{"id":23565,"date":"2013-09-22T16:00:32","date_gmt":"2013-09-22T21:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/2013\/09\/22\/2-gun-match-chinese-7-62x39mm-bren\/"},"modified":"2013-09-22T16:00:32","modified_gmt":"2013-09-22T21:00:32","slug":"2-gun-match-chinese-7-62x39mm-bren","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/2013\/09\/22\/2-gun-match-chinese-7-62x39mm-bren\/","title":{"rendered":"2-Gun Match: Chinese 7.62x39mm Bren"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mejs-video-container\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" allow=\"autoplay\" width=\"580\" height=\"380\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/hS_bM3Xlw7M?controls=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.forgottenweapons.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">http:\/\/www.forgottenweapons.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Thanks to the folks at SMG Guns in Texas, I just got my completed semiauto Bren gun in 7.62x39mm. What the best way to break it in? Take it to a run-n-gun match, of course!<\/p>\n<p>First off, the front grip is a repro experimental piece made by IMA &#8211; it would not originally have been on the gun, but I needed a way to hold\/shoot it offhand.<\/p>\n<p>Some thoughts after shooting this converted Bren&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s HEAVY. According to my scale, it&#8217;s 23 pounds, which is only about 2 pounds heavier than the Madsen LMG I shot in one of these matches a few months ago, but it&#8217;s longer and not as well balanced. Great off the bipod, but I had serious trouble shooting it standing (not that it was designed to be shot that way, of course).<\/p>\n<p>Recoil in 7.62&#215;39 is trivial. It&#8217;s possible to fire 3-5 round bursts that are actually fairly effective and accurate, because the muzzle hardly moves. Try that in a .303 semiauto Bren (or any other full-power semi) and you&#8217;ll have a much larger group, or take longer to get a small one. The big rear aperture sight stays nicely in view when you shoot, and overall it&#8217;s one of the most effective and shootable &#8220;semiauto machine guns&#8221; I&#8217;ve had a chance to play with.<\/p>\n<p>Malfunctions &#8211; I had three, two caused by my ammo and one by the gun. The ammo problems were one dud primer (it had a nice sold firing pin strike) and one that hit the barrel face and stopped rather than feeding into the chamber. I was using softpoint ammo (grabbed the wrong can for the match), and the Bren certainly wasn&#8217;t designed for that (in any caliber). The gun-related problem was a case that didn&#8217;t fully eject, and got jammed between the next round being fed and the side of the receiver. This was caused by a combination of a receiver much larger than it needs to be (because of the caliber conversion) and a gas system just barely strong enough to run the gun reliably. When this malf happened I was firing from the hip instead of holding the gun solidly, and just like short-stroking a recoil operated pistol, a bit of free movement in the gun was just enough to delay ejection and cause a problem.<\/p>\n<p>I was very happy to find that throughout my initial zeroing, the match, and some demo shooting afterwards, I had no other problems. The Bren was obviously built to run on much more gas pressure than the 7.62&#215;39 cartridge generates, and I&#8217;ve seen conflicting opinions on whether this conversion would work reliably, especially with the additional striker spring required for the semiauto setup. SMG did a great job building the gun!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>http:\/\/www.forgottenweapons.com Thanks to the folks at SMG Guns in Texas, I just got my completed semiauto Bren gun in 7.62x39mm. What the best way to break it in? Take it to a run-n-gun match, of course! First off, the front grip is a repro experimental piece made by IMA &#8211; it would not originally have&hellip;&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/2013\/09\/22\/2-gun-match-chinese-7-62x39mm-bren\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Read More &raquo;<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">2-Gun Match: Chinese 7.62x39mm Bren<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":23566,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[89,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-content","category-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}