The Z-008 III of the Zbroyar company in Kiev, Ukraine, can best be described as a bolt-action rifle with AR-looks. We have seen that before. But the Z-008 is not just a fashionably dressed repeating rifle. The weapon has been specially designed in this configuration and is full of gadgets.

The Ukrainian firm Zbroyar (which translates as “weapon maker”) is a private company established in 2004. The company in Kiev focuses on guns for sports, hunting and military use. Production, assembly, finishing and surface treatment are largely done in-house, using modern CNC machines and with a quality comparable to or better than many Western European companies.

At present, Zbroyar produces three types of weapons: the Z-15 (based on the AR-15) in 5.56x45mm (.223) NATO or .300 Blackout caliber, the Z-10 (based on the AR-10) in 7.62x51mm (.308) NATO caliber and the Z-008 III. The Z-008 III is the subject of this article.

The Z-008 is not restricted to any specific caliber. The construction of the gun, with a separate barrel extension, makes it relatively easy to change the barrel (and therefore caliber), which makes it a good choice for long-range shooters.

Description

The Z-008 is a bolt-action rifle. The Roman numeral III stands for the third generation of the gun, as Zbroyar previously made several conventional Z-008 bolt-action rifles. The weapon is completely built in Kiev. Only the AR-stock and pistol grip are aftermarket parts, made by Magpul on the rifle pictured here. The magazine of the illustrated gun is also by Magpul, but of course there is a wide choice in this area.
The Z-008 is a fascinating combination of bolt-action rifle gun and AR. The weapon has the ergonomics of the latter, in terms of the position of the double-sided safety and single-sided magazine catches. The aluminum handguard with its mounting rails and the design of the construction with an upper and lower frame have also been copied from the AR. But since this is a bolt-action rifle, there is no gas block, cocking handle or forward bolt assist. The right side of the solid aluminum ‘upper’ has two elongated openings. The front one is the ejection opening (without a hinging lid), and the rear is for the bolt handle.

The height of the upper part of the receiver is almost the same as that of a semi-automatic rifle, which means it is almost seamlessly continuous with the handguard. To give the upper sufficient rigidity, the top part contains a steel cylinder, of which only the back is visible when the weapon is disassembled.

Unlike a semi-automatic, the Z-008 trigger mechanism is an integral part of the upper frame. The Z-008 comes standard with a single stage trigger mechanism designed at Zbroyar, but the construction is such that it can be exchanged for one of the main brands for an aftermarket trigger.

Extras

The Z-008 bolt has a narrowed bolt head with three locking lugs. The front of the bolt has the extractor, which has been mounted from the rear. It is a Zbroyar design, comparable to a Sako style extractor. The ejector is a spring-loaded plunger in the bolt head.

To maintain the best possible fit between the bolt and frame, Zbroyar added two extras. First, the body of the bolt has been extended to the rear, by means of a detachable end cap. A longer bolt automatically means less play. But as the bolt now travels further to the rear, the buffer and buffer spring had to be removed from the stock, which now has an empty tube with room for the rear part of the bolt. A second characteristic is a steel U-profile, put in the left lower side of the upper receiver. The axis of the bolt handle protrudes from the opposite side of the bolt. This notch runs in the U-profile and secures a tight guide. The U-profile bends upward at the point where the bolt handle is turned downward. This prevents wear to the aluminum upper and aids in primary extraction when the bolt is opened.

Operation

As far as operation is concerned, the Z-008 is simplicity itself. Insert the magazine, operate the bolt and the gun is ready to fire. The magazine housing is asymmetrical. The right wall is shorter than the left, making it easier to insert a magazine in a prone position. The magazine is a standard AR-10.

The firing pin is cocked when opening the bolt. A tooth on the bottom of the firing pin locks in the rear of the bolt body. If the bolt is completely closed, this tooth is released but is then caught by the trigger sear. This is similar to 99% of all other bolt-action rifles, comparable to the reliable operation of the mother of all modern bolt-action rifles, the K98. A small notch with a red ring protrudes from the right side of the upper receiver, giving visual and perceptible evidence that the bolt is cocked. The gun has an ambidextrous safety catch, but only the left side of the receiver is marked with “FIRE” and “SAFE.”

Disassembly

Like the AR, the upper and lower receiver are connected with two cross-pins. When the rear pin is pushed out to the right (it won’t fall out), the lower receiver pivots open. For normal maintenance, that is enough. A special pin now blocks the mechanism to ensure that the weapon cannot be fired.

With the stock out of the way, the bolt can simply be pulled out to the rear of the receiver. To dismantle the bolt, one must first remove the end cap, which is fastened with a bayonet catch. If the cap is turned clockwise, it can be pulled from the bolt body. Next, the firing pin case and firing pin can be pulled rearward out of the bolt. The bolt head is attached to the bolt with a solid crossbolt, in turn fixed by a pin. If this little pin is removed, the crossbolt can be taken out and the bolt head separated from the bolt. The front part of the bolt has a smaller diameter than the rear and the bolt head. It is fitted with a synthetic sleeve, which reduces friction when operating the bolt.

Shooting

We fired the Z-008 III, equipped with a Tier-One Spartan III silencer and a Kahles K 624i 6-24×56 scope, at a 100-meter range, with Lithuanian GGG Ammunition. That distance is almost an insult for the rifle, with a group of roughly half an inch. The bolt runs very smooth, cartridges fed without any problems, and the trigger is excellent. The European importer, the Dutch company PIROSPORT, also specializes in custom-made barrels. It prepared a first run in 6.5x47mm Lapua, but the Zbroyar ZB-008 III can be made in any caliber of the .308 (short action) family, like .243 Win., 6mm BR, 6.5 Creedmoor, .260 and the 7mm-08. The gun is being used as a military sniper rifle as well.

In just a few years, the world of military museums in the Netherlands has been jumbled up. Almost everything has changed. The highlight of this reorganization is the new National Military Museum (NMM) on the grounds of the former airbase Soesterberg.

Until 1994, Soesterberg was home of the American 32 Tactical Fighter Sqn (TFS). It was closed as an operational airbase in 2008 and has now been renamed Park Soesterberg Airbase. The NMM is an amalgamation of the old Army Museum in Delft and the Military Aviation Museum, which was housed in another part of the airbase. In mid-December 2014, the new museum was officially opened by the Dutch King.

Organization

Ever since World War II, the Netherlands has had a small patchwork of larger military museums and dozens of smaller unit collections. Very interesting to visit, but a disaster in terms of management and conservation. No one knew what had been preserved, where it was or even who paid for it.

To remedy these defects, a new organization was established in October 2014: the Defense Museum Foundation. The Foundation manages the collections of the major museums: the Naval Museum in Den Helder, the Royal Marines Museum in Rotterdam, the Military Police Museum in Buren and the new NMM. It has also absorbed many of the smaller collections.

The reorganization meant a landslide. Museum staff are now employed by this Foundation, instead of by the Ministry of Defense. Uniting these collections means that both personnel and objects can more easily be exchanged. The Naval Museum, the Marines Museum and the Military Police Museum stayed where they were, but the two major collections—Army and Air Force—had to merge and move to a shared new building.

Army and Air Force together? One can imagine the outcries of indignation. Adding insult to injury, the new museum building was planned at the cradle of Dutch military aviation, Soesterberg.

Despite the differences, the new museum has proven to be large enough for the two to have their own space. Furthermore, the historical legacy has been carefully preserved. The oldest wooden building of the Dutch Aviation Department, as it was called at its inception, has been restored to its full glory. A pre-war hangar is incorporated into the new structure. Yes, some postwar buildings have been demolished, but will they be missed?

The real miracle, of course, is that a new military museum could be built at all. Defense budgets in the Netherlands have been tight for years and started increasing only after flight MH17 was shot down over the Ukraine in July 2014, killing 298 passengers and flight crew. By then, the museum was almost finished. How did they manage that?

First, there were major cuts in staff. The two museums together had 76 full-time jobs. In the new museum, there are only 31—less than half. But even with such a staff reduction you cannot build a new museum. The secret lies in the term public-private partnership.

In 2010, a competition was organized for the design and development of the NMM including the surrounding terrain. Seven consortia came forward, of which three remained after an initial selection. A yearlong consultation with these parties followed. They had to submit a plan based on detailed specifications, which included shaping the 111-acre museum park, the building itself and all the facilities for a planned 200,000 visitors per year.

Road construction company Heijmans came out best from the selection process. The company was enthusiastic, had some bold ideas and won the tender. This meant not only that it could build the museum, but Heijmans also got operational control for the next 25 years. The company has control over the museum shop, restaurant and catering and has to organize events, for which the company receives an annual allowance from the Ministry of Defense.

Together with those rights comes an impressive set of obligations. To begin with, there was a building to erect, with the complete equipment, depots, climate control and security. The requirements for all these aspects were strictly defined. For instance, the museum has some interactive games. The contract specifies that these are not allowed to be out of order for more than five minutes; no “out of order” signs hanging for three months. Similar requirements exist for the lighting and toilets—in short, for the entire infrastructure.

The museum was built with the express intention of holding various large-scale events. On the museum grounds are three “arenas”. Unpaved, paved and uneven, so demonstrations can be held with both horses and vehicles. A tank weekend, for example. But re-enactors, a knife fair—everything is possible. One of the runways has even been preserved, for the possibility of a future aircraft show.

Enormous

But now onto a much more important topic: how does the new museum look? To begin with, it’s huge. The museum is 13 meters high, with a 4-meter-thick roof which protrudes on all sides. The main roof is rectangular: 100 meters wide and 200 meters long. It provides a huge space, inside which armored vehicles and aircraft almost vanish. A Dornier Do-24 flying boat stands almost casually in a corner. And that huge building itself looks small in the vast landscape.

From the outside, the museum appears like a large shoebox. The inside is different. The huge glass outer walls are lined with the heaviest equipment: artillery, tanks, military vehicles and aircraft. Further inside, the building is divided into floors, halls and galleries, with surprisingly intimate corners.

The exhibition focuses on a number of topics, both chronologically and thematically. The “ring” with heavy equipment is divided into the periods of 3000 B.C. to 1500, from 1500 to 1839, from 1839 to 1945 and from 1945 to the present. The inner circle covers a variety of themes. Who are the Dutch? Military life, military operations, society and the armed forces and the future of the armed forces; all of these are shown on different levels, with objects, images and sound. In between, there are sudden intimate moments. A treasure room, for example, with an abundance of paintings and trophies, edged weapons, Japanese armor and Dutch ivory pistols. The main exhibition area has separate rooms with themes like camouflage, explosives, pilot clothing and ejection seats.

Arms Lovers

The National Military Museum aims at a broad audience. It wants at least 200,000 visitors a year, which you get only if there really is something going on. Thus far, it has succeeded remarkably. In its first year, it attracted more than half a million people.

The hardcore fans don’t need to be disappointed either. The army museum in Delft had a phenomenal library and a wonderful study collection. Both are still there. A little behind the museum are black buildings, in the form of two hangars, harboring the study collection, storage and library. You can go there by appointment. The museum itself has a Knowledge & Information Center: a hall with computers giving access to the collection and a core library of several hundred of the most requested titles. It reflects the intention that—from beginner to expert, from tourist to military historian—the National Military Museum is trying to serve everyone.

In addition, the museum’s infrastructure has been substantially modernized. There are large deposits with air-conditioned rooms, maintenance workshops and special facilities for the safe storage of old prints and photographs.

Of course, there are some negative sides as well. The new museum has become a commercial institute, which means you have to pay for everything. There is little budget for acquisitions. And since neither the library nor the study collection is “core business,” their future might still be insecure. All details of the new museum can be found at www.nmm.nl.

In the 1990s, the arms collector’s world was excited by the discovery of a Luger self-loading rifle with a toggle-lock, developed shortly before World War I. Here is something more unique: a prototype Borchardt toggle-lock rifle from that same period.

For most of their lives, weapon designers Hugo Borchardt (1844–1924) and George Luger (1849–1923) were fierce competitors. It is, of course, well known that both were involved in the early stages of development of a self-loading pistol, with Luger modifying Borchardt’s original design into the famed Parabellum pistol. It is far less well known that both Luger and Borchardt occupied themselves with the design of a semi-automatic rifle shortly before the outbreak of World War I.

Until the 1990s, there were mostly rumors and scraps of information, but then there was a spectacular find: a semi-automatic Luger rifle with a toggle-lock, serial number 4, in the German military caliber 7.92×57. The weapon reportedly emerged in Britain in the amnesty of 1988 and finally ended in the collection of arms dealer Samuel Cummings. For a long time, it was debated whether this was an original gun or a very clever forgery, but eventually the weapon turned out to be genuine and a number of associated patents were found.

Lawsuit

The veil was lifted further when a part of Georg Luger’s estate was bought by a European collector. Among the personal papers were documents concerning a lawsuit in 1920 between Luger and his former employer, Deutsche Waffen- und Munitionsfabriken (DWM). Luger could never quite get along with the general manager of DWM, Paul von Gontard. Disagreements eventually ran so high that Luger was fired. That, in itself, did not bother him. He objected, however, to the fact that DWM claimed the rights to the semi-automatic rifle he had developed.

One of the documents that Georg Luger presented to the court was a letter from the Prussian War Department in Berlin to DWM, dated March 2, 1914, in which the ministry expressed its interest in further tests with the Luger rifle. The same letter gave a less favorable opinion on another gun offered by DWM for trials: a Borchardt semi-automatic rifle.

Deficiencies

The Prussian authorities considered the 4.8-kilogram Borchardt rifle too heavy and difficult to disassemble. In addition, it was found to have several mechanical defects. The weapon had a toggle-lock combined with a fixed barrel. The result was that the breechblock would already begin its rearward movement when the bullet was still in the barrel, so that part of the cartridge case had to withstand the full gas pressure. The toggle joint that slammed to the rear was considered potentially dangerous to the shooter, especially when kneeling or in the prone position (which, by the way, was equally true for Luger’s gun).

The toggle-lock of the Borchardt rifle operated under the pressure of a heavy coil spring, which was located longitudinally behind the magazine. The force of the spring was transferred to the toggle-lock through a chain, as shown in Borchardt’s German patent 241,941 and U.S. patent 1,160,831. The Prussian War Ministry did not like this construction. Installation and removal of the chain was too complicated for the ordinary soldier, and the links collected dirt and dust. Finally, the self-loading mechanism did not work with blank cartridges.

Where, Oh Where?

The letter from the War Ministry provides indisputable evidence that the Deutsche Waffen- und Munitionsfabriken had offered both a Borchardt and a Luger self-loading rifle to the Prussian authorities for trials, prior to World War I. The Luger gun had already surfaced. But where was the Borchardt rifle? Quests for this unique piece at first only yielded a series of patents, issued from May 1908 onward:

DRP 213,012 from May 17, 1908;
DRP 241,941 from March 1, 1911;
DRP 262,217 from February 11, 1912;
DRP 262,217 from April 17, 1912;
DRP 279,184 from February 22, 1914.

The rifle is best illustrated in German patent 241,941, and in U.S. Patent 1,160,831 for which the application was filed on February 2, 1914. Both are reproduced here, showing small differences in the artwork.

However, all this did not answer the most important questions: Had the Borchardt self-loading rifle survived? And, if so, where? As can be seen from the pictures, we can answer that question: A prototype does exist, and it is in the collection of the Museum of Artillery, Engineers and Signal Corps in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Description

The weapon in the museum is similar in almost all respects to the drawings of the German and U.S. patents. The gun is unnumbered, in the white (like many prototypes) and has no visible markings. It lacks both Borchardt’s name and the DWM logo, and it has no proof marks. Apart from some minor damage, the metal is in good condition, but the stock has suffered considerably. As can be seen in the pictures, the wood is full of dents and scratches. The only missing part is the leaf spring that secures the barrel band.

At first sight, the Borchardt rifle looks like the front of a Gewehr 98 has been combined with the rear of a Garand, with the toggle of the Parabellum pistol. The Borchardt rifle has a detachable magazine with a five-round capacity for the German standard 7.9×57 military cartridge. The magazine catch at the front of the magazine housing is U-shaped with two arms on either side of the magazine. The magazine is held in place by two studs on these arms, which fall in the small rectangular openings at the sides of the magazine. Pressing the catch to the rear forces the studs outwards and releases the magazine.

Knee Joint

The most spectacular part of the Borchardt rifle is, of course, the beautifully made toggle-lock, which resembles that of a Parabellum pistol on steroids. It must have been a difficult job to figure out the kinetics. The breechblock must move to the rear sufficiently, to be able to pick up and chamber a full-size 7.9×57 round, which means the toggle joint must open accordingly. The layout of the lock remained unchanged: first the breech block with a combined loaded chamber indicator and extractor in the top, and then the two joints of the toggle.

In order to prevent the breechblock from rebounding due to the blow against the back of the barrel, the left side of the receiver has a spring-loaded metal plate which falls into a recess in the left cocking knob. The left side of the receiver also has a sliding safety catch and a sear bar just like the Parabellum pistol.

So, you may ask, why are there no pictures of the internals of the gun? Well, there simply was no time to take them. The Museum of Artillery, Engineers and Signal Corps has a collection of about 60,000 firearms, which might well make it the largest museum collection in the world. When our small group was at the museum, we had just a few days. So, there was a choice: go into a few dozen guns in depth or photograph as many as possible. We chose the latter. So even if it’s a glimpse, it’s a glimpse of one of the rarest guns in the world: the Borchardt semi-automatic rifle.