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...

Isaac Newton Lewis is best known for the Lewis light machine gun, but that was not his only foray into firearms design. He also patented two different types of handguns - one gas operated and this short recoil design. Very little information about this pistol is available, although it was apparen...

The Lebel was a truly groundbreaking development in military small arms, being the first rifle to use smokeless powder. This gave it - and in turn the French infantry - a massive advantage in range over everyone else in the world at the time. This advantage was short-lived, but the French did the...

Larry Vickers has published the newest book in the Vickers Guide series, and it looks at German small arms of World War II - the first of two volumes to do so.

https://www.vickersguide.com/ww2germany

I had a hand in the project writing a substantial chunk of the text, and so I met up with ...

Thanks to correspondent Ed Nash (he gave me permission to use his name after I had recorded the video), I have a number of really interesting photos and video clips of YPG (Kurdish) locally-produced anti-materiel rifles. Specifically, the Zagros 12.7mm rifle and the Şer Portative 14.5mm rifle. Bo...

The Šokac is just one of more than a dozen different submachine guns developed and produced domestically in Croatia during the Yugoslavian civil war of the early 1990s. It is a mechanical copy of the Soviet PPSh-41 made in 9x19mm and a folding stock modeled after the vz25 family of submachine gun...

The KE-7 was the product of two Swiss designers, Pal Kiraly and Gotthard End, and was introduced in 1929 by the Swiss manufacturer SIG. It was a recoil operated design and fired from an open bolt. The guns were not adopted by the Swiss military, and were exported primarily to Latin America, Ethio...

The ZK-420S is an experimental Czech rifle that is virtually unknown today, but which was remarkably influential, bearing significant elements of the Garand and several other Czech designs, and influencing the M14 and Kalashnikov rifles. Originally designed by Josef Koucky in 1942, the plans were...

The Czech ZH-29 is one of the first well developed semiauto military rifles - it was light, mechanically simple, reliable, and handled well, unlike many of its ungainly or excessively complicated predecessors. It only found two buyers, though, in China and Ethiopia, despite being tested by many m...

Had it not been for the German and Russian invasions in 1939, Poland might have entered the 1940s with a very modern semiauto infantry battle rifle - the wz.38M. Designed by Josef Maroszek (notably also the designer of the wz.35 Ur antitank rifle), the wz.38M is a simple and efficient rifle which...

One of the domestic US made pistols entered in the US military pistol trials of 1907 was this White-Merrill design. It is particularly interesting because White and Merrill submitted a manual along with the gun, which describes some of their intentions and thought processes in developing the pist...

In the aftermath of their rejection in the US 1907 pistol trials, Joseph White and Samuel Merrill continued working on handgun designs. In 1911, Merrill wrote to the Ordnance Department to inquire about whether they would be interested in testing his new design. While the Department was willing, ...

White's experiments in handgun design did not begin with the White-Merrill 1907 submitted to US handgun trials. In 1905 he submitted a patent for features in these two .38 caliber semiauto prototype pistols. These are both short recoil actions, one with a C96-like locking block and one with a rot...

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 Trejo pistols were made by a small family company in Puebla, Mexico from the late 1940s until the early 1970s. They made primarily .22 LR rimfire pistols, in both small (Model 1) and large (Model 2) frame sizes. They were basically styled after the Colt 1911, but with a more aggressive grip a...

Almost immediately after adopting the Colt/Browning Model 1911 pistol, the US military requested a .22LR conversion for training purposes. In 1913 Springfield Arsenal developed a conversion, but it was woefully inadequate. A better solution was submitted by a man named J.H. Carl, whose system mat...

The RSC 1917, aka FSA1917, has the distinction of being the only true semiautomatic service rifle to see significant frontline infantry use during World War One. It was introduced in 1917 as a long rifle, and about 75,000 were made in that configuration. An improved carbine model was developed in...

Developed in the 1980s, the H&K PSG-1 is one of the most iconic sniper rifles in popular culture, with a reputation for unmatched accuracy. It is, in fact, an excellent rifle, and today we will look at why.

The PSG-1 was introduced in the 1980s and based on the German G3 rifle action. Onto thi...

Axel Peterson was a Swedish immigrant who became a very respected gunsmith in the Denver area in the late 1800s, and whose shop remained in business until World War 2. Peterson was best known for his smallbore .22 target rifles, but he did much more than just that. Like, for example, this .22 rim...

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...

The M2 Carbine was a mechanically simple modification of the M1 Carbine to allow fully automatic fire. The fire prototypes of the M1 Carbine had actually been selective-fire guns, but that requirement had been dropped by the time the Winchester design was officially adopted as the M1. It was a fe...

Hans Larsen was a very successful competitive marksman (World Champion, in fact) and gunsmith in Norway in the late 1800s. He, and later his company, made a wide variety of guns, from revolving rifles and muzzleloaders to cartridge breechloaders and repeating rifles.

Larsen's target and sporti...

One of the domestic American pistols entered in the US 1907 pistol trials was this short recoil, toggle locked design by W.E. Knoble of Tacoma Washington. Knoble submitted two experimental pistols to the trial, one with a single action trigger and one with a double action trigger - although he wa...

W.E. Knoble of Tacoma, Washington is not a well-known gun designer, and was in fact not a successful gun designer. But he did enter a .45 caliber pistol in the 1907 US pistol trials, and in so doing put his name permanently in the annals of firearms history. In addition to that design, he also ma...