As with its other standard-issue arms, the Russian government intended to manufacture the M1895 revolvers domestically. However, when the Nagant was officially adopted the major Russian arsenals were already working at capacity to make the relatively new M1891 rifle, so the first 20,000 revolvers were made by Nagant in Liege, Belgium. In 1898 space had been freed up to start production at the Tula arsenal, where they would be made until 1945 (Ishevsk put the Nagant revolver into production as well during WWII).

The common version available in the US today is a 7-shot, double action revolver chambered for 7.62x38mm. That cartridge is a very long case with the bullet sunk down well below the case mouth. The cylinder of the Nagant cams forward upon firing, allowing the case mount to protrude into the barrel and seal the cylinder gap, thus increasing muzzle velocity slightly. This also allows the Nagant to be used effectively with a suppressor, unlike almost all other revolvers (in which gas leaking from the cylinder gap defeats the purpose of a suppressor).

The Nagant’s 7.62x38mm cartridge pushes a 108 grain jacketed flat-nose projectile at approximately 850 fps (I believe a lighter 85-grain load was also used by the military later, but I haven’t fired any of it), which puts it roughly between .32 ACP and .32-20 ballistics. Not a hand cannon by any stretch, but fairly typical for the era (the 8mm Nambu and 8mm French revolver cartridges were both pretty similar in performance to the 7.62mm Nagant).

As far as being a shooter, the Nagant is mediocre, but reliable. The grip and sights are acceptable (but not great), and the cylinder loads and unloads one round at a time. The low pressure round doesn’t stick in the cylinder, at least. The worst part for a recreational shooter is the trigger, which is very heavy in double action. Single action is also heavy, but very crisp. Recoil is mild, and not uncomfortable at all. The design was simple and effective, and really a good fit for the Red Army and WWII fighting conditions.

Additional Resources

Nagant page at RussianRevolvers.com

Well, the officer in charge isn’t, anyway

Greek soldiers practicing antiaircraft fire with a model 1926 Hotchkiss LMG – note the AA extension on the tripod. Thank to Di for the photo!

Production began in 1939, and very few had gotten into service when German forces overran the factory in 1940. Production continued after the war, but it wasn’t long before the French switched over to the 9mm Parabellum, and the MAT-49 replaced the MAS-38. The MAS did see some use in Indochina, and was used to equip police forces and other secondary units.

One element that is not necessarily apparent from photographs is just how compact the MAS-38 really is. The whole gun is just a hair over 24 inches long, and the barrel is a scant 8.7 inches. The receiver is narrow, and there are very few projections to snag on anything. (even the rear sight folds flush into the top of the receiver). The whole thing weighs in at about 6.5 pounds. That would make for controllability issues with many subguns, but the mild recoil from the rather weak 7.65×20 cartridge allows the gun to be pretty easy to handle. Of course, it lacks stopping power compared to just about any other subgun on the battlefield.

MAS38 cutaway drawing (click to enlarge)

Mechanically, the MAS-38 is a simple blowback action, firing full-auto only from an open bolt. The unorthodox element to its design is how the barrel and bolt travel are not parallel – the bolt travels downwards as it goes back, relative to the barrel. The breechface is cut at a matching angle to fit fully against the chamber mouth. This angle is partly to slow down the bolt (and thus the rate of fire) and partly an attempt to reduce felt recoil by using vertical travel of the bolt to compensate for it (this was also done on the Finnish Jatimatic and modern Kriss carbine to a more extreme degree).

The bolt handle is non-reciprocating, and stays in the rearward position once the gun is charged. It can be manually pushed forward and will latch in the fully forward position, acting as a dust cover over the ejection port. Another folding dust cover is pinned to the front of the magazine well for closing off that opening when no mag is in use. There is no selector switch since the action is full-auto only, and the manual safety is actually built into the trigger. When pushed forward, the trigger will snap into a more or less horizontal position, and in the process lock the bolt in place (whether it is forward or back). You can see how this mechanism works by looking at parts 22 and 23 in the diagram above.

Note closed magazine well and bolt handle which doubles as an ejection port cover.

The sights on the MAS-38 consist of a triangular front post and a pair of independent flip-up apertures for the rear sight. The apertures are set for 100m and 200m, and the sights are offset slightly to the left side of the gun. The magazines have a 32-round capacity, and are of the double-feed design.

MAS38 rear sight (200m aperture folded; 100m aperture in use)

MAS38 magazine

Despite begin a pretty simple mechanism, the MAS38 is not a really simple weapon to manufacture. Its bolt is round in profile despite the square receiver, and runs in a round channel bored in the receiver. This channel also houses the recoil spring, and runs back into the wooden stock (and for this reason a folding-stock model was not made). Other than small pieces like the ejection port cover, the MAS38 was made with all missed steel components. As World War II would soon prove, subguns could be made much faster and at less cost by using mostly stampings.

Disassembly, however, is very straightforward. Depress a spring-loaded catch under the front of the buttstock, and rotate it 90 degrees. The stock will then slide off the receiver, allowing the recoil spring and bolt out. The trigger frame can then slide out the back of the receiver (it runs in a pair of slots inside the receiver).

You can see the rest of our photos here (please note that this particular example has been deactivated, which required welding the barrel on and cutting the boltface at a 45 degree angle): MAS38 photos as high-res zip archive

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We haven’t had the chance to fire a MAS38 ourselves (yet), but we did find these short clips from American Rifleman TV:

We also have a manual for the MAS-38 (specifically, a parts identification list, in French):

MAS Mle 1938 Nomenclature (French, 1951)

The Maxim was hugely influential in machine gun development and warfare in general, and you won’t find a better reference work on it. Copies are available on Amazon, so head over and grab one!

Well, we found a couple archived photos of the 8mm Kurz prototype. We’d like to find more, but here are the two we have for the moment:

Note the removable sideplate, a feature of the earliest FAL designs (click to enlarge)

In this limited side view, we can see a bunch of design elements that would stay through to the final mass-production FAL rifles. The mag catch, bolt stop, and takedown lever are all basically unchanged. The detachable sideplate, of course, would be dropped. It is also worth noting that while the rifle was chambered for standard 8×33 ammunition, it used a proprietary FN mag and not the German StG magazine. The FAL receiver design isn’t wide enough to accommodate the German magazine.

8mm Kurz FAL prototype, top view. Not the forward charging handle and hybrid rear sight (click to enlarge)

The top view shows us some thing that would definitely not survive to mass production. Most notably, the charging handle was located up front on the gas tube, like later H&K rifles.  The stripper clip guide would disappear later into development, and the muzzle brake design would change substantially. The rear sight is also interesting, with an aperture much like the final FAL but mounted on a WWII-style leaf for range adjustment (click on the photo to blow it up much larger). The rear sight starts at 50m and goes out to 500m in 50m increments – a much more realistic scale than the 1000m+ scales in widespread use on rifles at the time. FN actually understood the assault rifle concept, it would appear.

BTW, if you look closely at the top view, you can see that the rifle is marked serial number “1″ just in front of the FN logo on the front of the receiver. Cool!

Interested in more of the FAL story? Here are some related posts you may not have seen:

Photos of the .280 British FAL
Photos of some other 1950s Light Rifle trials guns as well as the .280 FAL
Preliminary manual for the 8×33 and .280 FALs
Manual for the British X8E1 and X8E2 trials FALs
Modern FAL manual

Thanks to Keith, we have a copy of a really neat article from “The Model Engineer and Amateur Electrician” magazine. Printed in England in 1900, it is a set of drawings and instructions for building a .22 caliber model of a Hotchkiss-style quick-fire cannon (just like the designs covered in A Gun For All Nations). The model design is fully functional, of course, and includes a recoil and automatic ejection mechanism. As drawn, it uses a smoothbore barrel about 14″ long, so it would be an NFA item (just like the DefCad Liberator, interestingly). Of course one could lengthen the barrel a few inches without trouble to avoid that legal complication (or scale the whole thing up to, say, .38 Special size).

I think it would be a very educational project to take on, because it is written with the expectation that the builder will be making all the parts, not like most modern kit projects where you start with most of the work already done. The article includes directions on making the springs, screws, nuts, bolts, barrel, and patterns for casting some parts. And yet, this is all done with technology from 1900 – the tool list consists of a set of calipers, a small lathe (4′ bed), good set of files, and a solid vise (plus casting equipment, if you don’t want to outsource that work).

So…great end product, pretty low starting cost…all you need is patience and time. What are you waiting for?

And anyone does decide to take this on, please send me photos – I know I speak for everyone else reading when I say that we would love to see your construction process and finished product!

You can download the article with its drawings here, as a 3MB PDF file: Quick-Fire Model Article.

• Boris Karpa (who did a great job translating Dror testing reports for us a little while back) is running a Kickstarter to translate “The Soldier and Squad in Night Combat”, a WWII Soviet manual on night fighting without modern night-vision gear. It’s a neat subject, and we’d like to see a copy ourselves, so we chipped in a few bucks. A $10 contribution will get you an early copy of the finished product.
• A guy on The AK Forum (we don’t know him or have any ties to the sale, so caveat emptor) is selling a Chinese ZB-26 kit that has been converted to 7.62x39mm. It’s pretty beat up, and apparently missing some small parts, but the receiver looks like a pretty decent candidate for a reweld, the barrel is intact, and he’s only asking $500 for the kit.
• Another fellow, who has sent us a bunch of photos, has decided to sell his G41(M) and G41(W) rifles over at GunBoards. They’re not cheap, at $10k and $6k respectively, but they do look to be in pretty nice shape.

Beyond the neat-o factor, the 101 is actually a pretty nice shooter. The trigger is pretty good, operating the gun is smooth and easy, and it really would make a very effective starter pistol for a child.

• You know how we make fun of the Chinese over range safety? Well, how about getting a cigarette shot out of your mouth? (1:20 – and the guy nearly gets an ear piercing at 1:24)
• Full Sabrina as a competitive ready position (7:22)
• We may have improved training practices a lot since 1936, but pasting targets hasn’t changed a bit (8:56)
• IPSC deja vu – some things haven’t changed at all (10:34 – though the hop-skip-and-a-jump isn’t really a good idea)
• How many ranges would allow massed walking fire today? (15:13)

Of course, while I would like to think we have much better overall practices today, there are still some pretty cringe-worthy trainers out there today (take it away, Rick Taylor!).