Purchased a French MAS 49 yesterday

I

IdahoG36

New member
I was at my local Cabelas yesterday and was looking around their gun library, and came across a French MAS 49 chambered in 7.5X54 in the case. It is not a typical rifle to run across, and the handful I've come across over the years were all 49/56 models.

I took it out of the case to examine it and realized it was a French contract 49, not a Syrian! I ended up purchasing it for $499, which I thought was a really good deal. It is numbers matching and in excellent condition. It does not appear to have been fired by the previous owner. There is still what appears to be preservative grease or cosmoline in the barrel, as well as in the action and on the recoil spring.

I had always wanted to purchase a MAS 49 or 49/56 but haven't seen one locally in probably 8 years or more. I wasn't going to let this one pass.

After I got home, I was doing some reading on the French contract MAS 49 and it appears that only a handful were ever imported. I read on several other forums that Century Arms only imported around 265 of these, and sold them all to AIM Surplus. AIM then sold them to the public. Does anybody know if these numbers are correct? If so, that is quite a rare rifle to come across.

I ordered up 200 rounds of Prvi 7.5X54 ammo and look forward to taking it out to the range. I will be sure to strip the rifle down completely and clean all of the cosmoline/preservative grease out of it, especially the firing pin channel. Don't want any slam fires or burst fire going on!

I will get some pics up later today.
 
Here are some photos of the rifle

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I'm not to fond of the long heavy trigger pull on my Mas 49/56 {converted to 308}, yet you should be aware about the potential of slamfires with non-millspec ammo of the soft primer kind --- Especially while feeding the rifle as a single shot.

I did have a slamfire problem with my 49/56 with the steel free floating firing pin, with soft primer ammo, while single loading from the magazine; until I bought the $80 titanium firing pin --- Though I still gingerly close the action, when I load a single shot round.

I talked to another shooter at our range, who also had a slamfire problem with his 49/56, 7.5x54, using Privi PPU ammo with the stock steel firing pin.

You can go with the fountain pen spring route on the original stock firing pin, but the titanium firing pin still puts a dimple on the primer when you eject a live round.

My firing pin channel is clean on my 49/56, and the causes of the slamfires was not related to a cosmoline grease problem.
 
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I did have a slamfire problem with my 49/56 with the steel free floating firing pin, with soft primer ammo, while single loading from the magazine; until I bought the $80 titanium firing pin --- Though I still gingerly close the action, when I load a single shot round.

I talked to another shooter at our range, who also had a slamfire problem with his 49/56, 7.5x54, using Privi PPU ammo with the stock steel firing pin.

You can go with the fountain pen spring route on the original stock firing pin, but the titanium firing pin still puts a dimple on the primer when you eject a live round.

My firing pin channel is clean on my 49/56, and the causes of the slamfires was not related to a cosmoline grease problem.
Click to expand...

It is good to see that the firearms community is starting to acknowledge slamfires. For decades, shooters were repeating an Army coverup: shooter negligence was the only cause of slamfires, specifically high primers and your worn out gun. The Army was hiding the slamfire issue of the M1 rifle, M14 rifle, the M1 carbine, and derivatives of these actions, such as the mini 14. All of these actions will slamfire in battery due to primer sensitivity and worst, slamfire out of battery due to slamfire sensitivity.

The coverup worked because other semi automatic mechanisms were very rare on the ground and the misinformation was put out in the popular press decades before the internet. Shooters could not compare experiences on the internet and publications like the American Rifleman filtered letters to the editor. The authors of the American Rifleman actually put out material claiming that the only only causes of slamfires were shooter misconduct. The authority of these authors is so high that to question them was and is for many, considered heretical. The last one, a person I call the Prime Davidian, was the Government Expert at the Ichord hearings, worked on the slamfire solutions for the M16, and yet when it came to the Garand mechanism, slamfires were only due to shooter misconduct, there was no such thing as primer sensitivity. While mechanical malfunctions can cause slamfires, it actually turns out that the most common slamfire cause is not broken parts, it is instead due to sensitive primers. Commercial primers are more sensitive, on average, than military primers, and it is obvious that the French military must have used a very insensitive primer.

I would recommend using CCI #34's or Tula mil spec primers in your mechanism. I retained this article on reloading for the MAS 49 and that is also the author's recommendation.


7.5 French MAS In a Semi-Auto: Special Caution

http://web.archive.org/web/20060506045913/http://members.nuvox.net/~on.melchar/75french/sainfo.html



MAS 49-56 Slamfires

http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=665024&highlight=French+7.5+Bullet+Diameter+info+Request



================================================
These articles were available on-line, but the links are dead, so I copied
my post from an other board (two posts here as we are limited to 20000 characters):

Disclaimer: This article contains information that may not be appropriate for your particular firearm. Consult your gunsmith in regards to the safety of firing your particular firearm. Consult your reloading manuals for all safety procedures when reloading ammunition. We are not responsible for typographic errors. Your mileage may vary.

What follows is a reproduction of an article from Handloading Magazine on the 7.5x54 MAS, prefaced with comments by myself, updating the magazine article with considerations for the MAS semi-auto rifles.

Update: Reloading the 7.5x54 MAS.
By Paul Pelfrey

While the reprinted article that follows is essentially accurate, the author did not take into consideration the availability of the various semi-auto French rifles that would later be on the market at an affordable price. This article should be applicable to the MAS-44, MAS-49 and the recently imported MAS-49/56 rifles. With the data in table II of the article below, I didn’t need to reinvent the wheel to start my experimentation. My load was the 150 grain Sierra FMJ spitzer, loaded on Norma brass, with Winchester WLR primers, packed with 44 grains of AA-2520 powder. I had had a good experience with this load through my MAS-36 bolt action rifle and decided to give it a go in the MAS-49/56. The MAS-49/56 I had acquired came from SOG and was still in the arsenal wrapping when I received it. After a thorough cleaning I took it and 50 rounds of my handloads. I first test fired the rifle with some surplus Syrian ammo I had. I was disappointed. The Syrian ammo was rife with hangfires and dead primers, and those rounds that did fire would not actuate the bolt properly. Most of the rounds stovepiped none ejected fully. I then took my handloads, loading a single round in the magazine at a time and easing the bolt forward. To my delight, the rounds were rather accurate, keeping inside 1.5 inches at 50 yards, and the brass ejected cleanly. After 10 shots loaded one at a time I loaded two rounds. This time, I let the bolt fly forward on it's own to chamber the first round. The round immediately slamfired as the bolt closed, and the second round chambered. My finger had been outside the trigger guard. I unloaded the gun, then reloaded two rounds. This time, the round did not fire when chambered. However, when I pulled the trigger, the rifle fired both rounds in rapid succession. My first thought was that this was a repeat of a phenomenon that I had experienced with an SKS carbine. In that case, the modern lube I had used on the SKS was too slippery and allowed the firing pin to travel forward with the bolt actuation with sufficient inertia to impact and detonate the primer. In that case, removal of the lubrication solved the problem. I disassembled the MAS rifle and dried the components completely and reassembled it. The slamfire problem persisted. My attention turned to the handloads. Checking the primer seating depth and dimensions of the case turned up nothing out of spec (except the smaller rim diameter, per the Handloader article). I then chambered a Syrian round and then removed it. Examining the Syrian round showed a slight indentation on the primer. I then left the range to ponder my next move.

Next weekend I returned with more handloads, this time using CCI regular and match primers, and Remington primers. During this session my handloads still suffered from slamfires while the military French and Syrian ammo did not. Conclusion: Commercial primers are too thin to operate safely in the French MAS semi-auto rifles.

Solution: CCI, under the name of their parent company, Blount, manufactures a military spec primer. I found a brick at a gunshow in a plain white box. The label read "1000 M-34 Primer for 7.62mm Cartridge". Loading 50 more rounds with these primers solved the problem. Not a single slamfire. Most distributors do not carry this primer, and will only order and sell it in a case lot (5000 primers). The good news is that these primers sell for only about $6-$9 more than the same quantity of regular primers. I would recommend their use in any round that might be loaded in a semi-auto rifle, just for an added margin of safety.

Reloading this round has become much cheaper since the publication of the Handloader article. Lee now makes the dies for this round, and I have seen a retail store price on them for $29.99 (half of RCBS). After talking to the techs at Lee, they are willing to make a tapered expander for necking up the Swedish brass for $15, and if you send them a formed cased with a bullet (no primer, no powder) they will make one of their Factory Crimp Dies for it for $25. I recommend this, inasmuch as a few of my handloads had a problem with the bullets being pushed back into the case upon chambering. This can lead to overpressure and possible injury. Brass is more plentiful now as well. I find Remington 6.5 Swedish at shows for $27/100 and Kengs in Georgia also stocks Lapua 6.5 Swedish for a similar price.
 
Haven't heard of slam fire with the MAS.
Not surprising for military semi-autos considering a soft strike could be very embarrassing in combat.

Slam fire Bump fire or trigger riding. They're all malfunctions that cause a gun to fire multiple rounds when only one is intended (or legal?).

I don't remember it being more than an oddity till the SKS was mass imported. Since then it's hard to avoid the topic on some forums. More so now that some after market parts are trying to make them a feature instead of a bug.
 
I use nothing but the CCI #34 NATO Primers in all my military surplus rifles. There a tad hotter, they have thicker walls so slam fires won't occur. I don't mix primers in military semi auto and military bolt action rifles in the same calibers. All of them get the CCI #34 NATO primers so no mix up can happen.
 
You got an excellent deal. Even a Syrian contract that clean goes for $700 +. You are correct. There are Syrian contract 1949's all over the place, but the French ones are rarely seen. I hear a lot about slamfires with them, but never had one. I suspect it is a more of a "I know a guy" kind of problem. The potential is there, but seldom happens. I have shot all kinds of .308 through one of my 49/56 Centry conversion with no slam fires. All the conversions I have seen have the recoil spring cut down. Maybe Centry was trying to avoid slamfires that way? With the wicked recoil on the conversions, one would think that a slam fire was an absolute. I keep saying I will fix the gas system on mine. I do not even know where the empties go half the time. IMO, all 3 series rifles are great auto loaders that simply do not get the respect they deserve.
 
I have often heard that comments like that generally come from people that are buttholes. Apparently it is true. The French lost a lot more men in Viet Nam than we did. They put up quite a fight when the Japanese showed up too.
 
Not too hard, but stay away from Syrian surplus. The magazines are getting kind of pricey, or maybe it just seems that way because of the recent interest in the MAS.
 
Slamfire, what you say is true about guns with floating firing pins. Just because it never happened to me does not mean it cannot. I worked on thousands(Really) of M-16's and A-1's. I can only remember one "Blowing up" enough to hurt the operator. There was an investigation and we determined the cause. The rifle was so dirty that the F/pin was stuck forward and it fired out of battery. The operators fault, but still, it can happen.

My 1944's have a spring around the F/pin. This was changed when the 1949 came out. I am not sure of the original intent there, but it may have been to avoid slamfires.
 
Slamfire, what you say is true about guns with floating firing pins. Just because it never happened to me does not mean it cannot. I worked on thousands(Really) of M-16's and A-1's. I can only remember one "Blowing up" enough to hurt the operator. There was an investigation and we determined the cause. The rifle was so dirty that the F/pin was stuck forward and it fired out of battery. The operators fault, but still, it can happen.

My 1944's have a spring around the F/pin. This was changed when the 1949 came out. I am not sure of the original intent there, but it may have been to avoid slamfires.
Click to expand...

I am very surprised that a M16 firing pin could be so dirty as to stick outside of the bolt face because the firing pin is retracted once the bolt opens. The M16 is very positive in this way and out of battery slamfires are rare in the M16 mechanism. I do have a Security Guard bud, and they were shooting Federal Gold Medal match in their M4's during a practice and he said one of the M4's had an out of battery incident. I do not know how to explain that unless their was debris on the bolt face or, maybe some primers are so sensitive that they just go off due to the forces of chambering.

Now, for a mechanism that has a lot of out of battery slamfires, just Google "FN 49 slamfires". https://www.google.com/search?q=cam...rt&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#q=FN+49+slamfire&start=0 That is another military weapon that a lot of slamfire reports.
 
That is a nice rifle you have. I think you got lucky on the price from Cabela's, probably not sure of how to price it. It does not even have the rebuild date stamp that would have been on the left side of the receiver, that's a plus for originality. I'm still looking for one for my collection, I do have a 49/56 and a couple 36's. If you reload for it, stay to the higher side of the load scale or it won't cycle well. I found that to be the case with the my 49/56. Never had any issues with slamfire either.
 
Here is a photo of the two different firing pins. The one with the spring is a factory MAS 1944 pin. The one with the "O" is the revised version. The model 1949 and the 49/56 should have the "O" pin. I don't know why the spring was deleted. The "O" pin feels heavier.
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MAS%201944%20002_zpsy1km0cof.jpg
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