Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another
video on ForgottenWeapons.com. I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at the James D. Julia Auction House up in Maine, taking a look at some of the magnificent German sniper rifles that they are going to be selling in their upcoming April Firearms Auction in 2017. This, of course, is the HK PSG-1, and that stands for, translated into English, Precision Sharpshooter's Rifle. There was actually an SG-1 version of the G3 rifle that preceded this, that was the Scharfschützengewehr, the
sharpshooter's rifle, or the marksman's rifle. This was distinguished from it by being the
Precision Marksman's rifle. This is a true sniper rifle. It was designed for police
operations rather than the military, which is probably why it
has a tripod instead of a bipod. And this is another one of the rifles, like the Walther 2000,
that came out of the ... 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre. If you're not aware of it, this was of course
a terrorist attack on the Munich Olympics which resulted in a bunch of civilians,
Olympic athletes, being taken hostage. The German police response was
unfortunately inadequate, and resulted in the death of all of the terrorists but also
the death of a great many hostages as well. The issue at hand was the German police department
didn't really have a dedicated counter-terrorism task force. They had guys with rifles who weren't
bad, but weren't ready to be set up at night, with iron sights, hundreds of yards
away from hostages intermingled with targets. ... And part of the issue here is the German constitution
prohibited the use of the military on German soil. So they ... weren't able to call in German military snipers,
they had the police and whatever the police had on hand. Now in the aftermath of this, a number of things were
[done] to prevent it from ever happening like that again. And one of them was the development of GSG9,
this is the German counter-terrorism special force. And GSG9 is actually a part of the German border
security division, it is not actually part of the German military specifically so that it can be used on German soil
should there ever be another instance like the Munich attack. At any rate, one of the things that Munich made very clear is that
a unit like GSG9 was going to need a very precise sniper's rifle. The engagement at the Munich incident was at
several hundred metres, iron sights aren't going to cut it. And for that kind of work you really do want a
really good sniper rifle. This isn't typical police work, or that wasn't typical police work, where an ordinary police sniper is rarely going to
make a shot at more than 50 or 100 metres. For this sort of capability they wanted a lot more. Hence the PSG-1. So this is obviously
based on the German G3 rifle. But ... in fact a significant number
of changes have been made to it. This is not just a G3 with a fancy trigger and a scope,
which is I think is what a lot of people may expect. There are a lot of ... what look like minor
changes inside the gun to the mechanics that really ... contribute to it
being a magnificently accurate rifle. This is a half minute of angle gun with good ammunition.
It just is, out of the factory. And that's a pretty rare thing. Now of course it has a price tag to match, when
these were new they were $10,000 dollar rifles. But that's the price in many ways of getting a rifle that is
fine-tuned enough to do this, to get that level of accuracy. I think there are a lot of people who
underestimate what kind of work it really takes to get that level of repeatable
precision from a semi-automatic rifle. It is interesting that, like the Walther 2000, (and I have a video up on one of those as well, if you
haven't seen it you should definitely take a look at it), like that there are a number of choices on this rifle
that, in retrospect, look really old fashioned to us. And the biggest one is the scope. These
rifles came with a Hensoldt 6x42 power scope. It's good glass, but it's the only option
you had. There are no rings on this rifle, the scope is actually fixed to a pair of scope mounts
that are welded to the receiver by a pair of bolts. So you can remove the scope if you need to, but unless
you find another scope that's made with these specific threaded attachment points at this specific spacing,
you can't change the scope. You don't get an option. You can't go to say a higher magnification
scope, or a variable magnification scope, or something that has a more fancy reticle in it. The reticle here is just a simple crosshair.
It has a BDC out to 600 metres. And that's all you get. It's a very simplistic scope by
today's standards. It does have a lit reticle, there's a brightness adjustment and a button. And
apparently (and I don't have a battery in this one), but apparently you hit the button and it illuminates
the reticle for two minutes, and then it goes off again. That's ... an interesting system, certainly it prevents it
from being left on all the time and draining the battery, but apparently they did have trouble with
the batteries not being all that reliable. Figures, they do all the work, get a fantastic rifle,
and the batteries aren't quite up to par. At any rate, batteries are only necessary to
illuminate the reticle, not to actually use anything here. So a tripod, really? Would it have killed them to
add a bipod? Well, they sort of did. They have an allowance for a bipod. There is a rail
here on the bottom of the handguard which allows you to mount a sling ... swivel if you
want one, but also allows you to mount a bipod. That wasn't included OEM, but a lot of people have
done it. This particular rifle in fact has a bipod stud on it. And it does come with a short Harris bipod. That being said though, the tripod really does make
good sense for the role that this rifle was intended for. This is something that you're going to
go out and put in an emplaced position, and you're probably going to be watching your target
for some period of time before you actually take a shot. And the tripod allows you to really set this thing in
a perfect position and be more stable than a bipod. The way this is designed you have a tensioning screw here.
When I loosen that up, I can then crank this bipod up or down. There is a rubber coating, a rubber half ring,
inside here that sets nice and gently with the rifle's fore-end and does prevent it from sliding. You can move it, but it's not going to slip
around like hard plastic on hard plastic. And then we have this lever back here which, when loosened, allows the front support to
pivot side to side. And then can be tightened in place. This is important because the
length of the legs is not adjustable. So if you set this up on uneven ground, you would then use this
to level out the rifle, lock it in place, and then set the height. To actually assemble the bipod, or to
take it down, there is a centre screw here. We're going to loosen that up, and then
all three of the legs simply come out. And that is the bipod as it packs up
into the carry case. To assemble it quick and easy, just drop all three
legs in, tighten the centre screw down, and then you're all set. Even the tripod is just incredibly German. You'll
notice that the tips, the little pointed feet, are bevelled, they're at an angle. And that angle is set precisely
so that on a flat surface all three of the legs will sit on this flat surface and
not sit on their pointy tips. So you don't wear the tips of the tripod legs out. Then of course you do have those pointy
tips if you have a ... soft and pliable surface, and you've got the collars on here
to prevent the legs from sinking in. The amount of engineering that went into just the
tripod for the PSG-1 is by itself pretty remarkable. Now the rifle itself. Of course on the
magazine well we have standard HK markings, which are of course PSG-1, serial number here
is D 91, and of course the calibre is 7.62 NATO. The examples that were imported into the US will have
an import marking on the right side of magazine well, Made in Germany, and then
... imported by HK USA in Virginia. Now let's look at some of the mechanical
changes that were made to the rifle. And one of the most significant mechanical ones
is this, this is called a "silent bolt closing device". And it is basically a forward assist from an AR-15,
you'll notice scalloped cuts in the bolt carrier there. Those engage with a ratchet in this, and the idea for that is it does allow
you to slowly ride the bolt home. ... On a G3 type rifle this can
be a bit of an issue because at the very end of travel you
have to engage the locking lugs, ... normally you don't want to just slowly run the bolt
forward on a G3 or it won't engage, it won't go into battery. So if I run the bolt to there, now I can push this forward and drop the
bolt. I'm not sure about the silent part, I think in order for it to be silent
you kind of have to ride your thumb on this wedge and hold it down,
and make sure it goes even slower, because these tend to snap audibly
into battery when they do lock up. But that's a major mechanical element
added specifically to the PSG-1 with the idea of it allowing you to be sneaky
and quiet when you're in a sniping position. The trigger is another obvious change.
Maybe not so obvious from the outside. But it has this shoe added to the bottom
to give you a nice wide trigger surface. The main changes to the trigger are internal,
so we'll take a look at that in a moment. I will point out however is that it is a latch on
there, there's no pin on the trigger mechanism. Which is nice, that helps it avoid machine
gun issues related to HK in the United States. And the buttstock here is fairly distinctive. Now this is a style of buttstock that has
been pretty well copied here in the US, and now you can find all manner of fully adjustable stocks
that look like this for your AR-15, or most any other rifle. However, in the early '70s this wasn't a real
common thing, and this was a really nice high level feature on a precision rifle like the PSG-1. So the length of pull and the height
of the comb are both adjustable. You actually have this tool that comes with the rifle,
and we have square adjustment pegs in the gun, so I'm going to put that in,
and then I can loosen it up. And now I can run the buttstock out. or all the way in. When I get it to the right position
I can then tighten this down, lock it in place. This does also allow you to cant the buttstock, just slightly,
to one side or the other, if you decide that you want to. Then, in theory, you can leave this in the gun if you
want to because it does have this little retaining clip, or you can leave it in your carry case. We have the same thing up here for the
adjustable riser, put that in, and when I loosen it this is under spring tension, so it's going to snap all
the way up. I will then put it to whatever position I want, tighten it back up, and take the adjustment tool out. As you can tell by the name here, this scope is
a Hensoldt 6x42 specifically made for the PSG-1. As you can see from PSG-1 being
in the model designation there. We have windage adjustment obviously for zeroing. And then we have a combination of elevation
adjustment and a bullet drop compensator. So you can adjust the set range
for whatever you are shooting at. The PSG-1 does take all
standard G3 or HK91 magazines. The carry case set that these were originally
sold with includes a couple 5s and a couple 20s. Now let's go ahead and take this apart, because
some of the significant changes are on the inside. It's going to disassemble just like a standard HK91. ... This is very tight. Oh, before I do that,
actually I should point out there are a pair of stiffening bars
that have been welded to the receiver. ... The G3 series does use a simple stamped sheet
metal receiver, which is prone to quite a lot of flex. So adding these bars helps to stabilise the receiver. That's an important upgrade for accuracy. Alright, buttstock assembly comes
off, this is pretty much normal. Now our trigger group is
going to pivot down and off. And the ... bolt and bolt carrier come out the back. So the stiffening bars have been added to the receiver,
the forward assist has been added to the receiver, the trunnion is larger to help accommodate
the larger, heavy barrel in there. That's about a 0.88 inch in diameter
barrel. 25.6 inch length on the barrel. And of course we have these two
permanent scope mounts on the receiver. So really actually a substantial number of changes,
upgrades and modifications made to the receiver unit itself. Looking at the internals we have a number of
changes to the bolt carrier as well, so I have a commercial G3 import rifle (semi-auto rifle
actually) bolt and bolt carrier here as a comparison. Most distinctively we have the thumb pad and the
serrations for the forward assist here on the bolt carrier tube. And then looking at the front of the bolts, you
can see a substantial difference in the extractors. This is the PSG-1 extractor, this is the G3. So the G3 has a much larger extractor actually,
but it's also a different design of extractor. You can see it's a a piece here under a tension
spring that comes straight back into the bolt. On the PSG-1 the extractor wraps around the bolt, and it has a spring underneath it on that side. So presumably this has been probably
changed in order to specifically get a more repeatable purchase on the case, while
not sacrificing any reliability of extraction. And one of the most significant
changes is to the rollers. Now an original standard G3, you'll notice I can
shake this and the roller will come out the side, and the rollers spin, being, you know, rollers. And this is a very efficient, simple
piece to make. It works really well. However, what this means is that you
don't have a totally consistent lockup, because from shot to shot that roller can rotate. Which means you're going to be locking on a
different section of the roller at any given time. That's just fine for a combat rifle that needs
to be 2 or 3 or 4 minute of angle accurate. That's fine and it's cheap, it's easy to make.
But it's not going to cut it for the PSG-1. If we look at the rollers here, I can't get them
to come out of the bolt when it's not in battery. We can see why if I snap it into battery, now you'll
notice that these rollers are not actually circular. They have a flat surface on the front. The purpose
of that is to prevent them from actually rolling. ... The idea here is that they will
always engage at the exact same spot. You'll never have an inconsistent wear pattern causing
the gun to lock up differently between different shots. Now one of the well-known features of the
G3 is that it has a kind of mediocre trigger. It's got a long, heavy, creepy trigger pull.
That is intentional, that was done to allow the rifle to pass a pretty severe
drop test without firing inadvertently. And that's again fine for a combat rifle, but it's not
going to cut it for a PSG, a precision marksman's rifle. Now the PSG-1 grip assembly has
a number of changes made to it. It has this trigger shoe which is adjustable up
and down, and for angle, and however you prefer it. It has a nice thick grip, very wide, fills up
the hand, and it has this adjustable palm rest. Up and down, wherever you prefer to have that. It is semi-automatic only of course, you know, being
a sniper's rifle, there's no need for this to be full-auto. But most importantly it has a really good trigger,
it has a very crisp, roughly 3 pound trigger. How do they do that? Why don't
they do that in all the G3s? Well, the reason they don't do it
on all of them is because, I expect, the PSG-1 will not pass the kind of military drop
test that the standard G3 will. And it doesn't need to. But here's another interesting element. Note that
when the hammer is cocked it comes to rest there. The standard G3 does not. Now if you are going to take a G3
trigger and ... tune it up, you can do that. And you can reduce the trigger weight, and you can
reduce the trigger creep, but you're changing two things. You are either losing engagement surface on the sear,
which leaves the guns potentially liable to double fire. Or you're reducing the spring weight, which
leaves the guns potentially liable to light strikes. You know, if you have less force on the hammer,
you're going to have less force on the trigger. But if you have too little it won't reliably fire, and not
reliably firing would be a major problem in a sniper's rifle. So how do we fix that? The answer is they've redesigned
the trigger so it actually has a two-stage hammer spring. The initial stage back here has relatively little spring tension
on it, which means the trigger pull is quite light and very crisp. However, as soon as the hammer
gets to here a secondary spring kicks in and runs that thing forward
with a lot more force. That is there primarily to prevent
light strikes. If the whole hammer were running with just this spring
tension it would be a very unreliable rifle. By having that second stage,
and it's light, light, light, oop, right there, you can
hear it snap when it engages. That ... booster effect makes this a very special trigger
group and allows it to ... be both reliable and a very nice trigger. This thing has really stood
the test of time remarkably well. The Walther 2000, we see places
where it's kind of obvious that it's outdated. The PSG-1, with the exception of the scope
options (which by the way were updated, in 2006 they released the PSG-1A1 version which
does allow you to change out scopes, as well as having a couple of other minor tweaks
like the charging handle is mounted a little bit lower so that it doesn't interfere with the
scope when you try to lock it open). At any rate, the PSG-1 has really
withstood the test of time well, and it is every bit as magnificent of a
sharpshooter's rifle today as it was when it came out. Which is a pretty remarkable
achievement on the part of HK. If you'd like to own this one, there aren't a whole lot in the
United States, and boy, this would be a sweet shooting rifle, take a look at the description text below. You'll find
a link there to the Julia catalogue page on this rifle, where you can see their complete
pictures, description, provenance, etc. etc. And if you're interested you can participate in the auction
live here in Maine, or place a bid over their website. Thanks for watching. [ cc by sk cn2 ]
