Hi guys, thanks for tuning in another
video on ForgottenWeapons.com. I'm Ian McCollum, and today we're going to take a look at a pistol that really can't be forgotten quickly enough. This is the US Fire-Arms Company ZiP .22. And these were on the market only briefly,
they were produced for about one year before they completely destroyed USFA as a company. Which is really a shame, because
prior to this piece of garbage, USFA was known as the manufacturer of almost without argument the highest quality
Single Action Army reproduction guns on the market. They were really sought after. In the wake of USFA completely
dissolving, they have become even more sought after now. Their used prices are kind of astronomical in some cases,
and it's all the fault of this plastic-framed piece of junk. So, we have to first look at like,
what on earth happened? Well, the answer is USFA was owned
and run by a guy named Doug Donnelly. And it really was his personal
company, and he ran it that way. And ... USFA as a company, when they were
making Single Action Armies, was kind of known for promising things and then
never really delivering on them. And having weird ideas for new products that they ought
to offer, that they sometimes did, and sometimes didn't. Rainbow coloured Single Action
Armies, that sort of thing. And this really was just kind of figments
of Donnelly's personal preference. I'm speculating here, but one would
suspect he made money elsewhere, hopefully, and treated USFA as more of
a hobby than a real business. And this would really come down
to bite the company badly, because Donnelly's world view was really kind of completely
divorced from reality when it came to the ZiP. So this was apparently an idea he came up
with that he thought would be really cool, and really wanted to produce,
and wasn't able to for the while. And, as best I can tell, the concept here
is to make a gun that is extremely cheap, or extremely affordable, depending
on how you want to phrase it. Modular, like make this whole system
based around a really inexpensive base gun. Well, OK, there can be justification to that. The problem was this gun is an absolutely
terrible design, and they just don't ever work. Which you can discover if you go look up
virtually any YouTube video on these things. So what we're going to do today is we're
going to take a closer look at this one. We're going to take it all apart, I'm going
to show you exactly why it doesn't work. Which really doesn't take a rocket scientist,
or even a firearms engineer, to figure out. This was ... designed to be one
of the safest guns on the market, and it turns out to be one of the least safe
guns on the market, and I'll show you why. And then tomorrow we're going to go out and take
this thing to the range, and see how it shoots for us. And more interestingly,
because I'm pretty sure it won't, we're going to try getting some
high-speed footage of malfunctions. Because that should be pretty interesting. So without further ado, let's go ahead
and take this piece of garbage apart. The first question you have to answer
with this thing is, "Which end is forward?" And that is this end. The next question you have to
answer is, "How do I hold this thing?" And I will be honest this is the first
time I have ever actually picked up a gun and been legitimately unsure
how you're supposed to hold it. I've handled guns that were awkward,
I've never before handled one where I really honestly was not
sure how I was supposed to hold it. And the answer is trigger finger
goes here, middle finger goes here, thumb wraps around the back, and your
palm kind of sits in the back like that. That does actually let you get a sight picture. This is kind of like holding a two by four, maybe
a little less comfortable than a two by four because it's got some blocky protrusions on it. You'll notice that your finger is pretty
close to the ejection port here, and that apparently can result in brass hitting
you in the hand and being uncomfortable. If you hold it left handed it is, remarkably, actually better because you're less likely to hit
yourself with the ejecting brass. You'll notice here though that this particular one has
a couple of accessories on it, including a belt clip. Well with that belt clip, this grip is big enough that
the tip of my index finger just barely gets to the trigger. So some people actually that I've
talked to prefer to hold it like this (and it's actually almost seems like
maybe it's designed with that in mind), and use the middle finger to pull the trigger.
So that's how you actually hold the thing. I find it rather goofy that I even have to discuss in a
serious manner, how are you supposed to hold it? Moving on however. We do have a couple of controls.
There is a magazine release here at the back. Push that in and pull out the magazine. These were shipped with Ruger
10/22 10 round rotary magazines. In theory, they will take other sorts of 10/22 magazines. There you go, you can get the
extended magazine in there. That actually sort of makes it easier to hold, because it gives
you a little more to grip with with your bottom two fingers. But apparently, the majority of these larger
magazines simply don't feed fast enough to keep up with the ... bolt velocity on this thing.
So we'll touch on that when we take it apart. There is a cross bolt safety here in front of the trigger.
So that's safe, when the red is exposed that's the fire position. ... This thing was intended to
be ... the world's safest firearm. And in mechanical terms ... they
didn't necessarily fail on that. This thing won't fire if you drop it,
it's got a very good drop safety to it. It's got this really kind of unusual safety
to it where if you cock the thing halfway, (and by the way, these two lugs on the front
are your cocking handles), if you cock it partway you can get it in a position right here where the
trigger is locked and, in theory, it's completely safe, even if there's a round in the chamber. And apparently, allegedly, this was deliberate. And it was intended as like sort of a child safety
lock, where you could leave the gun loaded, and no kid, no child, could actually manage to fire it
because of this striker block once it's been half way charged. In order to release that what you
do is actually fully charge the thing, and then it can actually fire. So half-cock it like that and it locks the thing up.
I don't know, maybe that's an interesting idea. I mentioned that this is, in fact, a particularly
dangerous gun, that's because of this cocking system. In order to load it, what you're actually
supposed to do is put in a loaded magazine, and then put your finger here and push
back on these bars to charge the pistol. So you're literally putting
your finger right at the muzzle. Very easy to get your finger in front
of the muzzle. This is a terrible idea. It is not mechanically unsafe, but it is as a practical
and human factors sort of idea incredibly unsafe. Now, you'll notice there are two of these things and
they are different lengths. This one is labelled "ZiP Load", and this one is labelled "ZiP Restrike". The idea is if you
cock the thing most of the way, but not quite all the way, you can actually reset the striker
without ... extracting the cartridge. And if you have a dud .22 that doesn't want to fire
the first time you strike it, you can use this lever. ... Because you're using a shorter
lever you can't pull it back as far, you can use that to re-cock the action. Or you can
use this long lever to actually fully load a cartridge. Now my understanding, and we'll find out for
sure tomorrow when we have this at the range, my understanding is this short one is actually
long enough that it does tend to eject the round, or at least jam it up such that the gun
malfunctions. We'll see about that. But that's the reason why there are two of these. In light of that safety issue, this gun
actually has an extra little widget on it that was intended as a workaround for that.
And this is a sort of a cocking lever, sort of. What you do is (presumably when
the gun's empty, like this one is), you can pull back on the restrike
lever, and then you can push this (there we go), you can push this out and it
will actually catch that and hold the bolt open. Until you pull this backwards,
which will then release it. So in theory this gives you a safer way to cock the
pistol. Lock it open, put the magazine in, and then drop it like that. How well that actually works, I don't know. And this, by the way, is very much an
aftermarket or afterthought sort of accessory. You will not find this on the standard guns. They did mould "USFA ZiP .22"
into the side of the casing here. As far as the ... legal receiver component,
it is the right side of the frame moulding (which comes in half for a complete detail strip). They've embedded a little piece of
metal in here with a serial number. It will be interesting someday when someone
does a serial number analysis of these to find out how many they actually made,
because I bet it wasn't more than a couple hundred. Anyway, we're going to go ahead
and disassemble this now. You do that by actually pulling off the top cover first. I should say, this has also been one of the least
intuitive guns to take apart that I've ever messed with. I ... don't want to sound like I'm bragging here,
but I've taken apart some pretty weird guns, and this one is legitimately kind of
up there with, "How do you do this?" So anyway. To take this off we're going to lift up on the
rear sight, and then slide this whole plate backwards. By the way, this opening here is
so that you can see the striker. So, for example, because we can see that orange
striker in there, we know that the gun is cocked. When you fire it (or dry fire it here), that
disappears. So now the gun is un-cocked. Anyway, I'm going to lift this up, fairly high, and then there we go. All of the bits on this are tight,
which I suppose is a good thing. This, there we go, slides off.
That has your sights. They did actually offer like four
different versions of this piece. There's this one, which has just
plain plastic square sights on it. There was one that ... apparently either came
with or could attach to standard pattern Glock sights. So if you wanted like good night
sights for some unexplainable reason. They made one actually
made out of a luminous plastic, one of those things like you put in the light for five
minutes to charge it up, and then it'll glow in the dark. Well, they made an entire top cover with sights out
of that, so that in theory you could see it in the dark. That's an interesting idea. They made a top cover with Picatinny rail in it. And this they legitimately did, this is kind of a clever
idea. There are 8 screw holes, threaded screw blocks, in the body of the gun. And there are
matching holes in this railed top element. So you slide this in and then you can actually
screw it down. And in theory you should have a pretty darn stable mounting point for any
sort of red dot that you want to put on there. And they even made one other like this that was
sort of a reverse Picatinny that was, I kid you not, intended to allow you to hang this thing off
of the bottom rail on the handguard of a carbine. Now doing that would legally require registering this thing
as a short-barrelled rifle, and it would gain you literally nothing. However, let me read you what
the manual says about that. Alright, I'm not kidding you, this is the
actual manual that came with the gun. "Attaching an additional weapons system opens up
ZiP Operators to the world of special operations. Only possible now with the ZiPSBR (trademark).
Why use a duty round when less force will do? Or test that object in the middle of the street, and performing a mag change isn't so
bad now, leaving you a viable option." So you're supposed to hang this off
the forend of a carbine, like that, so that if you have to shoot somebody while you're
doing a magazine change, you can shoot them with this. Or you can consider .22 rimfire
to be a less lethal cartridge. This, by the way, is a terrible legal idea,
.22 rimfire is absolutely lethal force. Although I suppose if fired from a gun as unreliable
as this thing, maybe you could consider it less lethal. So anyway, enough ... digression there. We'll leave this off to the side. The next
step for disassembly is to remove this spring. This is the ... striker spring. There are
two other bolt recoil springs in this gun. So it's a little .22 with no less
than three recoil springs. Now, ... lest I forget, this is also kind of cool. They did
actually mount your disassembly hex wrench in the top cover. So it's underneath and it's always there with the gun. And then this acts as a barrel wrench, which
we'll get to in a minute. So that's a clever element. Instead of using that wrench,
I'm going to use a little better one. What you're supposed to do is
get a wrench in this little notch right here, and then push it forward. You have to push it forward, and then lift it up. And if you don't do it carefully, the
recoil spring will go flying across the room. So back is pretty easy, relatively easy. Lifting it up then is a little tricky, because I
don't really have anything to grasp on to do it. Let me get a different wrench and try that. Alright, let's try this again the other way. Oop. There we go, there we go, alright. So, I've got it partially lifted out, and now I can, oop, there we go, carefully remove the striker spring, its guide rod, and this little
plastic retaining piece that goes on the back. Next up we need to remove the back plate here.
We're going to do that by taking out this socket head screw right there. Alright, screw comes out, then you can
pivot this piece off the back of the frame. Now, we've got access to the bolt. And you would think
the bolt just slides out the back. You would be wrong. First we're going to take out the striker,
which is a little tight. That's right there. There we go, that comes out. By the way, well, we'll cover this in a minute, that's the striker. Now to take out the actual bolt, we first
have to take off these two cocking rods. And we're going to do that by unscrewing those
two socket head screws in the back of the bolt. What's going to happen here is that
screw connects actually into a steel rod, that's this thing. This thing extends
all the way back is a steel rod, and there's a recoil spring located
around each of these two bars. So I've got to fully unthread each of these. They will be under a little bit of spring tension when
I get that thing all the way out, so it will kind of pop off. There we go, so there's that one. There we go, now that one comes out.
These can be interchanged by the way. So if you're left handed and you want to have the
re-strike one over here and the charging one over here, you can do that, for all the good it'll do you. Now lastly we can, finally, pull the bolt out. Pop! There is the bolt. Next we can take the barrel out. This thing has this sort of four
protuberance pattern thing on it, and the idea there is that you can loosen
it using this top plate as a wrench like so. There we go, it's actually kind of easier just
to grab this with your hand and unscrew it. This piece ... basically just tightens the barrel in place.
This is just plastic, as is most of this gun. There we go, this is just a retaining nut really.
That's the barrel. We can now shove the barrel out. There's a ... mounting plate in here. There we go. So there's the barrel. Then we can take the guide rod
here and drop it forward. Somehow, come on. This should be able to drop through
the hole for the barrel. Yes. There we go. There's the guide rod, and
then there's this guide plate. Now in theory, we could take this apart
farther by taking out the rest of these screws and popping ... the two parts of the frame apart.
But we're not going to do that. Instead, we're going to look at
why this gun sucks so badly. And the ... reason comes down
to a couple of things here. So first off, this is our striker. That
little tab there pokes through that hole. ... When you fire ... that's what hits
the rim of the cartridge and fires it. This thing is made of polymer, this is not metal.
And this is the entirety of the reciprocating mass. Well, I guess this thing actually does technically
reciprocate as well, this weighs more than the bolt does. These two together are the only things
that are actually cycling back and forth. So what this means is that
these things move extremely fast. ... On a blowback firearm like this, the only thing
that holds the bolt shut when the gun fires is inertia. So because these things are so light, they
start moving very quickly when you fire. The bullet's pretty light, but so are these.
This means you have a very high bolt velocity. That's why aftermarket magazines
don't tend to work, because this thing flies backward, hits the back of the gun,
and there's very little over-travel space for it. In fact, there's basically no over-travel space for it. This hits the back of the gun, slams back forward
under spring pressure, and tries to pick up a cartridge often before the magazine has been able to actually
push a cartridge all the way up into position for feeding. This is also why these guns
occasionally have ruptured cases because this will start moving and open up
while there's still enough pressure in the chamber to blow open the side of the .22 cartridge
case as it starts to pull out the back. ... A big helper here is the fact that there is
neither an extractor nor an ejector on this gun. In theory, with a blowback piece like this you
can get away with not having an extractor, because chamber pressure will push
the cartridge case [out] backwards. ... However, the extractor does tend to
do something useful even in those guns, and that is control the position of the case to
make sure that it cleanly ejects out of the gun. Well, on this not only is there no extractor, the only thing functioning remotely as an
ejector is the tip of the striker right there, kind of vaguely pushing up on this
side of the cartridge case to kick it out. So this thing is going to have poor extraction, poor
ejection, and you combine that with a very high bolt velocity, and you get an obvious recipe for
a huge number of malfunctions. Which is exactly what these guns are best known for. That being said, I do want to point out
that this design does meet a lot of what Donnelly apparently ... envisioned the gun to be. If you look at ... all of these parts,
(this thing is now field stripped here), nothing in here is even a remotely
expensive piece to make. You have polymer moulded bits like these. Your barrel even is a very simple piece with
a polymer sleeve over it for this threading. A very simple stamped or laser-cut plate
there. Some basic machine screws. Some more polymer. Very simple round rods. ... I mean this thing is the most expensive
part to make, and this was clearly cast. This would have been an extremely
cost-effective gun to make, as long as you could be sure that you
would sell them in like the tens of thousands. That's of course where the problem was. A couple other quick things I want to touch on. First off, these sold for like I think about 100 bucks when
they were new, they are about double that right now. They did also come out with a very limited
number of .22 Magnum single-shot adapters, which, unfortunately, we
don't have to show you here. They also had plans for a bunch of other things, like
for example, this SBR shoulder stock - assembly - thing. That was like, well, there it is right there:
the "BattleZiP Survival SBR", with a little ... compartment
in the side for first-aid stuff. And then you can fit your non-functioning
.22 calibre ZiP pistol here on the front. Or, extra cool, you can turn it around to
protect the muzzle while it's in storage. You get ZiP t-shirts and such.
I think those are the main ones. The SBR fitting, they never actually released these. There's another picture of it on the bottom. There is the upper accessory rail that you
could use to hang this off the bottom of a carbine. And then there are the other standard top rail bits When these accessories were available, interestingly
they actually sold the accessories through Amazon, not direct through the company.
Creative, interesting I suppose. And just to show you, there's the thing cycling. This has a really heavy trigger. ... These
springs in the action are very heavy because that's what it's entirely relying on to stay closed
when it fires. To varying degrees of success. Well, there you go. That's how
the insides of this thing go together. I think you can probably see now why it
doesn't work, and why you don't want one. You should also be able to see pretty well how
it fit Donnelly's, ... as far as I can reconstruct it, Donnelly's worldview of,
you know, a modular cheap pistol. There's nothing complicated in here. Even the
barrel itself is a very simple piece of material. And then most of the other parts are laser-cut steel,
or maybe stamped steel, or just moulded plastic. So, I kind of see where he was going.
The problem is he was kind of crazy, and where he was going wasn't
somewhere anyone wanted to be. Now as for the ultimate repercussions to USFA, Donnelly's original plan,
as best I can reconstruct it, was to take a two year hiatus from manufacturing
Single Action Armies to produce this. And the way they did that was by selling all
of the tooling and equipment that they used to make Single Action Armies to
raise the capital to make this thing. Because while all the parts are cheap
individually, you have to order them in bulk, in large quantity, in order to
get those cheap prices. Because a lot of the bits in this come out of plastic
moulds, so they spent, I don't have exact figures ... I didn't talk to anyone who
actually knows the dollar value, but they had to have spent a tremendous
amount of money on moulding, ... moulding dies, to get the parts to make a cheap gun like this. And the problem was it completely fell on its face because
it's completely unreliable, and a complete piece of junk. And so the original plan had been, "We're going
to sell all of our actual high quality firearms tools, invest all the money into this thing. This will
somehow miraculously make a giant pile of money. Which we will then use to purchase new machine tools
and start up production of the Single Action Army again. Which isn't a big priority because I'm
Doug Donnelly, and I got bored with that." So that was I think the original plan and it fell apart
because this utterly failed to make any money whatsoever. So these guns were produced from
like ... late 2013 into early 2015 I believe. About a year, just a little over a year. The company formally dissolved in January of 2017. ... Right about the time that they started
manufacturing these, the company legally moved from Hartford, Connecticut,
where it had been based, to Jackson, Wyoming. But it never really had an office in Jackson. It was just like ... an FFL or business
licence held at a lawyer's office. So, the whole thing kind of just
fizzled up and blew away like dust, leaving us with a number of
relatively inexpensive, worthless guns, and a great collector's market now
for USFA Single Action Armies. Those things were expensive to begin with, and have
only gone up in value because they will never be made again. I think there are some people
who have some forlorn hope that USFA will come back, and their really
nice Single Action Armies will come back. But I think it's pretty much guaranteed
that they are gone forever, so. Anyway, that is the story of the USFA ZiP .22. Stick around tomorrow, we're going to take
this thing out to the range, and get what I anticipate to be a lot of
unimpressive footage of it failing to fire. And hopefully some pretty cool slow-motion
footage of the bolt opening too early. If we're really lucky, we can get a really good
slow-motion shot of a ruptured casing in this thing. That to me is by far the most
valuable characteristic of this guy is it's going to let me get some really cool
slow-motion failure footage. So stick around for that. Thanks for watching today. [ sub by sk cn2 ]
This is the first time I've seen something truly terrible that I really want for some reason this thing is just fucking weird
u/forgottenweapons Ian, if you ever make a video about how the Remington R51 destroyed Para USA send me a message I can give you some information.
I never shot this gun but I have handled it. Kinda silly.
I think nerf has taken inspiration from this
Iām fascinated how something this bad could have ever been even considered for production - or even considered at all!
I like how they advertise that you can oper8 by attaching it to a freaking SCAR. I think I'd rather have an underslung trebuchet.
Would a lot of the problems the Zip .22 had be solved by making that breech block out of a nice heavy piece of steel?
Is it bad that I still want one?
Man that's like selling your blood so you can replace it with toxic sludge.
I'm not entirely sure you could intentionally make a worse gun.