Trego's Mountain Ear

Back in the eighties, I wound up with a handful of Hakim rifles.  It was a great time for surplus – stuff that Israel had captured in the Six Days War had been stashed for 15 or 20 years and was being surplused.  So there I was with some rifles that had been dropped in the sand once.

Egypt bought the tooling for Sweden’s AG-42 Ljungman (and with Sweden’s neutrality, the rifle had no combat experience) made a few modifications, and started building them in Egypt.  About the same time, they contracted with Beretta to make a copy of the M1951 that they also manufactured in Egypt and called the Helwan.  One of those was unfired – I had to take a burr off the firing pin to fix it.  The biggest problem was a cross-bolt safety – secure  as it could be, but it took both hands to release the safety. 

There must have been a lot of 8mm Mauser cartridges in Egypt at the time – and the Hakim has a valve so you can tune the rifle for whatever powder/bullet combination you stumble across.  Very different from our M1 Garand, where the rifle takes a slightly reduced 30/06 load.  The really neat thing about the Hakim is that it has a very effective muzzle brake -no 8mm I have ever fired has so little recoil.  Loud as heck, and you really won’t want to shoot one without hearing protection – good hearing protection.

If I recall correctly, my Hakim came through Century Arms – and this may be the photo I saw before I bought them:

It’s big – basically 4 feet long and 11 pounds.   Since I lack understanding of Arabic, I have to remember that when the safety is to the right it’s safe, when it’s to the left it’s ready to fire.  I don’t need to read Arabic to adjust the sight elevation – it’s in 100 meter increments, and I can count to 10 with some ease.

It shot well – not so well as my Garand, but close – and the Garand has a new Marlin barrel, and has been bedded and accurized.  Those 196 grain bullets can keep an 8-gallon keg rolling like a 22 pistol can a pop can.  Semi-automatics can be a lot of fun.