#Unusual

In this episode of TFBTV, James Reeves talks about 5 weird-ish revolvers for concealed carry. We aren’t discussing ZANY handguns like a Colt Single Action Army or a Nagant revolver – we are talking about wheelguns that are actually decent, viable carry options: They are just a little weird in their own special way. We also talk about Kenny G, mythril, Wolverine’s skeleton, and Blade Runner. It’s one of those videos.

The catalog of the upcoming Rock Island April 2018 Premiere Firearms Auction is already published. It is always interesting to look through their catalog and see what lots are consigned because this is one of the USA’s biggest firearms auctions and some of the most unusual and rare guns of the world are sold through it. I picked five firearms from the catalog which are either extremely rare or unusual. The names of the guns are linked to the corresponding Rock Island Auction page. The list goes in no particular order.

A German company called JANZ-Präzisionstechnik has introduced a new pistol designed by the company’s master gunsmith Horst Schuknecht. It is called Janz-Schuknecht pistol. It is a striker fired locked breech, short barrel recoiling firearm with quite an unusual locking mechanism.

H&P Manufacturing is one of the companies that brings the metal 3D printing technologies to the firearms industry. We see more and more companies deploying these technologies to manufacture sophisticated parts that would otherwise be too difficult or even impossible to machine.

A Russian YouTube gun channel called “ practical shooting” has released a video showing an extremely unusual competition rifle. As you can see, it is not just a heavily modded rifle but has a totally weird layout.

The submachine gun had been perfected by the end of World War II as a dirt cheap, nearly disposable weapon for arming large numbers of men to fight the largest war of economy in history. However, despite this, post-war submachine gun designers would seek to push the concept into new roles and niches that would require a rethinking of the conventions established in that conflict. The submachine gun would be re-imagined as a close quarters battle weapon, and an echelon weapon, or PDW, for troops whose primary tasks was not combat. One of the primary obstacles to their suitability in this role, many designers recognized, was their long, protruding stick magazines, and so after the war pencils were put to drafting paper to come up with possible solutions.

In the early 1980s, German gunmaker Heckler & Koch began to design a new submachine gun that would improve on the existing MP5, in response to a US Navy solicitation for an advanced submachine gun as part of the Joint Services Small Arms Program (JSSAP). The SMG I, which was the product of this development, is not the focus of this article, so instead I’ll refer readers to the HKPro article on the weapon:

Since the first article received a fairly enthusiastic response, I have decided to continue the series on unusual firearms feeding mechanisms. Many of the devices I will cover are associated with equally interesting firearms, but for the sake of brevity I will be mostly talking about the magazines themselves. One of the more unique and important designs is the Hill H15 submachine gun, which used a transversely mounted magazine of a design that would reappear with the successful FN P90 PDW/SMG. Matt at the Historical Firearms blog writes: