Is there such a thing as a semi-auto Bren in Canada?

tiriaq said:
12-2, 12-3. Never heard of a 12-5.

Brens in 8mm were manufactured for, and supplied to China. Probably .303 as well, judging from period photos. Don't know that the manufacturing package was ever supplied.
To reverse engineer a Bren, the design altered to acceptable semi auto, would be possible. But how big would the market be? Made in China, it would not be importable into the US. That eliminates what would be a major market.
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My apologies. :D FA converted to fire SA
 
wheaty said:
There is a good section on the converted 7.62 x 39 Brens in the SECOND addition of the Bren Gun Saga by Dugelby....
Mk. II Brens were converted in England and South Africa to the L4 config. They used the metric pattern mag and not the Canadian with the front lug on the mag
As a side note, the Chinese converted 7.62 x 39 Bren used a sleeved chamber and the existing .303 cal. bore (311 - 314) diameter. It was a rather ingenious conversion but did suffer from a gas problem. Even with the ports bored out it would not meet western reliability requirements.
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the L4 did use inch mags as the british used inch FALs, and the mags work in each gun, the brit 30 rounders are curved however and the canadian ones are straight
 
tiriaq said:
Investment casting lar ger, more complicated shapes is definitely possible. Catch is, if you reverse engineer from an existing piece like a Bren receiver, obtain the dimensions, and then a die sinker creates the dies to inject the waxes, which are then used to produce castings, the dimensions of the casting aren't going to be the same as the original. The product must be redesigned for production by casting. With allowances built in for machining critical areas. Making a two piece unit would likely simplify things. The castings become smaller.
In the 1980s, a simple three piece die to injection mould a synthetic stock cost $90 000 (conversation with Lee Six). Dies to produce production ready castings for a Bren reciever - and any other parts which could not be adapted from originals - would make that sum look like a pittance. Develpoment costs to produce usable Bren receivers by casting would be substantial.
One reason that limited production runs are done with CNC rather than casting is because of cost of designing and developing production ready dies.
At one time I owned 12 dies to inject the waxes for some gun parts. Investment casting is a valid technique, but it is not a gimme.
The cost to develop and produce the dies - and do the product development to get the resulting parts working - is the same for 100 or 10 000 units. Up front cost is heavy.
If a company were to take on such a project, it would be a substantial one from an industrial standpoint. It would take a serious investment of time, money and engineering talent before gun #1 appeared.
And, of course, spending dollar one before knowing if the resulting product would be classified non-restricted would be unwise. Recent tales of woe demonstrate the risks involved in production of paramilitary firearms.
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BGS shows an experimental British cast BREN receiver.
 
t-star said:
no need, they already have the drawings or can reverse-engineer one of the INGLIS canandian made ones- we supplied a LOT of those in 8mm back in ww2- all we have to do is supply the DEMAND - and we could get it in 308 as well, as the bren uses a quick-change barrel
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As the Bren was a development of the Czech ZB-26 to take the .303 round, I wonder how the 7.92mm Brens differed from the parent design.

On a related note, it looks like Romania, Yugoslavia, and Nationalist China, as well as the Czechs manufactured the ZB-26. D'you suppose the tooling might be gathering dust in the corner of some ex-communist warehouse somewhere?
 
I would argue that the demand would not be as high as people think.

There's been a few (call it 5) people on this thread who've commented that they'd take one.

Let's look at the price of the IAI Enfields...they're handy on $800-1000 depending on the variant. If the WWII Bren cost 6 times what a WWII Enfield cost to manufacture, we can extrapolate that the BEGINNING price of a new manufacture semi-auto Bren would be $4800-$6000.

That's the LOW end.

Let's look at the mid-range would be the FG-42 Semi-Autos that came on the market for around $10,000 a while back. There were a handful of these imported to Canada, and if I recall, they seemed to have taken a while to sell out. Yes, there were a few that got snapped up right away, but they did not sell like hotcakes at that price.

Both of those firearms were built internationally, and distributed into Canada.

If someone did the same thing with the Bren, I would expect the minimum cost would be at least that of the FG-42's that came in. A low production run item, with high R&D and long lead time.

How many of you would be willing to pay $4800 for a semi-auto Bren?

How many would be willing to pay $10,000?

How many would be willing to pay more than $10,000?

I suspect that would be the reality of a new manufacture Semi-Auto Bren. $10,000 or more. The number of people who would want one even at a $4800 price-tag would be limited, and those that did would demand it to be as exact a copy as possible, requiring additional attention to detail in the manufacture, probably a transit chest, spare barrel, etc....and the detail is what costs.

Truth be told, for $1500-2000, I'd be interested in a Semi-auto Bren. I'd happily sell my Dewat Bren and trade up if it was in that price-range.

I don't have the $$$ to toss on a $4800 Bren, or a $10,000 Bren. Not in the cards, and that's the reality of it.

If someone built them, they'd have to ask a premium, and they'd sell a handful.

NS
 
The only way that the price could be kept down would be if the majority of parts could be salvaged from existing guns. There are no doubt sufficient originals that could be broken for parts to meet the needs of a modest production program.
Many of these would require rework for the new design.
Perhaps a parallel would be the 1918A2 BAR semi auto rifles which have been made in the US. Most parts are salvaged, the receivers are brand new. A BAR receiver is smaller and less complex than that of a Bren.
IF the Indians still have the tooling, perhaps that could be a source for a new semi auto only receiver.
Johnone would know if Zastava could whittle these receivers and the dedicated semi auto parts out. He would also know if there would be any point in even considering such a project.
 
FWIW, to the 5+ ppl who have pm'd me for copies of the drawings, they are for a British-made Bren MkIII and they are .jpg photographs of the original paper drawings from RSAF Enfield.

They are 15MB which is too big to e-mail to some folks, so if someone has the means to accept them via e-mail and can host hotlinks to them, I'd be happy to make them available. I only want to do this once, so don't pm me unless you can server host them in the opriginal resolution (photobucket will shink them to the point the measurements are illegible) for everyone to download.
 
A generous offer, Claven2.
No doubt an enterprising individual will use them to generate code, fire up a CNC machining center, and start spitting out the critical parts.
 
I would most definitely be interested in one...

With the new non-restricted regs I think there would be a fair to good amount of interest from all sorts of different angles. Think of all of those vehicles out there that guys have dropped thousands to work on, and a working firearm would be the crown jewel..

The bren is much more enjoyable to lay down behind than a 1919A6!
 
shootemup said:
I need a Bren Gun for my Carrier...but I don't want it costing more than I sunk into the carrier...
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Pics of carrier or yer making it up....

I have little to add but ####

brenZB30.jpg
 
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