Mauser 06/08 Semiauto Pistol at James D Julia
Throughout the pre-WWI period, Paul Mauser was working continuously to develop a reliable self-loaiding rifle. Among his many experimental designs was a flapper-locked rifle. The flapper-locking...
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Howard Francis 7.63mm SMLE
The Howard Francis carbine was a design submitted to the British Ordnance Board for consideration in 1943 – one of many weapons proposed to help meet wartime requirements. Specifically, the Howard...
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Vintage Saturday: Maxim’s First Maxim
Hiram Maxim with his initial 1884 prototype machine gun Not actually a photo, but a good likeness of both Maxim and his first working machine gun. That lever on the side is to set the rate of fire, and...
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System Luger 1892/6 Bolt Action
Georg Luger is known today for just one firearm: the Luger pistol. However, he actually spent significantly more time during his career working on rifles than he did on that iconic handgun. One project...
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Landstad 1900 Autorevolver Disassembly
You may recall seeing my post about the Landstad model 1900 semiauto revolver a while back… Well, the gun (only one was ever made) was in a British collections for a hundred years, but recently was...
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Sunngård 1909 Pistol
Just a photo – of probably the nicest Sunngård pistol in existence today, along with its holster. Thanks to Lars for sending it! (click to enlarge)
View ArticleColt Model 1909 Automatic at RIA
A while back I put together a video on the development of the Colt/Browning 1911 pistol, and one of the missing links in that video was the Model 1909. Well, one of the 23 Model 1909 pistols is up for...
View ArticleWhite Gas-Operated .276 Prototype at RIA
One of the competitors against the Garand and Pedersen rifles in the 1929 and 1930 US Army trials was the White rifle. White actually submitted two rifles, but only this gas-operated design was...
View ArticleWhite Toggle-Locked .30-06 Prototype Rifle
This toggle-locking rifle chambered for the .30-06 cartridge is the second of two rifles submitted by White for the 1930 US military trials. It was not actually tested by the US, but White did take it...
View ArticleWhite Prototype Open-Bolt LMG at RIA
Along with his two semiauto rifle prototypes, when White went to England for rifle testing he took along a work-in-progress light machine gun. The weapon was trsted by British officials, but found...
View ArticleGewehr 71 with Experimental Magazine at RIA
The Model 1871 Mauser was adopted as the newly united Germany’s first standard rifle, and it was a good design. However, it was a single shot rifle and soon it became apparent that the additional...
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StG-45 Horn Prototypes
Herr Horn (I have seen his name given as both N.V. Horn and V.G. Horn; not sure which is correct) was an engineer working in the R&D department of Mauser at the end of WWII, and he designed one of...
View ArticleSIG Prototype 1924/1925 Semiauto Rifles (Video)
The Swiss SIG factory was one of the earliest producers of semiautomatic military rifles, having produced the M1908 Mondragon rifles for Mexico. They continued to experiment with self-loading rifle...
View ArticleKnoble Automatic Pistol, Cal .30 (Video)
The Knoble in .45 caliber was one of the pistols in the US pistol trials of 1907. Unfortunately for Mr. Knoble, his pistol was deemed to crude for the Ordnance Board to consider even test firing, and...
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Mystery Japanese Semiauto
While in the Smithsonian gun room, I noticed a semi auto Japanese rifle of a type I have not seen reference to before. It is definitely Japanese, judging from elements like the split buttstock and rear...
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Sidewinder SMG Photos
The Sidewinder is a rather unusual submachine gun designer by Sidney McQueen in the mid 1960s. His objective was to create a weapon which could be fired one-handed with the firepower of a submachine...
View ArticleSwiss Prototype: N33 (Video)
The N33 is one of a series of Swiss prototype semiautomatic rifles developed between WWI and WWII (the “33” refers to 1933). This particular design is interesting because it fires from an open bolt, a...
View ArticleSavage .45 ACP Pistols – History & Disassembly (Video)
In the US pistol trials of 1907 that eventually led to the adoption of the Colt/Browning Model 1911, the two strongest competitors to the Browning design were the Luger and the Savage. Luger declined...
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The First Maxim Machine Gun
I am going to start an intermittent series of posts on the various different types of Maxim machine guns over the next few months – there are a whole slew of them, and I have good photos of a bunch of...
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Schlegelmilch Automatic Pistol
Aside from being one of the more unfortunately-named early repeating pistols, the Schlegelmilch is also one of the earliest and more unusual mechanically. It also the only example I am familiar with of...
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