Official directions on the use of a Sten gun: 1. Come within 50 yards of the target 2. Point nozzle in their general direction 3. Hold down trigger until either you run out of ammo or the target is sufficiently perforated. That blob of weld looks suspiciously like it could be undone by a very naughty person with a dremel.

"Hi, we're out on the range today so please bear with gunfire you hear in the background."

Between Bloke and BritishMuzzleloaders, I am having a grand time remembering a good friend who served in the British Army back in the 1950s. He had one thing to say of the Stens he had to work with: "If it worked still after a decade of being in the hands of bloody fools like me, I think the bullets occasionally went the direction you asked them to, but they never did reply to queries on the matter. They may not have been literate enough to write back."

I second the idea that installing the barrel at 180o to the way it was, might have worked. Once, in either the eighties or the nineties, there was some sort of WW2 anniversary programme on the BBC and a couple of (relatively youthful) Home Guard veterans were interviewed, on a firing range. One of them was give a STEN gun for a firing demonstration, but the first thing he did was face the camera over a bench, take the gun to pieces and very deftly put it back together again. He didn't stare at the barrel, he just gave it a glance and popped it into place in a particular way. Then, I think at 50 yards, he proceeded to fire in very controlled two or three shot bursts. When he looked at his target, they were all pretty well centered. "Not bad for a STEN gun firing bursts" with a gentle smile. Why would a Home Guard know how to do this better than then a conscript in the regular army at the time? It was a conscript army, to some extent trained by other conscripts, and few of the regular army would have any prior knowledge of guns other than what they were told in training. In contrast, the LDV ("Home Guard"), in Bromham, Beds, at least were recruited thus, according to my late mother. "The gamekeepers were all called in to Bromham Hall and told by their employer to volunteer. Then the policeman went round to all the poacher's cottages and marched them all down to volunteer." My grandfather, being a clerk and a Baptist lay preacher, was politely encouraged to join the ARP, which he did. Other men were recruited once the poachers and gamekeepers had become familiar with the available weapons and felt able to tell novices how to actually hit things with them. After Mr Eden's speech in 1942, describing what he knew of what is now known as the holocaust, even my grandfather was allowed to join the Home Guard and given a STEN gun. It was left to my mother to teach him about it...

I initially heard "the sight radius is kind of short" as "the sight radius is kind of shit" which, well, I guess it's not inaccurate that way as well.

Now I’m curious how often a sten in service would have be off that badly in elevation. The grouping is impressive regardless. Kudos to the man behind the trigger!

Been there, done that! Persistence and ALOT of ammo pays off sometimes! Good job Mike 😜

I machined a 16" barrel for my MkII from a large diameter 9mm barrel blank. It solved the eccentric problem and improved accuracy greatly. It now actually shoots to aim point at 100 yards.

I bought a Sten MKII parts kit in the early 90's so I could have some spare parts for my transferable Sten . the parts kit came from either India or Pakistan. The barrel nut was actually spot welded to the receiver. Now I know why, the Army didn't want the soldiers to change the point of aim by messing with the barrels. Great video. Information I never knew about.

During my apx. 4000 days with the German Military I carried an UZI Submachine gun, the version with the folding stock. Was quite accurate @ 100 m and usable up to 200. Barrel can only be installed in 1 position there.

My Father who joined the British Army in 1937 commented on the WWII Sten that a left handed man couldn't hit a barn door at 10 yds on full auto ! I only ever fired the Stirling version and that was 'very sophisticated, comparatively' :)

I have owned a Sten MKII since 1991 and I never knew this! I just looked at my barrel and found the mark. My Sten has always shot a little to the right. I will have to see if indexing the barrel helped. Thanks for this information.

Can’t you see that the runout on the bore is a feature not a bug? “Eccentric Zeroing”, just turn the barrel for a completely different POI. Very advanced stuff!

My semi-auto Sten I installed a locator pin to align with a notch in the barrel flange to where it indexes the same all the time. I then removed the front sight and installed a No. 4 Mk 1 Enfield sight with protectors on the barrel. Mine fires from a closed bolt and everyone comments on the range as to how I can ring the 250 yard gongs offhand. Replacing the sight and moving it out to the end of the barrel really made a difference. But firing from a closed bolt probably helped as much.

And here I thought hitting the target at 100 m with the Swedish m/45 SMG during my military service was bad...

"Blocked at semi-auto, back in the day, by the judicious application of welds to the selector" Now that's how it's done! I'm sure there's some American collectors who have now melted due to jealousy. :D Thanks for the video guys.

Have you ever considered trying this will the barrel effectively upside down, so your mark is 180 degrees from where it should be?

I have shot my MK V at the 50m range quite a few times (prone position only) and it is surprisingly accurate. Probably due to the formidable adjustable sights. Something the soviets did always right, even my pps43 made in occupied Leningrad has adjustable sights for individual zeroing.

Wish I had a range that nice near my home.

I remember watching a sten gun demo in the 50's being fired at about 25 yards at steel plates possibly 6 or 8 inch square and the guy was picking them off one at a time on semi auto.

At my clubs zero range we have a giant berm at 185 yards. During real busy times I just shoot the berm. I am good at getting a sight picture and peaking over to see where my shots land. Saves time setting up a 50 yard where am I target. Especially when people shoot the dog crap out of all the target stands. We also do not have designated cold range times. This was awesome, thanks Bloke and Chap!

I had a STEN as a kid when I gave my pal an Elvis record for it. I never had any ammo (if I had I'd have been too afraid to fire it) and surrendered it at a local police station during an amnesty in about 1960. I used to enjoy stripping it down and rebuilding it.

Im supposed to get an semi only pistol grip one on Thursday and iam so excited!

We compete with the Swedish K at 100m. Best group I ever saw was ~15cm standing from 100m with sling support only and the Swedish nationals. Edit: 5 shot group and the Swedish K also has a removable barrel that changes poi after removal. Regular sight leaf though.

I remember hearing somebody on the internet say that the test for accuracy for the sten was that on automatic it could put all 32 rounds from a magazine onto a 4 by 4 foot wooden square at 100 meters.

My father said put a piece of shim stock thin brass sheet cut to fit a quarter area of the the ring of your barrel the shape of a quarter of a letter C and rotate it until you get it to hit center target like you want it to hit. That will move point of impact. shim stock is very thin and easy to cut with scissors ✂️ and it should work very well

Probably more suited for a gun fight in a telephone booth!! Hickok's channel had him firing for a couple hundred meters and hitting targets so that was impressive but he had a modern made Sten and maybe its perfectly inline machined? Never jammed once and he was impressed as so cheap and rustic but gets the job done...

Thats some fine swissgerman right there bloke

Another example of video craft from the Bloke....... great consistent work in the character of the channel.

Hey you have a sten magazine loader also thats a good thing to have it really better than useing just fingers. That loader makes it way more enjoyable.!

"Bloody hell! I'm in the next township over. Could ye stop peppering me flat, mate??"

P.S love your video keep them coming and good luck for southern Georgia USA.

Try putting your front sight lower in your rear peep sight. Use maybe a third of your front sight sticking up in your rear peep sight hole and when you figure out how high or low to hold your front sight in the rear peep mark it with a line of yellow or white paint in a thin file mark . Or add more metal to the front sight and if it's to much on front sight file it down until you get it right where you want it. Either way will work I'm pretty sure I have set a few of them and sweating a peice of metal on front sight is pretty easy just put wet rags around your tubing and keep it cool and only use silver solder to add a piece of bent metal maybe 1/16th thick. Shoot it and file if necessary to right height and then put flat black paint on it.

Some weld on the receiver is what keeps it from going into full auto? Sixty seconds with an angle grinder and I could fix that.

The practical test would be snap shooting in bursts on a fig 11 set up to drop if hit and see how effective it is in its role.

I did some long range pistol shooting one day ( 200 yards) and my friend could see the bullets path in the spotting scope. I didn't believe him, but it's true. I was able to hit steel rams at 200 yards without a rest with a 44 magnum revoler. This was a sport in the US years ago called silloette shooting. Mind you this was with iron sights, flat on my back, with my pistol against my calf.

What a mission! Just wondering, what happens if you turn the barrel 180 degrees? Does it get better or worse?

If it was mine, I would mount a red dot sight on the exposed end of the barrel and blue locktite the barrel thread. I think you might get more usable groups.

Thankyou for the video, Sten was really intended for CQB or tank and artillery crews looking at its limited range , this why the m1 carbine type weapon would have been a better choice and a effective range of about 300 yards max i did read somewhere atvb Steve

I get the impression from the WW2 training pamphlet that you are supposed to read out the "from 10 yards" bit clearly then the "to up to 100 yards" bit very quickly while hiding it with a cough.

7:30 'Gar nüt'. Interesting exercise... but that weapon system strikes me more like a close quarters gun than anything else. Cheers.

My Dad was fighting in Palestine in 1947 with his Sten; I asked if he had ever hit anyone with it and his response was "not that I'm aware of". In essence, trying to use a this weapon against a target like you are doing is a ridiculous exercise given it wasn't intended to be effective at anything like that range by design.

My grandad was a sharpshooter in the early 50s, he said the only way you'll ever hit anything with a Sten is when they're within punching range

I've only fired the Australian designed Owen and the love child of the Owen and the Stirling; the F1. The Owen was OK; although (from memory) at targets no further than twenty five yards. I made conscious decision that if I were ever to be equipped with the F1 in combat, I would just throw it at the enemy and run away.

A complete mystery why the french resistance fighters liked Lee-Enfields, loved Brens and hated Stens.

Having fired both the sten and the sterling in my opinion they are only useful at short range ie house clearing.Give me the FN if you really want to damage the enemy.

Sorry watched vid again, got it wrong you need a taller front sight. Sten front sights can be had in different (numbered) heights, a taller front sight will push the poi down at 10yds it may be a + 1/16” which would mean glue the filament on top. Still , show it to a gunsmith (let him fall about laughing) perhaps he can fix your issues(fit a new barrel)

When I did military service in the 60's, we trained single shots at a distance of 100 meters. It was with m / 45 Carl Gustaf submaskingun 9mm. Mostly everyone hit the target in the black field without difficulty. We were 19-20 year old lads who did 1 year of military service. No elite soldiers just ordinary conscripts. I guess Carl Gustaf m/45 was a much better gun.

That's why it was known as the STENCH gun also loved to run away when dropped by tripping the Sear.

NCOs were predominantly armed with STENs within regular infantry divisions.

Back in the day where i come from the military used these to clear out bunkers/ im from ireland btw

The spray and pray gun

295st comment. With a standard UZI, on semi auto, we could do groups of 30 cm diameter on 100 m. Every guy of my peleton achieved that.

Wait , the only thing keeping it semi is a weld 🤔

The Sten is good only at ranges of 50 yards or less. I tried one. I got only 3 hits on the target out of 20 rounds from 150 yards and none of them were in the centre.

I guess, by trying to hit something with this at 100 meters one could just safely say the bullets were landing in the same country (provided the shooting range was not close to some border).

Not all Stens were created equal. The Canadian long branch was much tidier and completely made in one factory. I have seen pics of British made Stens with crooked trigger guards as a sample of a Sten made from parts from different shops. Apparently troops were trained with Stens for use in Dieppe raid and when it was postponed and re-planed for a later date, the troops were re-issued new Stens (not broken in). the previously issued Stens had been tested and in some cases gone over by armorers.

I think the Sten was more of a spray and pray weapon. Of course WW2 soldiers were issued new weapons.

I did laugh when you showed the sight picture!

Das switzerdütsch ist süss

Needs a bigger front sight -triangle…. 🤔 or a scope 🤔

Yep, you are just a Nightforce scope away from complete accuracy and precision-at 5-15 yards. Ymmv. Good video! Thanks!

I can't figure out if it is steam punk or not. It has a sort of hand-made Pakistani-mud hut roughness but it was a full auto sub of the XXth century. I notice a lot of government arsenal produced Lee Enfield rifles are quite roughly finished however well they perform. Maybe it's a cultural thing. The Swiss or Germans wouldn't stand for it. Even the American arsenal rifles were actually pretty nice.

Good shooting nice bit of history thanks for sharing.

Great video

A bit off the video topic, Mr. Bloke, but I am curious if you have any information on how many Swiss men, after they aged-out of service, kept their military-grade weapons. I was just thinking about the situation in 1939-40 when the Landsturm age was pushed up to 60 after many years of being 48. Just how many of those men who had aged-out in 1927-1929 still had their military-grade rifles ready to go in 1940? Did the Swiss have to rush out government reserves to make up for all the old droopy-mustached fellowed who had gotten rid of their old service weapons or did those old boys mostly still pack their old gear? Maybe a topic you can expound upon for us all who want to know more about the mysterious militia of the mountains. Cheers!

In service, if they had to replace the barrel, how would they go about re-zeroing the weapon?

hickock 45 did very well with his ?

Hello Bloke. Great video and surprising accuracy from this much maligned tool. If I may suggest... maybe align the electropencil mark 180degrees different, on the underside of the gun. Reason I say this is, why leave such a crude mark atop a shiny new gun? The perfect horizontal sight alignment, along with the extreme vertical misalignment, says the gun is better made than it appears but also that something is being done wrong, such as a barrel exactly 180 degrees out, thus affecting only elevation zero.

Your switzerdütsch is adorable

Some guys in Bern are probably still hiding in their nuclear bunkers since those rounds impacted in their kitchen windows.

It's beautiful to hear bloke speak Swiss German xD

Wow I didn't realize Sten barrels were that hard to come by... I would just throw a fresh Barrel on , I'm sure you can find one as good as new ... I guess you like a challenge, lol....

So the Sten Mk II qualifies as a "Ramirez" Challenge at those aranges?

swiss german sounds so weird compared to normal german.

Perhaps the barrel index mark would better serve for 200 yard zero!

The swiss german caught me off guard lol Wohnsch du i de schwiiz?

An old uncle of mine fought in WW2 and he said the Sten was made a cost of 10 shillings and sixpence. A weapon made for this price has to be an inaccurate device.

I wish we could leave them as open bolt in the us, we have to buy an expensive closed bolt setup to build one. If we could just weld the selector it would be hundreds of dollars cheaper to build.

I remember the sten i shot had probably the 3rd worst trigger ive ever used. (Fie derringer and p64 are worse)

I'd be so tempted to take a dremel to that selector switch and go down the range on a quiet day... why cant us brits have any fun?

Why wasnt the Sten in .45 so our American Friends could send us ammo?

Stupid question, but did you try shooting with the electro-pencil mark on the bottom?

Its easy to tell if you have hit your target. The bugger stops shooting at you.

Holy crap... how does a STEN group at 50 yds?

You might try firing United States grease gun up alongside of a sten

it saddens me that so many gun experts have basically no understanding of close quarters combat. one would NEVER fire a sten at distances that far away unless they are simply harassing or trying to get the enemy to ground so they could move away. stens are made for full auto ambush fire within 15m. youre trying to basically hit a pizza box sized target with three to five bullets and then move tf out. look at the statistics of who actually got shot in the war and by what and it will tell you why the russians immediately copied the stg and then changed the ak47 to the ak74. the inability of ordnance to get their heads around this full auto burst concept cost hundreds of thousands of lives. stens and grease guns were some of the best weapons of ww2 but never get their propers because of civilians who dont know about actual gunfighting.

Some barrels were 1 piece There are different front sight 3 I think the best were canadian made some had pins that held the barrel nut to the barrel so it would go on in mostly the same place or had pin drilled into the barrel frm the recever tube the sten gun is the #1 illegal gun in Canada then FN ak & the other 1 you are know

Would rotating the barrel 180° make things worse or better?

This issue you're having with this non-concentric barrel is curious. Is there to your knowledge any small arms that take advantage of such an effect and incorporated this into the gun mechanism for say adjusting zero?

Where term "spray and pray" came from.

Did the sten not usually be used with mk2 ball which was a hotter 9mm + would that explain the zero

Yes, but a squad of 4-6 firing on the same target wouldn't be at all optimistic. Plenty of hits then even on full auto I would think. It's a Simple 9mm Blowback Operated SMG. The only way to make it more accurate is to make it closed bolt and to delay the recoil of the bolt using rollers of some kind.. Yes MP5. But of course that is not an open bolt weapon and the price is significantly more.

If you could find a suitable rifle barrel to lathe down would 7.65 Luger be a possibility? Most .30 ish bullets seem to require around a 1 in 10 twist just like the Luger round?

Not a military expert or anything but every time I see videos about stens I really feel for those soldiers that had to use them . They look like garbage compared to even low budget PPSh or grease guns

My Dad (WW2 Vet) said that you "kind of point it in the general direction of the Germans and sprayed it"...... LMAO

WHat are the laws when it comes to open bolts in Switzerland? Are they treating like any closed bolt guns in the same category or are they considered in the restricted category along with full autos?

I wish you would’ve had a scope handy when you Shot the sterling

Two Sponge Bob references and a Sten.👍

Dear Bloke, what language were you speaking to friend in?