The Vickers "K" Class gun - also known as the Vickers Gas Operated - was the gun the Vickers company thought would replace the heavy water-cooled Vickers and allow them to remain primary machine gun supplier to the British army. The design actually came from the French designer Berthier, who has ...

Around 2013, the UK MoD began looking for a new rifle to replace the Special Forces' L119A1. Those A1 rifles were getting old, and something new was needed - and there was some thought that a new rifle could improve on some shortcomings of the A1 model. The new rifle was produced by Colt Canada (...

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UPDATE: One correction to make; this rifle has the A2 charging handle. The original A1 version was essentially identical to the standard conventional charging handle. Sorry!
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In 1999, the UK Ministry of Defense put out a tender for a new rifle for UK Special Forces (UKSOF). The elite...

We looked at the 7.62mm conversion of the No4 Enfield into Rifle L8 yesterday. Part of that program was an attempt to develop a new sniper rifle on the L8 platform. To this end, six good-quality No4(T) Lee Enfield sniper rifles were tested for accuracy, then made into L8 rifles and fitted with No...

After the British adopted the FAL as the L1A1 rifle, there was still an interest in converting stocks of existing No4 Enfield rifles to the new 7.62x51mm cartridge for reserve and training use. A conversion system was developed using a new barrel, bolt, and magazine - although the Sterling compan...

One of the the flamethrower design styles to come out of experimentation late in World War One was the toroid type, with a donut-shaped fuel tank and a central spherical pressure bottle. The British continued development on this type of weapon between the wars, and used it in World War Two. While...

Phillip A. Luty was a Briton who took a hard philosophical line against gun control legislation in the UK in the 1990s. In response to more restrictive gun control laws, he set out to prove that all such laws were ultimately futile by showing that one could manufacture a functional firearm from h...

The M1915 Howell Automatic Rifle is a conversion of a standard No1 MkIII Lee Enfield rifle into a semiautomatic, through the addition of a gas piston onto the right side of the barrel. Despite its very steampunk appearance, the Howell is actually a quite simple conversion mechanically. The rifle ...

The SMLE No1 Mk3 was the iconic British infantry rifle of World War 1, but not the final evolution of the Lee Enfield design. By World War 2 it had been replaced by the new No4 Mk1 Lee Enfield, and this is the story of the interim models.

At the end of WW1, the British recognized several areas...

One of the British lessons form the Boer War was that the distinction between infantry rifles and cavalry carbines was becoming obsolete. In 1902, they would initiate troop trials on a new short rifle pattern, intermediate in length between the old rifles and carbines, and intended to be issued u...

The EM-2 was the rifle that the British pushed for NATO trials in 1950. It was a rifle well ahead of its time in several areas - as a select-fire bullpup rifle, it was intended to replace both the infantry rifle and the submachine gun. Its .280 caliber cartridge was designed with combat ranges of...

I had 10 rounds of .280 British ammunition to work with today, so I opted for several rounds in semiauto (including some slow motion shots) and then one burst at the end. The .280 cartridge is less powerful than the 7.62mm NATO, but in my opinion the EM-2 remains a rifle much better used in semia...

The Farquhar-Hill was a semiauto rifle developed in Britain prior to World War 1. It was the idea of Birmingham gunsmith Arthur Hill, and financed by Aberdeen industrialist Mowbray Farquhar. The design began as a long-recoil system, but that was replaced with a unique spring-buffered gas operated...

George Fosbery was the British officer (Major, at the time of this particular design) responsible for the quite famous Webley-Fosbery self-cocking revolver, as well as the Paradox system for shotgun slugs and many other lesser known firearms inventions. This rifle was his entry into British trial...

George Fosbery V.C. is best known in firearms circles for the Webley-Fosbery automatic revolver, but he experimented with several other firearms designs as well. This particular one never made it into commercial production, but it uses a bolt design very reminiscent of what Johnson and Stoner wou...

The typical pepperbox revolver is a sleek and small .31 caliber double action pocket gun, like the Allen & Thurber standard type. This one, however, is anything but typical. This London-made gun is a far larger than normal, and sports 8 barrels, with a center square of four and an addition four o...

The Webley Model 1911 is a single-shot, self-ejecting target pistol made only for a few years. It was fitted with a long barrel to increase sight radius and also a detachable shoulder stock for those who wanted a bit more stability when shooting. Mechanically, the piece must be loaded manually, a...

The British started World War One without a sniper program, but were quick to develop one once faced with the threat of well-trained German snipers. The initial equipment used by the British was a motley collection of commercial hunting rifles, but by 1915 the government was issuing contract to m...

In 1892, just a few years after the British military adopted the Lee-Metford rifle, the BSA and LSA factories began offering several configurations on the civilian/commercial market. They would produce them all the way into the 1930s, with your choice of Metford or Enfield rifling, and in Sportin...

While rifle-launched grenades date back hundreds of years, they first came into widespread use during World War One, on all sides of the conflict. The first years of the war saw the use of rod grenades, but their downsides (mediocre accuracy, bulkiness, and a propensity to damage rifle bores) led...

The British began World War Two with the Boys antitank rifle, but like all antitank rifles it rather quickly became obsolete. The replacement for it was adopted in 1942 as the PIAT - Projector, Infantry, Anti-Tank. This was a unique sort of weapon which fired a 3 pound (~1.35kg) hollow charge pro...

The Wilson family was a gunmaking dynasty in London that began in 1730 when Richard Wilson was accepted as a Master Gunmaker by the Gunmakers' Company. Wilson's eldest son William Wilson would receive the same recognition in 1755, and William's son William (junior) completed his apprenticeship in...

Why Lee-Enfields are fast, and other rifles are not. Featuring a customised Australian International Arms M10A in 7.62x39.

Keep the fanboy hate down to a dull roar please...

The Timberwolf is a bolt action precision rifle made by Prarie Gun Works of Manitoba, Canada. It was initially made as a commercial rifle in a number of different calibers, and in 2001 it won Canadian trials to become the C14 Timberwolf Medium Range Sniper Weapon System (replacing the C3A1 Parker...