which is
constantly pushing the trigger bar forward. Now you can see how this whole thing actually cycles. So this is semi-auto. And when I pull the trigger the bar
is going to come back, which causes this sear to drop. The bolt however is going to trip the
disconnector. Note how the sear rises. So I can continue holding the
trigger but the sear has gone up. It's not going to fire again
until I release the trigger. The trigger bar can go back up,
and then I can fire again. It'll disconnect like that. Now to hold this in full-auto I'm actually gonna put in the selector
lever because I don't have enough hands to do this all manually. There we go. There is full-auto.
Now when I pull the trigger back, the sear drops and it's just gonna stay dropped
until I release the trigger, because this disconnector is dropped down
outside of the receiver. So it'll fire full-auto. Whew, so there is your field stripped AVS-36, select-fire, Soviet, pre-World War Two battle rifle. As the Russian trials progressed, ultimately by 1935
or 1936 it really came down to Simonov and Tokarev. And both rifles had pros and cons. Ultimately the Tokarev would prove
to be the more durable of the rifles. And the Simonov was a good design, it worked
reasonably well, but it had more parts failures. Now Simonov would go back and he would modify
the design again and he would actually fix those issues. The problem was by the time
he had fixes for those issues, his redesign had increased the complexity of
some of the parts to the point that now his gun was actually more expensive
to produce than Tokarev's rifle. Both in terms of material cost,
how much steel had to go into it, it was like an extra ... kilo and 3/4 of steel
that was required to make a Simonov rifle, and also in cost. It was just under 7
roubles more expensive in labour terms, even in Soviet Union labour terms, to
produce one of these than it was a Tokarev rifle. ... Oh, and it didn't hurt that Stalin
knew Tokarev and liked Tokarev. Stalin thought the bayonet on the Tokarev rifle
was a better type of bayonet than Simonov's. Although I think Simonov's was
probably the more practical of the two. Ultimately Tokarev gets chosen.
Now this wouldn't really slow down Simonov, you may recognise his name from some
later guns, like the SKS as well as the PTRS. So he would go on to have a very successful and
notable career in the Soviet arms design bureaux. But it wouldn't be entirely because of this rifle.
The rifle would be adopted as the AVS-36. Real actual substantial production would begin
in 1937 with a little more than 10,000 produced, it would scale up again to about 24,000 made in 1938. In total they would produce about 65,000 of
these rifles by 1940, when they ceased production. This was replaced by the SVT-38, which was then replaced
by the SVT-40, but these production timetables are all overlapping. So they didn't immediately drop this rifle as soon
as they decided to replace it with a different rifle, because they already had production lines running,
tooling in place, parts in various stages of manufacture. These were good enough rifles that they were worth finishing
up a production schedule and not being terribly inefficient with it. But at the same time that they were, you know, scaling down
production of this, they'd be scaling up production of say the SVT-38. You'll see the same thing going on with Kalashnikov
rifles as they transition between different models of the AK in its earlier, more developmental, days. The production
of two competing models would actually overlap. So. Ultimately this was first seen in
public in 1938 at the May Day Parade. They did also make a sniper version, a
scoped version, with a PE scope on the side. But in total only about 65,000 of them made, and
of course that was right before World War Two, the Great Patriotic War, and so very
few of these have survived to this day. There's only a handful of them here in the United States. And it's really cool to get a chance to take a look at
this one, tear it apart, and show you guys how it works. If you are interested in having it yourself, it is
of course coming up for sale here at Morphy's. If you take a look at the description text below the
video, you'll find a link to ForgottenWeapons.com. And from there you can click over to
Morphy's catalogue page on this guy, take a look at their pictures, their
description, their price estimate. This is a fully registered and transferrable, curio and relic
eligible, registered machine gun because it is select fire. So anyone who can pass an NFA background check can add this cool
awesome piece of firearms history to your own personal collection. Hope you enjoyed the video.
Thanks for watching.
good video, also he posted one about shooting it that has 2 very good tips that apply to HnG. Ill let yall find them yourself.
op gun