Peter Dallhammer is a mechanical engineer who works for the Walther company, and has written an excellent book on firearms manufacture. If you were going to design a university program around the design and production of small arms, his "Textbook of Pistol Technology and Design: Production, Princ...

During World War Two, the British government contracted for about 8,000 Ballester Molina pistols from HAFDASA in Argentina. They were produced between 1942 and 1944, and are easily identified by the application of a second serial number on the left side with a "B" prefix. The exact details of the...

The New Model Melior was patented just before World War One, but did not go into production until 1920. It was a visual lookalike of the FN Model 1910, where the (retroactively named) Old Model Melior had been a copy of the FN Model 1900. The New Model was actually a remarkably well designed and ...

The Hotchkiss Universal was a closed-bolt submachine gun submitted to French military trials in the late 1940s to replace the MAS-38. The French were looking for a compact SMG in 9mm Parabellum, and tested guns form the state arsenals as well as the Hotchkiss and Gevelot companies. The Universal ...

Historically, there are a variety of combination knife/gun/knuckles combination weapons, typically made in the late 19th century. This one is…rather larger than most of those. This is a combination knife/gun with a pair of percussion-fired 12mm smoothbore barrels, a roughly 5.25 inch folding knif...

Nicolaus-Noël Boutet is one of the most significant gunsmith artists in the world. He was the “directeur-artiste” of the Manufacture d’Armes de Versailles, set up in 1792 and would remain in charge of the factory until it closed in 1818. Originally set up to make a variety of small arms, under Na...

"XL" was a brand name used by Hopkins & Allen to cover several different styles of revolver, but the first were a series of rimfire, spur-hammer pocket guns made in the 1870s and 1880. These were mostly very simple, chambered for a range of cartridges from .22 rimfire to .41 rimfire. Some example...

At the top end of Hopkins & Allen’s revolver line were the XL Navy, XL Police, and XL-8 Army. We covered the Army in a separate video, and today we are looking at an XL Navy. This was a .38 caliber rimfire revolver with a 6-shot cylinder and a 6 inch barrel. It was single action only, with a pivo...

Michael Kaufman was a talented gunsmith who worked for the Webley company from 1878 until 1881. While there, he patented a substantially improved clockwork for the gun, removing 5 parts from the system and improving the trigger press. He was paid a royalty for this system, which was tracked by th...

This experimental repeating conversion of a Trapdoor Springfield was most likely made by Augustine Sheridan Jones, of the Dakota Territory in the 1880s. We know he submitted a different type of magazine-fed Trapdoor to the US military’s 1882 repeating rifle trials, and this rifle also came out of...

I am happy that the practice of sporterizing military rifles has fallen out of favor, but sometimes one can throw the baby out with the bathwater. Before decrying a nice rifle as Bubba’s sporterization project, it’s worth making sure the gun in question isn’t actually a factory sporting rifle. Th...

The Chichester Rifle Company (actually of Jersey City, NJ) was one of many small firms that sold branded guns made by the Hopkins & Allen company. In particular, Chichetser sold a “pocket rifle” which was really an XL No. 5 revolver fitted with a long barrel and detachable shoulder stock. These a...

Taking what they had learned in developing their series of large-frame .44 caliber revolvers, Smith & Wesson introduced the “Baby Russian” in 1876 as their first .38 caliber revolver. They actually developed the cartridge first (146 grains at 740 fps), and then designed the revolver around it. Th...

Ammunition for the Volcanic Repeaters is extremely rare today, and this opportunity to take a look at a complete original box of it was something I did not want to miss. There were two calibers made; the .31 (Cartridge No.1) and the .41 (Cartridge No.2). Both were sold in tin boxes of 200 rounds,...

Laban E. Tucker and his sons Elihu and Argyle were several of the original partners in the Tucker & Sherrard Company, which contracted with the State of Texas to produce Colt-pattern revolvers during the Civil War. The company went through several different names, driven in part by the departure ...

The “Pistol-Carbine” was a pattern offered by the Volcanic Arms Company combining a 16 inch rifle-length barrel with a pistol grip and detachable shoulder stock (it could also be had with an 8 inch barrel). This is the rarest major variations the Volcanic, with only about 300 examples made. This ...

With the commercial success of the semiauto Type 56S AK rifles in the US, Norinco looked for other options for export rifles to sell. Given the use of the 5.56x45mm cartridge in the US, an AK chambered for that round was an obvious answer. Norinco did not have the technical data package to make t...

During the 1600s and 1700s, flintlock and wheel lock systems were used to make “hand mortars”; firearm-like apparatuses to throw objects. Some of these were military grenade launchers, capable of withstanding significant pressure and generating very substantial recoil upon firing (they were vital...

The 1903 Pocket Hammer was an effort by Colt to adapt the Model 1902 pistol for better civilian sales. They cut the barrel down from 6 inches to 4.5, and used the 7-round magazine and rounded grip frame of the 1902 Sporting model. Production began in 1903, and ran until 1929, when the .38 caliber...

James Merrill was a Baltimore inventor and businessman who patented an improvement to the Jenks pattern carbine in 1858. His idea was for an improved locking lever for the gun, which would also allow the use on paper or linen cartridges instead of loose ball and powder. He demonstrated the improv...

The Serbu BFG-50A is one of only a couple self-loading .50 caliber rifles manufactured in the US. Work on its design began in 2008, and the first finished examples were produced in 2011. A total of about 500 have been made to date. Mechanically, it is a direct gas impingement action with a 3-lug ...

Today I'm bringing the PCCs back out to the range, to try them out with a Woldman suppressor from Dead Air. This is a two-part suppressor that can be shortened a bit if you like, although I will be running it at its full size for maximum effectiveness. I'm using S&B 150 grain 9mm ammunition, whic...

Many years ago, SMG Guns introduced a reproduction FG-42 rifle, a semiauto version of the 2nd model as made by Germany during World War Two. After several more years of development, they have now shipped the first of their 1st model FG0-42 semi autos. There are several significant differences bet...

The AMELI (which is a contraction of "ametralladora ligera", or light machine gun) was introduced by CETME in 1981, and adopted by the Spanish military as the MG82. It was a counterpart LMG to the new CETME-L 5.56mm rifles, and is a mechanically fascinating design.

The AMELI is a roller-delaye...