Pistols of Denmark’s Artist-Turned-Inventor Bent Agner Nielsen
Bent Agner Nielsen was a Danish tinkerer born in 1925, who studied art as a young man and worked as a painter. In the 1970s he became interested in firearms, beginning with engraving work. This soon...
View ArticleYes, the AR-14 is a Real Gun…Sort Of
The AR-14 was the subject of a widely-seen political gaffe a while back – but what was the real AR-14? Because yes, there was one! It was one of many firearms planned by Armalite, but not put into...
View ArticleExperimental Gras-Vetterli Repeating Rifle
In the 1870s and 1880s, France experimented with a huge variety of repeating rifle designs, including tube magazines hopper magazines, box magazines, and all sorts of other unique systems (more than...
View ArticleBritain’s Experimental Viper No.3 SMG/PDW
A series of very compact submachine guns – possibly better described as personal defense weapons – was made in Britain at the end of World War Two under the name Viper (as an interesting aside, snake...
View ArticlePrototype Jungle Carbine: A No1 MkV Becomes a No5 MkI
When the British began developing a shortened version of the No4 Lee Enfield in 1943 (which would become the No5 MkI “Jungle Carbine”), the development process included work with some rather older...
View ArticleWinchester Mystery Prototype: Melvin Johnson does Project SALVO?
This rifle is a Winchester semiauto prototype that has no documentation I could find in any source. So, today we will take a look at what we can possibly extrapolate from its various features. It will...
View ArticlePrototype Ross “H5” from 1909
The Ross MkII (aka Ross 1905) was a reasonably successful rifle design, but it lacked a few elements that the Canadian military would have preferred. Most significantly, it was not compatible with the...
View ArticleAn Interesting Possibility: The FG-42 in 8x33mm Kurz?
Here’s an interesting thought – what if they made the FG-42 in 8x33mm Kurz? Well, they actually did, in very small numbers. The rifle’s designer, Louis Stange, actually thought it was a really good...
View ArticleSchouboe Model 1916: The Final Attempt
The final iteration of the Danish Schouboe pistol is this, the model 1916. Produced in prototype quantities only, it took the features of the 1910 pattern (safety and external barrel pivot) and made a...
View ArticlePassler Model 1887 Ring Trigger Pistol – Now With Mannlicher Clips!
Franz Passler and Ferdinand Seidl formed a partnership to make manually-operated pistols in Austria in the late 1880s, but the arrangement did not last. Their design was initially patented by Passler...
View ArticleReiger Model 1889: Quick-Change Revolver Clips!
Edwin Reiger was an Austrian designer who took the basic mechanism of the Passler & Seidl ring trigger manual pistol and added a sort of revolver magazine to it. Reiger used a drop-in 6-round clip...
View ArticleColt’s Prototype Scaled-Down Model 1910 in .38/9.8mm
With the impending success of Colt’s program to develop new .45 caliber pistol for the US military (the 1911), the company began to look for ways to exploit the work that had gone into it. They had...
View ArticleMaxim-Silverman .455 Caliber Behemoth of a Pistol
Hiram Maxim’s hired shop supervisor was a man named Louis Silverman. He was a skilled engineer, who was treated rather poorly by Maxim, and whose contributions were systematically understated. One of...
View ArticleIan Fangirls Over Some Weird Bergmann (Prototype M1910)
This unique Bergmann Model 1910 was made by Anciens Etablissements Pieper with a grip angled slightly back compared to the standard model. It was also fitted with a square front sight and square rear...
View ArticleMauser 1912/14: Flapper-Delayed Blowback
Starting in 1909, Mauser had a plan to introduce a family of automatic pistols, with a picket gun in 6.35mm (.25 ACP) and a military/police service pistol in 9mm Parabellum that shared the same basic...
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LAD: The Soviet Pistol-Caliber SAW that Could Have Been
This guest article written by Andrey Ulanov. In 1942, the Red Army was experiencing big problems with machine guns. Before the war, great hopes were pinned on Dyagterev’s brand new DS-39 heavy machine...
View ArticlePancor Jackhammer Mk3
John Anderson was a Korean War veteran who became interested in developing a high capacity, selective-fire combat shotgun for military use. He designed what became known as the Pancor Jackhammer, a...
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Hill SMG/Pistol: Inspiration for the FN P90
John L. Hill was a World War One fighter pilot who went into the oil and gas industry, and enjoyed tinkering with guns in his free time. In 1949 he got an idea for a new style of magazine and feed...
View ArticleRoth Steyr Developmental Models 1904 and 1906
Before the Austro-Hungarian Empire adopted the Roth Steyr Model 1907 as its official cavalry pistol, they of course went through a series of pistol trials. The winners of two sets of trials were the...
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The Long Road to the DP-27
This guest article written by Andrey Ulanov. The Russian military first got acquainted with light machine guns in 1904, on the brink of the Russian-Japanese War. After having tested a few Madsen LMGs,...
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