Roy sent us these photos of his original Remington Model 1987 Single Action Army that were part of the order delivered to Egypt in the late 1800s. Apparently not many of the 10,000 revolvers ordered by Egypt were actually manufactured. This was because Egypt, or more [Read More…]
With 2015 being the 100th anniversary of the second year the First World War entered, there has been much media reporting and renewed interest. In addition, it is also the centennial of the Gallipoli landings on April 25th, 1915. Within this wave of media coverage, a [Read More…]
ARpilot sent us this photo of a Thompson submachine gun Model 1919 replica being used by reenactors celebrating the anniversary of the liberation of Italy. He wrote … Today, April 25, 2015, the 70th anniversary of the liberation of my country from the [Read More…]
The Chinese QBZ-95 bullpup has been in service for two decades and due to its sheer production, over 1.65 million so far, it will be the most prolific bullpup ever built. I did a detailed write-up on the QBZ-95 for Guns & Ammo SIP in 2006. Since then, that [Read More…]
JohnInBlackHawk tells us about his research project and asks if any TFB readers can help him identify some guns. John writes … This photo is part of an extensive historical project I began just over a year ago. I live in an historic mining town (nearly 30 years, [Read More…]
It served the Imperial Japanese military for 40 years and drew inspiration from several sturdy European designs of the day, so how well does the Type 14 work? Well, we set out to find out! Many thanks to Christian for the German subtitles and Osamu for the Japanese subtitles. Transcription below [Read More…]
Webley & Scott MkI was the first auto-loading pistol adopted by the London Metropolitan Police and UK military (Royal Navy). Collector Roy Shadbolt writes … Something a little different for you chaps. A photograph showing a Webley & Scott MkI (model 1913 [Read More…]
The Sturmgewehr is a rifle that will never lose it’s place in history; it is one of the single most influential weapons of the 20th Century. It is not the first of its kind, however, and we at TFB have previously taken a look at some of the rifle’s [Read More…]
Up for auction through Rock Island Auction Company is a rifle that is very significant to the history of the military .22 caliber rifle cartridge. Below are pictures of the rifle, an experimental M1 Garand chambered for the .22-06 Duplex caliber which was a part of the [Read More…]
Complete with corny acting and a Garand-type ping to each fired shot, below is the Annual Training video from the US Air Force circa 1967. The video showcases original M16s (not even the A1s were mentioned). Interestingly, it showcases the original detachable bipods and [Read More…]
This is the first part of a series of posts seeking to describe and analyze the 7.62mm Light Rifle concept promoted by the Americans, and subsequently adopted by NATO in various forms. This series will cover development from before World War II to the present day, but [Read More…]
The early model Japanese Type 99 Arisaka was by far the most optimistic rifle ever made. The designers envisioned soldiers shooting 175 grain 7.7x58mm rounds and taking down aircraft. The operation of the sights are explained in this excellent video by C&Rsenal [Read More…]
Now known as a significant part of the now ubiquitous AR platform, the charging handle has an interesting history from the first ambidextrous design (mounted on the top of the AR-10, inside the charging handle) to its final multitude of iterations. Leitner-Wise has [Read More…]
Forgotten Weapons’ most recent video has Ian looking at one of my very favorite rifle designs – the 1895 Lee Navy. This Lee-Navy rifle, though, is not just an ahead-of-its-time, fast-firing, small caliber high velocity repeater, it also has a pretty special [Read More…]
Blogger oper-1974 recently covered a trip he made to the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum (Military History Museum) in Vienna, Austria. In the museum are many artifacts from Austria’s rich military history, most dating from periods outside my expertise, and thus [Read More…]
Tim sent us some very interesting photos he took of Indian police earlier this year. Time writes … A series of images taken during the Vibrant Gujarat 2015 exposition in Ahmedabad, India, in January 2015. The Indian police (be they state, local, or federal) were [Read More…]
It has been a little while since our last installment of A Short (Stroke) History, but in this article I intend to wrap up my coverage of tappet-operated rifles by cataloging most of the post-war developments of this mechanism. One left-over from my last article [Read More…]
Medium has published an interesting article on the Pentagon’s search, back in the 1970s, for a rifle that required little maintenance. Joe Trevithick writes .. DARPA asked TRW for a rifle that would solve these continuing problems. The new weapon had to be [Read More…]
As in all Small Caliber Book Reviews here at TFB, I will be covering the area of relevance and strengths and weaknesses of the book, as well as whether it is more introductory or advanced. The recent mud and sand tests of the M14 by InRange TV have blackened the eye [Read More…]
DTIC is a wonderful resource for finding documents that are important records in firearms history. One such article, which we will be looking at today, entitled “A Comparison Test Between United Kingdom And United States Lightweight Rifles” documents the [Read More…]
With the introduction of the successful metallic cartridge in the 1840s, an explosion of innovation directed towards rapid-firing infantry weapons rocked the world. The culmination of this would be the mass-produced self-loading rifle, realized with the adoption of [Read More…]
As our regular readers have by now guessed, early selfloading rifle design is a major point of interest for me. It’s not well-known, but before the US entrance into World War I, Ordnance was extremely interested in procuring a self-loading rifle design to arm US [Read More…]
A one hundred and thirty-two year old Winchester lever-action rifle was recently found in Great Basin National Park, near the border of Utah in Nevada. WinchesterGuns.com has a good summary of the find: Many of us harbor pipe dreams of running across an original [Read More…]
It’s unfortunate that when tabletop volumes or works of fine journalism cover the weapons used in a particular time or place, they always seem to paint a nice neat picture: M16A1s squared off against AK-47s in Vietnam, Lee-Enfields against Mausers in the Boer [Read More…]
Here at TFB, we’re excited to be sharing new patents with you through our Patent Database. To celebrate, this weekend we’ll be looking at ten firearms patents that changed history, broke ground ahead of their time, or were just plain awesome. Without [Read More…]
In Fairfax, VA, tucked away among other unassuming office buildings is the NRA’s headquarters. A twin-towered office building, it doesn’t look like what you’d expect the site of one of the most important collections of small arms in the world to look [Read More…]
It’s often said that small arms technology has plateaued; that development of better kinds of weapons is essentially unfeasible for the moment, and that non-optic related small arms technology had pretty much reached its peak by 1965. It would be very difficult to [Read More…]
IAA Forum user PaulSmith received several x-ray images of ammunition, and was able to take photographs: Last week I was given some excellent x-rays. By having a diffuse light source behind the film I was able to take some pictures. The quality of the x-ray images are [Read More…]
10. Thorneycroft Carbine Some of you might be familiar with this gun, but few know that almost all available pictures of it are misleading, at best. The picture below is not of the original Thorneycroft Carbine, but of the later Thorneycroft-Farquhar rifle. The title [Read More…]
It’s not commonly remembered in today’s world of .22 caliber infantry rifles that once upon a time .30″ was “small caliber”, and with that came all of the doubts an questions about wounding and killing power of such small bullets. [Read More…]
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