Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another
video on ForgottenWeapons.com. I'm Ian McCollum, and I just have a little extra video for you today because I saw this thing on GunBroker this morning,
and it's kind of wacky. So quick reminder, today's video is
brought to you by "Thorneycroft to SA80", Jonathan Ferguson's fantastic book on the history of
British bullpup rifles that is currently being sold on Kickstarter. Check out the link in the description text below
to see all the cool stuff we have available for that. Now, as for this alleged Berthier, this kind of reflects back on something I get asked
fairly frequently, which is how common are faked guns? Like how how cognisant, how wary does
a person have to be to not get taken in? And the answer is kind of depends on
your price point and what you're looking for. On very high-end guns, we're talking $10,000 and more,
then you really need some specialist knowledge. But for the lower end guns, things that are more
common, often it doesn't take that much knowledge, and a little bit of critical thinking, critical
assessment, to spot things that are fake. And this is one of the fakiest fakes
that I've seen in quite a long time. So this is listed on the site as
"French Berthier M16 Lebel carbine with bayonet", which is a little bit of a tip-off to begin with because
there is no such thing as an M16 Lebel carbine, or a Berthier Lebel carbine, they're two different things. Anyway, ... the first picture you can actually see that
there is a clearing rod in the gun and that jumped out at me. And that's really the biggest thing
that got me to take a closer look at this, because original actual clearing rods in
Berthiers, like this guy, are fairly rare to find. So I go in and I take a closer look, and I
realise ... something's not quite right about this. And the second picture it becomes very clear that something
is definitely not right, because the stock isn't the right contour, there are bits of the magazine well sticking out.
The hole for the action screw looks very strange. And when we get to the third picture, now it's really funky,
because everything about the front end of this rifle is wrong. So what appears to have actually happened is
someone had a Berthier M16 barrelled action without a stock, without furniture,
without a barrel band or nose cap. And they took Mauser parts and Steyr
M95 straight pull parts and made them fit. And ... in a way they kind of did a
nice job of it, in that it actually fits. That's not trivial, ... re-inletting a Kar98 (or some sort of Mauser, I don't know exactly what style of Mauser it was), but re-inletting some sort of
Mauser stock to fit is not trivial. But anyway, if we look at this third picture here. First off, ... I wonder if the front chunk of the stock is actually a separate
piece from the back chunk, the colouring looks different. But what we can definitely see is that the handguard came off
of an Argentine 1891 Mauser, or something very similar to it. That is not a Berthier handguard at all. If we go to the next picture, there's
something wrong about the stacking rod. It's the same style as a Berthier, but it's got a bayonet lug on the bottom of it, and
the Berthier bayonets used a plug in the middle. I don't know if you guys can really quite see
this, but they use a plug right in the middle of (there you go), in the middle
of the front of the nose cap. They don't have the typical sort of
bayonet lug hanging off the bottom. And this one does, so. This picture first off shows the handguard very
clearly, that's not a Berthier handguard at all. And then you can see that the style of the
nose cap is different and that is in fact, this appears to me to be a nose cap from an M95 straight pull an Austrian M95, Steyr M95 rifle. Which is like actually it's kind of clever, if you're
gonna pick something to put on a Berthier that looks more or less like
what the Berthier originally had. And then what's really interesting to me is the listing says this
comes with the original bayonet which is not numbered to the gun. Well, the reality of the fact is it
comes with an M95 bayonet. And if we look at the picture, he actually
included an up close picture of the bayonet where it slots over the barrel. And someone has actually
inserted a brass or a copper ring to bring the diameter of the bayonet attachment down to the diameter
of a Berthier barrel, instead of an M95 barrel. So it looks like someone actually fitted this
bayonet to fit on this rifle, which is kind of remarkable. Now, if we take a closer look, that last
picture here shows the front end of the gun. On the Berthier the rod is sitting on the side. And on this one ... well, ... either they took out or
there was no bayonet plug and they use that hole, and they must have drilled it down. Or rather, actually if that's the ... If that's the Mauser stock, there
was probably already a hole there. But at any rate, they put ... a cleaning
rod where this bayonet lug originally was. And I don't know off-hand what that cleaning
rod is from, it's not a Berthier cleaning rod. The listing says that the front sight has been filed down. In fact
the front sight is completely missing and has been removed. There's like everything about this
rifle is wrong. In fact, if we look at ... there's a picture that shows the side of the stock
really well, and you can see a couple things here. First off that it doesn't fully cover
the bottom of the magazine. The Berthier has this sort of pregnant looking sort
of stock that goes down there to cover the magazine. And this does not, because it's actually a Mauser stock
which would normally cut across a little more straight. And it's got two gigantic cracks
running down the side of the stock. And that's because the Berthier carbines have a
substantial amount of recoil, and so they have a pair of recoil lugs to help absorb that recoil
and prevent the stock from splitting. This Mauser has none. And so someone
rebuilt this thing with that Mauser stock and then went and shot it and, presumably, then the
stock basically shattered into a couple of pieces because it's a hefty recoiling little carbine that doesn't
have the proper supports in the stock. So I found this pretty fascinating. I
occasionally run into things like Berthiers where one or two parts will have been replaced,
usually it's a barrel band or something. Someone didn't have one and so they
kind of just kludged something to fit. This is the first time I've seen one where
like fully half of the gun's components really have been retrofitted on. And I don't know if
the seller doesn't recognise that, or doesn't care. But it was an interesting listing to look at,
and I figured I'd bring it to you guys. So hopefully you enjoyed that little diversion. This is some of the interesting stuff you occasionally find on classifieds sections and
advertising boards, and that sort of thing. Anyway, it's also a good reason to have reference books. Of course if you have a copy of "Chassepot to FAMAS" you
would immediately, I hope, recognise the problems with this rifle. And if you're looking to get more cool, fantastic
reference books, particularly from Headstamp Publishing, check out our currently running Kickstarter for
"Thorneycroft to SA80, British Bullpup Firearms 1901 to 2020". Thanks for watching. [ sub by sk cn2 ]
u/forgottenweapons you trying to tell us something with that Hawaiian shirt? Is the revolution at hand?
https://www.gunbroker.com/item/866003537
Between a decent rebuilt rifle, only missing recoil support screws in the stock, and what I was thinking was Ian's cosplay of some magnum P.I. episode. This video had me tickled Pink!