The SMG FG42 In Detail

[Wilhelm]

In this post, we'll be looking at the sling. SMG DID NOT make the sling and I have no idea who did but it was included with the rifle and is supposed to be a reproduction of an original sling. We'll put that to the test by comparing it to an original sling.

Here is a general comparison shot of the two with the reproduction on the right and an original on the left:



From this distance the repro looks pretty good. Compared to old wartime pictures in a book, it looks really good. On the repro, all hardware is painted black. On the original example shown here, the front carabiner is in the white, the adjustment buckle now has a brown patina but I think it was originally blued and the rear attaching clevis is painted black. I'm sure that there must have been variations on a theme though as is typical of German equipment of that era.


Lets move in a little closer and start the comparison in earnest with the front attachment carabiner:



The original is on the bottom in the above picture. The carabiner is made of steel and it's quite heavy. The spring is very stout too. The repro feels cheap and light like it's pot metal or aluminum and the spring is nowhere near as strong. In form, the repro looks absolutely nothing like the original. To be fair though, it seems to work just fine for it's intended purpose but I guarantee you that it would snap easily if you were to abuse it in the field. The original is built like a Panther tank. The diamond pattern on the leather is pretty good and the quality of the leather itself seems to be as good any wartime sling I have encountered.

Here's a bottom view of the adjustment buckles with the repro on top:



The stitching is as good as the original but the buckle is a joke. The weld is rough, the steel feels like tin and there is no leather wrapped around the bottom. In fact, the entire bottom of the buckle is so misshapen and the lock bar so useless that the buckle does nothing. If you use the sling to lift the rifle, it simply slips in the buckle until it's at maximum length. If you walk with the rifle shouldered, the sling again slips through the buckle until it's at maximum length and the rifle is dangling all over the place. Fail.


A side view of the buckles:



Again, notice how misshapen the bottom of the buckle is. The lock bar is not of a large enough diameter to firmly squeeze the leather between itself and the top of the buckle. The lack of a leather wrap to grab the lock bar just exacerbates the slippage problem. It's just plain worthless. I may try to beat the buckle into something resembling flat and square or I may just use it as a target.....I haven't decided just yet. I really have no use for a product that is cheaply made and doesn't do what it's supposed to do.


A top view of the rear attachment clevis with the repro on top:



This part kinda' sorta' looks like the original but it's still pretty bad. Notice how the original has the sling loop molded into it while the repro has a poorly shaped and thin oval barely welded to the clevis. Just as with the front carabiner, there is a noticeable weight difference between the two. The lug sticking out the side of the clevis is the push button used to open the assembly for installation on or removal from the stock. Again, the stitching and leather tooling is on the repro is excellent.


The pushbutton side of the clevis with the original on top:



To the left of the picture we can see on the original where the weld holding the pin to the arm was ground down somewhat crudely. We can also see the manufacture mark upside down. L&F was a major manufacturer of slings. On the repro, we can see the weld for the pin through the paint. While the spring on the repro seems to be as strong as on the original, the push button does not operate anywhere near as smooth.


This last shot is the other side of the clevis with the repro on top:



Notice on the repro that the pin is not flush with the surface of the arm. That's because neither the pin nor the hole in the arm is perfectly round so the pin will not fully seat. Big thumbs up on that. It works but it won't hold up to real use. On the original, the pin properly seats in the arm. We can also see grind marks to the weld holding the arm to the pushbutton.


By now, I'm sure you have guessed that I do not hold the repro sling in high regard. The leather, leather tooling and stitching are all first class but the whole thing is ruined by the cheap to the point of worthless hardware. I guess it's good that someone is at least trying to make one and it's fine for display I guess but it's junkola if you plan to actually use it. As for calling it a "reproduction", you might get away with that word if you've only seen an original in old photographs or at a distance but when sitting next to an original, I think the words "cheap knockoff" are a more fitting description. Being that there were various sling manufacturers during the war, maybe one of them actually made one that looked like the "reproduction" pictured here but since originals are not to be found in abundance, this example is the best I could come up with for comparison purposes. Whatever the case, I can't recommend this sling unless someone upgrades the hardware.


In the next post, we'll look at the scope and mounting rings. I am much more enthusiastic about those because they are as good as originals (probably even better in the case of the scope) and a worthwhile addition to the SMG FG42 if you ask me.