BM 59 ?

[browningautorifle]

Hopefully, in a few weeks I'll be able to show a new, damn expensive, new baby.

Looking forward to seeing that one... Strange though, they appear to actually be only a couple ounces heavier than the M1... Beretta BM 59 - Wikipedia

[Ovidio]

Hello BAR, I'm picking at numbers I have in my memory, but the Garand was somewhere around 4.5 kg, while the BM 59 I remember at 5.625 with full mag, sling etc.
Might be a problem of memory and of the much more difficult mountains we had to go up further on during the course, but the FAL (as we called it, from Fucile Automatico Leggero) was all but "leggero" (light).
We loved it anyway, and although it is very expensive now, I'm looking for a very good one in pristine conditions, from the Carabinieri reserves. Then I'll buy the TA stock and the original compensator to make it as it has to be again.
I just have to find one that is really as new. Too many people are trying to make money selling junk.

[browningautorifle]

Might be a problem of memory

It's not. It's just perception. I remember handing a man a metric FN and he immediately said "Wow, they're way heavier than ours!"... but they aren't. Another flinched when I handed him a Thompson SMG saying the same thing. It weighed just about a pound more. The BM59s that we saw around here were shorter looking by appearance and that makes one think, "That's a heavy little bast*rd!"... I found them robust and solid.

Anyway as you pointed out, they were superb and apparently you were ready to trust your well being to one in a fight...which is what's important.

[Ovidio]

I would definitely have trusted her and my MG 42/59.
Loved the toy!!!

[Bruce_in_Oz]

A few years ago, I picked up several interesting documents, (original and "copies"), covering the BM-59

One is a damaged, but readable, copy of something called: "Sinossi di Armi ed Appunto di Tiro", which has a small section on the BM-59.

The other one is a digitized version of a document produced by Beretta, circa 1966. This is essentially a "technical sales brochure" and has text in Italian, English, French and German and covers several variants, and includes excellent photographs, drawings and data tables.

It may even be available via the "library' associated with "milsurps" web-pages.

[Ovidio]

Wow, Sinossi!
That's really an oooooold word we all met and heard for the first time at the Military School.
That one might well have been one of the texts we studied then.
Unfortunately I didn't keep much from my time at the SMALP (Scuola Militare Alpina).
I sure do regret it now.

[Bruce_in_Oz]

The Beretta document on my hard-drive is quite large; 8.4Mb / 57 pages.

Moderators: Is that too big to upload?

Does "Sinossi" mean something like "synopsis", or the French term, "precis"? My Italian is limited to words related to food and cooking or, of course, music.

[Bill Hollinger]

The Beretta document on my hard-drive is quite large; 8.4Mb / 57 pages.

Moderators: Is that too big to upload?

Does "Sinossi" mean something like "synopsis", or the French term, "precis"? My Italian is limited to words related to food and cooking or, of course, music.

Contact Badger as I do not know.

[Ovidio]

Hi Bruce, yes, it means synopsis.
I'd love to look at it.

[Hal O'Peridol]

I built a BM59 clone a couple of years ago before the current receivers were available. I bought one from the Garandguy, but it still needed a little modification, would work as received but I wanted it closer to the original.

Parts came from ebay and Italy, and barrel came from Standardparts llc. Modified an original birch M1 Garand stock to fit. It was not an easy build, and I finally got it running decently a couple months ago.

Here a a few pics of my build:







Above are the parts source from the US and Italy. I started this a couple years before the current kits were available.

Below is the receiver. The legs were not profiled correctly, I ended up trimming them down with a drimmel tool.





Finally ended up with this. Not an easy build.




I currently have another parts kit, sarco barrel and JRA receiver waiting to be assembled.