The Remington Model 8 is a sporting rifle designed by John Browning that first came on the market in 1906 (as the Remington Autoloading Rifle; the name was changed to Model 8 in 1911). It is a long recoil action, meaning that the bolt and barrel remain locked together as they travel more than the...

The mitrailleuse was one of the early types of mechanical machine gun, along with the Gatling, Gardner, Nordenfelt, and others. "Mitrailleuse" was originally a general name for a volley gun - one with many barrels in a cluster, which are fired sequentially (it now means heavy machine gun). The tw...

(Unfortunately, Tombstone Territorial Firearms has closed up shop since this video was published).

I had a chance to do a video on a Portuguese contract AR-10 made by Artillerie Inrichtingen in the Netherlands a little while back. Unfortunately, it had just sold, and so we didn't have an oppo...

Most people are familiar with the Type 38 Arisaka, which was one of the two very distinctive Japanese rifles of World War II (along with the Type 99). The Type 38 was an outstanding rifle in large part because it was the result of several years of experience and development which began in 1897 wi...

The Murata was Japan's first domestic manufactured military rifle. In its first iteration, it was an 11mm, single shot, black powder weapon and was adopted in 1880 (the Type 13). Before long, some problems in the design were discovered, and the Winchester company helped to resolve them. Wincheste...

The Slocum revolver, designed by Frank Slocum and manufactured by the Brooklyn Arms Company, was one of the more successful workarounds for Rollin White's patent on the bored-through cylinder. The most significant advantage of Slocum's design was its use of standard .32 rimfire cartridges, unlike...

The Palmer was the first bolt action firearm adopted by the US military - it was a single shot rimfire carbine patented in 1863 and sold to the US cavalry in 1865. The guns were ordered during the Civil War, but were not delivered until just after the end of fighting, and thus never saw actual co...

The Khyber Pass is a region near the Afghan/Pakistan border known for firearms production - particularly for very crude guns made with crude tools. This particular pistol is an excellent example - it looks like a Colt 1911, although it is smaller and more akin to a .32ACP Llama. It is a straight ...

Made in Naubuc Connecticut, the Hammond Bulldog was an interesting single-shot rimfire .44 caliber pistol. It used an unusual rotating breechblock, and had the potential to be a fairly strong action. Reportedly prototypes were made in a wide variety of calibers, including a carbine version with a...

During WWI, the German army issued about a half million sets of trench armor, often called grabenpanzer or sappenpanzer. Despite common belief, this armor was not intended for trench raiding - in fact, German orders regarding it specifically prohibited this use because of the amount of mobility l...

This particular Chinese pistol is a great example of all the elements of a proper Chinese Mystery Pistol: sights that don't function, gibberish markings, mechanical derivation from the Browning 1900, aesthetic elements form the C96 Broomhandle Mauser, and clearly handmade parts. However, it is a ...

The Campo-Giro was Spain's first indigenous self-loading military pistol, adopted in 1912 to replace the Belgian 1908 Bergmann-Mars. Only a small number were made of the original M1913 variety, with the vast majority being the later and slightly more refined M1913/16. This particular example is ...

Ethan Allen was a very prolific gun manufacturer in the US, being involved with a series of different companies. This particular rifle of his appealed to me because it is an excellent example of how many different clever elements can be in something as simple and pedestrian as a single shot rifle...

The 1907 Dreyse is an early automatic pistol whose design is attributed to Louis Schmeisser. It saw fairly extensive use by the German military during World War I, and was also used by various German police organizations into the early 1930s. Overall, nearly a quarter million were manufactured.
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This is a replica 1860 Army with a 5.5" barrel, in .44 caliber and using true black powder. Footage shot at 2000 fps. Note the delay (6 frames / 0.003 seconds) between the cap detonating and the powder charge igniting.

The Lewis Gun was developed by American Isaac Newton Lewis shortly before WWI, but the US military was not interested in it (in part because of a bitter dislike between Lewis and the Chief of Army Ordnance Crozier). Lewis instead licensed production to BSA in England, and the gun because a major ...

The MG-34 and MG-42 machine guns were the mainstay of German infantry (and vehicle) firepower during World War II, and it will take several videos to properly cover them. For now, we are shooting them both, and explaining how to load, unload, and operate them (including changing barrels on the M...

Brief clip shooting a round from a Solothurn S18/1000. Note that in normal use, the gun ejects cases automatically. The owner here had disabled the ejection in order to preserve the brass - that's why the manual unloading was necessary.

The Colt 1903 Pocket Hammerless was a very popular pistol for civilians - it was compact, comfortable, reliable, and exceptionally modern for its day. The initial production was all in .32ACP, but 5 years after it was introduced a variant in .380 caliber was introduced - the model 1908 Pocket Ham...

The firm of Sedgley Inc of Philadelphia was a gun company involved in many aspects of the industry. They made rifle barrels for the US military, they made the rather goofy "Glove Guns" for the US Navy, and they did a lot of commercial gunsmithing, including high-quality sporter conversions of mil...

This is a presentation I gave to the Arizona local AFTE (Association of Firearm and Toolmark Examiners) group in February 2015 discussing some of the uses for high speed camera photography of firearms. Specifically, this presentation was based on the Edgertonic camera I have been using for about ...

The Sedgley Glove Gun was one of the goofiest projects actually funded by the US military during WWII. Designed for the Navy, it was basically a leather gardening glove with a single shot .38 S&W pistol attached to the back. A plunger fired the gun, and the idea was literally that the user would ...

I am getting high speed footage of a bunch of interesting pistols right off the bat now that I have my Edgertronic camera, and one that has been on my list ever since I first shot it was the blow-forward Schwarzlose 1908. It's a very fast action, and my initial attempts at high speed a year or tw...

This is a Belgian-made Schulhof bolt action rifle. It is notable for its 9-round rotary magazine, and this same model of rifle was tested by the US Army in 1889. The magazine and overall design of the rifle was found to be quite good, but the bolt was too weak for Army approval. Regardless, it is...