Forgotten Weapons

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  • Save the Date! Moons Out 2026: March 6-8

    Mark your calendars; Moons Out 2026 will be March 6-8 at the Echo Valley Training Center, in WV. Practiscore registration will open December 1:

    https://practiscore.com/moons-out-26/register

  • Type 79 SMG: China's MP7 At Home

    The Type 79 is an overly-complex submachine gun that uses a scaled-down AK operating system chambered for 7.62x25mm Tokarev. In many ways, this is akin to the H&K MP7 - it's a miniaturized combat rifle. The locked breech system allows the reciprocating parts to be arather lighter than a simple bl...

  • Ada Blackjack: Real History Vs Insulting AI Slop

    "Ada Blackjack: A True Story of Survival in the Arctic" by Jennifer Niven:
    https://amzn.to/42UBKpG

    In the past couple days, I have had two people send me two different images, asking me to identify the odd rifles in them. Both were posted claiming to be Ada Blackjack, and Inuit woman who survive...

  • "Howth" Mauser 1871: Irish Volunteers Gunrunning into Dublin

    On July 14th, 1914 the 50 foot pleasure yacht “Asgard” sailed into Howth harbor in Dublin with its cabin completely filled with arms. It has 900 Mauser 1871 rifles and 29,000 rounds of ammunition for the Irish Volunteers, and there is a crowd of a thousand people turned out to unload them - just ...

  • Unique British Crankfire .58 Morse Manual Machine Gun

    This is a really interesting piece with a mostly unknown origin. It was manufactured in the UK (the barrel was deemed Enfield-made by former Royal Armouries curator Herb Woodend) and is chambered for the .58 Morse centerfire cartridge. The date of production is unknown. It uses a gravity-feed mag...

  • Japanese 3-Barrel Palanquin Swivel-Breech Pistol

    This is a very rare style of Japanese matchlock, with three separate barrels on a revolving axis. It has all the design and decorative elements of a tanegashima musket, but built more as a self-defense piece for home or perhaps when traveling by palanquin. Think of it like the Edo-period Japanese...

  • MG38: Colt's Interwar Water-Cooled Machine Gun

    After World War One, Colt was the sole owner of license to produce Browning machine guns. With production tooling well established form the war, the company set about looking for international sales. The water cooled .30 caliber (the M1917 in US service, essentially) was designated the Model 1919...

  • M1922 BAR Cavalry Light Machine Gun

    After World War One, there was a lot of tinkering with the BAR by the US military. It was recognized as being a very good platform, but the original M1918 configuration left a lot to be desired. It was deemed to heavy to use effectively form the shoulder, but also not really well suited to sustai...

  • Dutch Navy Luger: From World War One to the End of Neutrality

    The Dutch Navy first acquired Luger pistols in 1918 specifically for its aviators. They has 12 German P04 Lugers taken from a German submarine stranded in the (neutral) Netherlands, and 28 more were purchased from DWM in 1918 to round out the 40 guns needed to equip the Naval Air Service. The pis...

  • Military-Issue Colt Model 1839 Paterson Revolving Rifle

    The first rifle made in Sam Colt’s Paterson NJ factory was the 1837 “ring lever” rifle. These were rather fragile and underpowered and while they were used successfully in the First Seminole War, they needed improvement. Colt set about doing this with his 1839 pattern, which was more robust and m...

  • Jennings 5-Shot Repeating Flintlock Pistol

    Isaiah Jennings patented an improvement to the Belton repeating flintlock system in 1821 - but we don’t know exactly what his idea was because the Patent Office lost his patent (and many others) in a large 1836 fire. Jennings' system was used by several gunsmiths, though. In 1828/9 the State of N...

  • German Occupation FN High Power Pistols

    When Germany occupied Belgium in the summer of 1940, the took over the FN factory complex and ordered production of the High Power pistol to continue. It was put into German service as the Pistole 640(b), and nearly 325,000 of them were made between 1940 and 1944. The first ones were simply assem...

  • P38K: The Real One, not the Nazi Fantasy Piece

    The P38K is both a fantasy WWII concept and also a real pistol made in small numbers by Walther in the 1970s. The idea is simple; just cut down the barrel on a P38 to barely in front of the slide (2.8 inches on the real ones). This does make for a shorter gun, although it retains the large frame ...

  • Herman Brevete: A Pepperbox Hidden in Your Bicycle Handlebars

    In the 1890s, there was a lot of interest in small caliber, simple revolvers for self-defense by cyclists, primarily against dogs. This led to the creation of a whole category of “velodog” revolvers, and a Belgian designer named Herman patented this extension of the idea. It is a 6-shot, 5mm pinf...

  • Model 1875 Officer's Pattern: The Finest Trapdoor Springfield

    As the main national armory, Springfield got a number of requests to make specialty rifles for commissioned officers and important dignitaries each year. These were essentially all custom sporting rifles, and the orders were duly filled. In 1875, however, the decision was made to standardize a fo...

  • Fenian Needham Conversion: Just the Thing for Invading Canada

    The Fenian Brotherhood was formed in the US in 1858, a partner organization to the Irish Republican Brotherhood. The groups were militant organizations looking to procure Irish independence from the British, and they found significant support among the Irish-American immigrant community. In Novem...

  • Voere SAM-180 - Semiautomatic American 180 SMG Made in Austria?

    The American 180 is a .22LR machine gun that fires at a high rate (1300 rpm more or less) from a super-high-capacity magazine (177 rounds). Conceptually it was designed by Richard Casull in the 1960s, but he only produced about 70 of his original M290 design. He sold the rights to the design, and...

  • ASAC Presentation: Bullet Strikes From the First Day of the American Revolution

    This lecture was presented at the Spring 2025 meeting of the American Society of Arms Collectors. It was given by Joel Bohy, coauthor of a new book of the same name, published by Mowbray. You can find his book here:

    https://gunandswordcollector.com/product/bullet-strikes-american-revolution/
    or
    ...

  • Enjoying Black Powder Episode 10: Model 1871/88 Beaumont-Vitali

    Beaumont-Vitali clip file here:
    https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7007347

    Black powder military rifles of the 1860s-1880s are a really enjoyable group of guns. A lot of them are relatively reasonably priced, and they are actually pretty easy to reload for. The unavailability of factory ammunitio...

  • Haenel's Prototype Simplified Sturmgewehr StG45(H)

    In December 1944, the Haenel company received permission to produce a simplified version of the StG-44 Sturmgewehr. The idea was to keep the mechanical system and controls as similar as possible to the design in use, but simplify the design to reduce the cost and time of production. The design wa...

  • DSA's Unique Titanium FAL Project

    DS Arms got some billet titanium and decided to make a batch of titanium receivers and other parts. This turned out to be a nightmarish amount of work, and two of the receivers had to be scrapped, leaving only 10 completed. They also made a number of other titanium parts, including flash hiders (...

  • Springfield Kuna: Croatia's New Delayed-Blowback PCC/SMG

    The Kuna is a delayed-blowback 9mm pistol/PCC/submachine gun developed by HS Produkt in Croatia and marketed int he US by Springfield Armory. Development on it began in 2020 as a commercial project, but probably also with an eye to military and law enforcement sales. The Croatian police are curre...

  • Q&A: Competition Firearms and Shooting

    Today's Q&A is brought to you by the fine folks at Patreon! Join us to help support Forgotten Weapons and to submit your questions for future Q&A videos:

    http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons

    This month's Q&A theme is competition shooting...

    00:50 - Guns I'd like to shoot in BUG match but ha...

  • North Korea's Huge Type 88 Helical Drum AK Magazine

    Everyone who gets a Kim Jong Un patch or t-shirt will also receive -100 social credit points in China:
    https://www.varusteleka.com/en/product/forgotten-weapons-best-korea-propaganda-t-shirt/81932
    https://www.varusteleka.com/en/product/forgotten-weapons-best-korea-propaganda-morale-patch/81954

    No...