Nick was exploring Chatsworth House, a palatial house in Derbyshire, England, when he noticed an interesting sculpture tucked away in a corner that looked out of place among the grand oil paintings, murals and tapestries. The sculpture is of a Bren Light Machine Gun [Read More…]
Red Knight Armament, a manufacturer of ultra concealable firearms, are now manufacturing medieval-style morning star flails. The fails are made from steel and weigh up to 20 lbs, not much lighter than a M249 machine gun! The price will be $350.
The Armalite AR-18 is arguably one of the most influential guns of the 20th century. Many of its gas, bolt and recoil spring features continue to be appropriated in new gun designs. The rifle was a commercial failure, although some of its direct descendants did well. [Read More…]
Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov was born on 10 November 1919. He turned 93 a few days ago.
A reader spotted an auction at Gunbroker.com for a vampire hunting kit produced in 1842. The kit contains a crude percussion lock pistol, four silver bullets (engraved with crosses) and a powerhorn along with numerous other quintessential anti-vampire accessories such [Read More…]
This contraption is a Belgian Percussion Eprouvette. Back in the days when blackpowder was of dubious quality, devices like these were used to test the potency of the powder at hand. The barrel plug is attached to a V shaped spring. When fired the spring compresses [Read More…]
The Colt .38 Detective Special snub-nose revolver found taped to the inside of Bonnie Parker’s thigh after she was killed is going up for auction at RR Auction. The action is expected to reach $200,000. The son of the police Captain who lead the famous ambush said [Read More…]
This beautiful sword gun is engraved all over in what looks like names of people. Maybe a family tree? It looks like it is Germanic in origin. Full size photos and more sword guns here. [ Many thanks to WhaleOil for emailing us the link. ]
Michael Bane got to play with the Polish PM-63 … The Polish PM-63 “RAK” in 9 x 18 Mak…man, these things so rock! I gotta say that in the balance, I like them more that Czech Skorpions, which I like a lot. The flat disc in front is the [Read More…]
An amusing article on the US Army adoption of sniper scopes was published in September 1915 of Modern Mechanix (1 year after the outbreak of WWI but 18 months before America’s entry into the war. I must admit I love the archaic language used in this old magazine [Read More…]
A reader asked for help identifying an interesting Chinese gun I have never come across before. This gun looks remarkably futuristic for a gun that has been around since at least during WWII. I am sure someone here can identify it for us. The gun has a very long [Read More…]
A reader email in a scan, from an auction catalog (I think), of a rifle said to be made by George Luger. Apparently Mr. Luger was working in secret on a rifle version of his famous pistol. The description mentioned a German patent No. 4126 of 1906. Does anyone know how [Read More…]
The Borchardt C-93 is a fascinating firearm. It is said to be the first semi-automatic pistol that was mass produced. Different sources give different numbers for how many were produced, but none that I have seen give a number greater than 3,000. A reader emailed us [Read More…]
Less than 300 of the Kimball .30 Caliber Carbine Auto Pistol were produced back in the 1950s. The operating system is fascinating. It is straight blowback, but upon firing the case expended into a ring machined into the chamber. The slide was force to swaged the case [Read More…]
This nifty spanish revolver fired off three 6.35mm rounds per trigger pull. The recent trend of double barrel guns is not so recent. UPDATE: I forgot to add the link. There is some disagreement about wether it fires more than one shot at a time. My interpretation of the [Read More…]
Below are blueprints for the German MP 44 / StG 44 rifle. You can download them here. Does anyone know what it would cost to have these blueprints converted into a CAD model and animated, like this animation for example. [ Many thanks to Sven (Defence and Freedom) for [Read More…]
The Treeby gun was a muzzleloader with 14 chambers in a chain. The create a seal between the chamber and the barrel, the barrel was rotated forward and back. It is not hard to see why only two were made. It looks like the gun could easily have been fired without the [Read More…]
A reader from New Jersey emailed me this cool story … I’ve been a follower of your blog for about three years now and I really enjoy it! I have a part time job working as a junker, basically people pay me and another guy to remove junk from their houses. The [Read More…]
I can barely contain my excitement! A german firm called Tactics Group will be producing a “tacti-cool” version of the German WWII Fallschirmjägergewehr 42 (Paratrooper Rifle 42) aka. FG-42. It will feature all the accessories found on modern rifles. The [Read More…]
Arms historian Max Popenker read my blog post about the Australian company that claims to have produced recoilless firearms and immediately came up with three patents for recoiless guns going back to 1908. Both involve pushing a lot of mass forward to counter the recoil [Read More…]
I like to celebrated Easter with some shooting or hunting. The folks in Upper Lusatia and southern Austria take Easter shooting to an entirely new level. A tennis ball sized piece of calcium carbide and a few millimeters of water are placed in those barrel. The calcium [Read More…]
An Australian company has claimed to have developed truly recoilless rifles capable of firing .308 Win. (or equivalent) rounds. Is this real or an elaborate hoax? It does seem pretty incredible. Recoil reduction is reducing the actual recoil energy or reducing the [Read More…]
This beautiful “Coffin” cased pinfire revolver/dagger was made for Jose Balta, the 19th President of Peru, by the French firm Lefauchaux Casimer & Eugene in 1870 is being auctioned off by RIA. Jose Balta is notable for among other things being deposed [Read More…]
A reader sent me a fascinating photo taken by a friend of his who is a Malaysian defense journalist and photographer. The photo below was taken at a Malaysian counterinsurgency training exercise last year. The men pictured are members of VAT-69, the Royal Malaysian [Read More…]
Anthony G. Williams has updated and expanded his history of Assault Rifles And Their Ammunition. Tony knows more about cartridges than anyone else I know and I doubt that there are many people who have fired more types of assault rifles than he has. Attempts to improve [Read More…]
It is interesting to see the St. Peter’s Keys of Heaven stamped on a firearm. Tam writes … Because if the dead rise and walk the earth in search of human brains, there’s nothing better with which to put them back into the hereafter than a rifle with [Read More…]
Colt is now manufacturing a fully functioning replica of the 1877 Bulldog Gatling Gun. It fires .45-70 cartridges at up to 800 rounds per minutes (the speed depends on how fast you can crank the handle). It is an incredibly beautiful piece of machinery and worked [Read More…]
While browsing auctions at GunBroker I noticed a fascinating Chinese fortress rifle from the late 1800s. The rifle is 7 feet in length, about height of a modern doorway, and weights 40 pounds! A gun of this size would have been used to snipe from the ramparts of [Read More…]
The March, 1932 issue of Modern Mechanix described a nighttime gun sight that worked by throwing a very focused beam of light at the target. It was operated just like todays laser gun sights. From Modern Mechanix … A GUN sight for night firing, which may be [Read More…]
In the four years I have been blogging I don’t think I have come across a more obscure gun than the Parker Hale Rogun. I don’t know when the below prototype was made, if it was ever in production or even precisely how it functioned. What I do know is that [Read More…]
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