This is a “Kleiner Waffenwerkzeugsatz” - a small armorer’s tool kit used by a German Waffenmeister. It is a really neat little set of handy and essential tools for working on small arms, which folds up and fits neatly into a standard German WWII ammunition can. The use of standard ammo cans for s...

The Colt Monitor was Colt’s improved version os the Browning Automatic Rifle intended for the law enforcement market. Colt had the sales rights to the BAR in North and South American (as well as a few other specific countries), and they worked on improving the design after World War One. In 1925 ...

Patented in 1855 by James Butterfield, this revolver is a 5-shot, .41 caliber percussion revolver with a brass frame and 7.5 inch barrel. Aside from its somewhat unorthodox grip configuration, what makes it interesting and unusual is that it was designed to automatically feed pellet primers, obvi...

After World War Two, both the Beretta and Breda companies in Italy began manufacturing M1 Garand rifles. When Italy decided that they wanted a more modern selective-fire, magazine-fed rifle, they chose to adapt the M1 Garand to that end rather than develop a brand new rifle. Two Beretta engineers...

Beistigui Hermanos is probably the least known of the Spanish machine pistol manufacturers, despite being the first to actually make such pistols. Beistigui was founded in 1910 in Eibar, and was one of the initial subcontractors chosen to make Ruby pistols for the French military during World War...

The Spanish Astra firm introduced its C96 Mauser lookalike, the Model 900, in 1927 to take advantage of the strong Chinese demand for that type of handgun. When Bestigui Hermanos introduced a select-fire machine pistol to the Chinese market, Astra quickly followed suit with their Model 910 and 90...

When the 1968 machine gun amnesty was announced in the US, it was treated with widespread suspicion among gun collectors. Some thought it would merely a pretense to find and arrest owners of unregistered machine guns. Others though it was just the first step in a prohibition and confiscation of m...

The typical pepperbox revolver is a sleek and small .31 caliber double action pocket gun, like the Allen & Thurber standard type. This one, however, is anything but typical. This London-made gun is a far larger than normal, and sports 8 barrels, with a center square of four and an addition four o...

The M231 Port Firing Weapons was developed in the 1970s as a part of the M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle Project. A modern relative of the WW2 Krummlauf, the weapon was intended to provide close-in firepower against infantry that might attempt to overrun the M2. It has no sights or buttstock, and fir...

In 1959 the German military first adopted the Spanish CETME as its standard infantry rifle, because it was able to acquire a license to manufacture the guns domestically (something FN had been unwilling to grant for the FAL). The European rights to the CETME were at that time owned by NWM in the ...

I am joined today by Cy Hudson, to take a look at the early prototypes of the Hudson H9 pistol - nicknamed the Brick and the Boat Anchor - and to discuss the development process of the gun from the initial sketch in MS Paint to the final production guns that are coming off the production line now...

A bit of shooting with an MP40 at an indoor range, courtesy of Hill & Mac Gunworks.

Today were are going to do something a bit different than normal, and take a detailed look at an intersection of arms and art: gold damascene. This is a type of art used to embellish a wide variety of objects, including firearms.

Gold damascene enjoyed a renaissance in Spain in the mid 1850s t...

This rifle design was developed by the Gevelot cartridge company to compete with the Modele 1866 Chassepot for French military use, although it was not successful in that attempt. The weapon has an uncommon sliding chamber mechanism in which the cartridge does not move forward into the chamber, b...

Robert Simpson's massive project of studying and documenting German training rifles has resulted in this much-anticipated reference tome. At 700 pages and full color, it a tremendous resource for understanding the chronology and features of the dozens if not hundreds of variations of these rifles...

We have lots of exciting content coming for you in 2017, including at least two international trips, thanks to support from the fine folks on Patreon! I will be visiting the Pattern Room collection, and also making an exploratory trip to France. I don't know what material that will result in righ...

Today's question topics::

0:00:24 - Belt-fed ARs
0:02:13 - US Army and the .276 vs 7.62 NATO
0:06:20 - Finnish cartridge choices
0:08:11 - Guns with built-in recoil absorbing mechanisms
0:10:45 - Deep dive on Krnka pistols
0:11:37 - Surviving Vampir night sight?
0:12:35 - Can countries e...

The French military during World War One used a number of American-made small arms, including both the Winchester Self-Loader and the Winchester Model 1894. A total of 15,100 Model 94s were purchased by France in 1913 and 1914, and they were used as a supplemental arm for drivers and airfield gua...

Today we are going through the French rifle ammunition used in the Lebel, Berthier, and MAS series rifles - 8mm Lebel and 7.5mm French.

The 8mm Lebel cartridge began as simply a necked-down version of the 11mm Gras cartridge, because that cartridge was already in use in the French Navy Kropats...

George Fosbery V.C. is best known in firearms circles for the Webley-Fosbery automatic revolver, but he experimented with several other firearms designs as well. This particular one never made it into commercial production, but it uses a bolt design very reminiscent of what Johnson and Stoner wou...

George Fosbery was the British officer (Major, at the time of this particular design) responsible for the quite famous Webley-Fosbery self-cocking revolver, as well as the Paradox system for shotgun slugs and many other lesser known firearms inventions. This rifle was his entry into British trial...

A montage of a bunch of shooting from our trip to Finland in June 2017! Including:

m/31 Suomi
KP-44
KvKK-62
LS-26
DP-28 (Emma)
M91/24, M27, and M28/30 Mosins
M32/33 Maxim
Rk-95
Sako TRG in 7.62mm NATO

Thanks to Varusteleka.com for arranging this shooting trip!

Final prices from the last RIA regional auction (June 2017).

Apparently, a lot of people really preferred the expended discussion of auction prices that I did with the recent James Julia auction, so I did the same for the recent Rock Island auction. This one had a bunch of submachine guns (both transferrables and dealer samples), so we will take a look at ...