Welcome to today’s Photo of the Day! Designed by Emmanuel Holek in the late 1920s, the ZH29 was one of the earliest practical and reliable semi-automatic rifle designs, though it failed to secure widespread military adoption. It utilized an unusual tilting bolt locking system where the bolt pivoted into the left side of the receiver. This required mounting the barrel at an angle to be perpendicular to the locked bolt’s breech face. Despite its innovative design, only around 500 ZH29s were produced for small orders from China, Lithuania, and Ethiopia. Several other nations tested it, including a .276 Pedersen variant for the US trials, but did not adopt the rifle. The manufacturing quality was high, with a distinct plum patina on surviving examples today.
“This is a very scarce example of an early pre-war Czechoslovakian ZH29 rifle, developed in the 1920s and 1930s. The ZH29 was a very interesting early semi-automatic military rifle. Manufactured almost entirely from finely milled and machined steel, the ZH29 shows a very high level of fit and finish. A similar example is pictured in “Hatcher’s Notebook” by Julian Hatcher. A limited number of foreign contract sales are also known, with Abyssinia (later Ethiopia) and China notable among the buyers; notes supplied by the consignor suggest that this rifle was one purchased by China in 1929, which was captured by the Japanese in Manchuria. A similar version was actually built and tested by the Japanese in their 1935 Test Trials with an almost identical version shown on page 167 in the book “Military Rifles Of Japan” (2nd ed., Honeycutt). It is listed as prototype rifle that was manufactured by the Tokyo Gas and Electric (TGE) Company. The heart of the action is a novel tilting bolt assembly, which hinges left to engage the frame for locking prior to firing, powered by a hand adjustable long piston gas system, with the trigger doubling as the bolt release. Blade front and tangent rear sights, with a ribbed aluminum barrel shroud ahead of the hardwood forearm.”
Lot 3561: Czechoslovakian ZH29 Semi-Automatic Rifle – Rare Czechoslovakian ZH29 Semi-Automatic Rifle with Bayonet. (n.d.-c). Rock Island Auction Company. photograph. Retrieved April 2, 2024, from https://www.rockislandauction.com/detail/82/3561/czechoslovakian-zh29-semiautomatic-rifle.
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