Partway through 1944, the Japanese Imperial Navy began a program to provide their infantry units with better firepower than was afforded by the bolt action Arisaka rifles. The initial experimentation was based on rechambering captured US M1 Garand rifles for the 7.7 Japanese cartridge, but an inc...

The Swiss were the first country to adopt a bolt action repeating rifle with their Vetterli, and followed this by changing to a straight-pull design in the 1880s. The straight-pull Schmidt-Rubin system was quite good, but one potential flaw was that it was a quite long action. This became an issu...

Patented by John Walch in 1859, this is a .36 caliber revolver using superimposed chambers - meaning that each of the six chambers could hold two shots, for a total of 12 rounds before reloading. The revolver has two hammers and two side by side triggers, with the trigger for the front loading be...

James Reid was a New York gunsmith best known for his "My Friend" knuckleduster revolvers, but before he devised the idea for those he was working in New York City making traditional style revolvers. This particular one is a Number 2 pattern example, a .32 caliber, 7-shot rimfire revolver.

Th...

The FR-8 is a Spanish rifle manufactured in the 1950s as part of Spain's adoption of the CETME semiautomatic rifles. Spain was not only moving to their first semiauto rifle, but also changing from 8mm Mauser to the new 7.62mm NATO. It was not possible to immediately equip everybody with the new r...

The Schnellfeuer, or Model 712, was Mauser's answer to the Spanish production of selective fire C96 lookalikes. Just over 100,000 of these pistols were made by Mauser in the 1930s, mostly going to China (although some did see use in other countries, and also with the SS). They use 10- and 20-roun...

In 1928 and 1929, the Swiss Rheinmetall company produced about 50 examples of a toggle-locked rifle designed by Karl Heinemann. It was tested by the United States among other countries, but never found military acceptance. This particular example is a Heinemann rifle in sporting pattern, made by ...

When someone says "Old West Colt", the first thought is usually not double barreled shotguns. However, Colt made two quite high-end side-by-side shotguns during this period, and they played a role in the remarkable Colt/Winchester market-fixing agreement.

Colt's Model 1878 was an exposed hamme...

In 1936, Lewis Nolan Nomar patented this device, which is basically a large 40-round magazine for the 1911 pistol. He envisioned a military use for the device in trench raiding, giving men a compact weapon with a large capacity. Unfortunately for him, the device was both remarkably (and unnecessa...

The Model 1895 Nagant revolver is pretty common in the US thanks to large imports of Russian revolvers, but we rarely see Polish Nagants. These were adopted as a sidearms for police organizations under the designation Ng30, and manufactured at FB Radom through the 1930s. Typical of FB Radom produ...

The 1883 Reichsrevolver is not the weapon most people would expect to see in German service - it was a decidely obsolete weapon from the moment of its adoption. The initial 1879 model was actually even worse, with an awkward grip and longer barrel, but the 1883 update retained all the same mechan...

The Danes were the first military to adopt the Krag-Jorgensen rifle, with this infantry variant in 1889. It is chambered for the Danish 8x58R cartridge, which was also used in Remington Rolling Block rifles (although the Krag loading is more powerful than that of the Rolling Block). Unlike the No...

One of the options for having multiple shots available in the age of the muzzleloading rifle was the swivel-breech rifle. Such a rifle would have typically two barrels and one lock - one the first barrel was fired, the whole barrel assembly could be rotated 180 degrees to bring the other barrel i...

This is one of the more practical knife/pistol combinations I have seen - it actually has a pretty reasonable grip when used in either capacity. It has two muzzleloading smoothbore barrels, with a percussion cap hidden under each top ear of the crossguard and a folding trigger in the body of the ...

Before the Type 14 Nambu pistol was developed to replace the "Papa" Nambu, Kijiro Nambu experimented with a high-capacity design with a 15-round magazine. This pistol was called the Type A Experimental, and was designed around 1920. Only 15 or 20 were made, and they show elements of both the Papa...

The Winchester Thumb Trigger rifle was a very inexpensive boy's rifle developed from the Model 1902. It is a single-shot .22 rimfire bolt action system, on which the trigger was replaced by a thumb-activated sear behind the bolt. In theory, this was to allow greater accuracy by requiring less for...

The pinfire system was a popular type of early self-contained metallic cartridge in Europe, but didn't find much use in the United States. Pinfire revolvers were made in a variety of calibers from 5mm up to 15mm, and a much smaller number of revolving rifle and carbines were also made. This parti...

James Reid was a Catskills gunsmith who emigrated from Ireland by way of Scotland. He made a number of different revolvers, but is best known for his line of "My Friend" knuckleduster pepperboxes (or "knucklers", as he called them). At the height of their popularity, Reid had 17 employees, and ma...

The Sisterdale revolver is one of the most original designs of the Confederate revolvers. It was devised by a group of Texans led by one Alfred Kapp, son of a German immigrant in Sisterdale, Texas. He and his compatriots made six of these revolvers on the Kapp homestead with the intention of obta...

The pinfire cartridge was a popular development in Europe in the mid-1800s that never saw much exposure in the United States. A huge variety of pinfire revolvers were made by a myriad of large and small shops, with Liege Belgium being one of the biggest manufacturing centers.

Guns ranged from ...

We often hear the phrase "hand-fitted" in regards to either really finely made guns, or ones made before the the advent of truly interchangeable parts. Well, I recently had a firsthand experience with hand-fitted parts, and thought it would make an interesting video. i suspect a lot of people tod...

What is that unusual revolver that Ed Harris' character is carrying in the new HBO show "Westworld"? It's a modern cartridge conversion of a Confederate LeMat grapeshot revolver. Pretty cool!

In a Q&A video a month or two back, I was asked what modern rifle I thought would be best for a soldier in WWI trench warfare. My answer was an AR-15, and I got a lot of people asking why. Well, because the AR is a more reliable rifle in really bad mud than the AK.

What I couldn't show at the...

The G33/40 was made by the excellent Czech factory at Brno under German occupation (between 1940 and 1942). It was essentially a copy of the Czech vz.33 carbine, and was specifically issued to the Gebirgstruppen (mountain troops). It is easily distinguished from a typical Mauser by a couple chara...