Well, my 8mm French Chauchat finally cleared transfer, as did my application to reactivate it. This was a "dewat", or "Deactivated War Trophy" - a machine gun put on the NFA registry but modified to be non-firing. This is not the same as legal destruction, as the receiver of the gun remained inta...

We have a brief video from a friend of the Forgotten Weapons site showing a standard M1915 Chauchat in use. Although short, the video does a good job of showing the gun's rate of fire and general operation. You can see the open magazine design that caused so much trouble, and see how the heavy re...

This week, we will be featuring all Swiss weapons here at Forgotten Weapons. Kind of like Shark Week, but more land-locked. We'll kick off today with a video showing you around a Swiss LMG-25 light machine gun we found for sale at Cornet & Company in Brussels (a better gun shop than any I've foun...

We met up with Greg - who runs Allegheny Arsenal - at a gun show a couple weeks ago, and this is the first of a couple interviews we did with him on the MG34 and its mount. Greg can do anything that needs to be done to a Lafette mount, and stocks all the parts you'll need to get your 34 running a...

The M60 light machine gun is something of a contentious subject. Many veterans who used it in combat in Vietnam remember it very fondly despite its design defects, while many more recent users detest it. I think I know why - because many of the M60s flaws were related to its long-term durability,...

During the 1960s, the Colt company was looking to help market the M-16 rifle to military forces by pairing it with a light machine gun. They were going after the exact same market segment as the Stoner 63 system. The first attempt at this was the Colt CMG-1, which had some limited parts commonali...

Well, that's that busted. No, the BREN light machine gun does not pull forward on firing. It has to obey Newton just like everything else.

Legal note: selbstverständlich war diese Schiessgelegenheit gemäss Art. 5 abs. 4 kantonal bewilligt

The Seaforth Highlanders of Canada Museum gave me the honour of unboxing their latest acquisition - but what could it be?

https://www.seaforthhighlanders.ca/museum-1/

With many thanks to our friends as mentioned in the video, here we take a look at the mechanics of the lightweight BREN Mk.3 LMG, issued initially for airborne and jungle use from 1944 onwards, but which found wider usage in Korea, Malaya, Borneo and beyond.

Too many jump cuts, I know. Sorry....

Due to a shortage of Lewis guns and a glut of withdrawn Ross Mk.III rifles once the Canadian Expeditionary Force had been completely re-equipped with Lee-Enfield SMLE rifles, Monsieur Huot proposed to modify Ross rifles into an automatic rifle / light machine gun (LMG) configuration.

5 of the...

Welcome to Bloke on the Range Strip Club, where we're only interested in one thing: Will It Strip. Up today: What happens when you've stripped but you can't blow your load? You have to relieve all that pent up spring pressure somehow! Fear not, the French thought of that (at least for the FM1924/...

The FM24-29 is one of the crowning successes of the France's post WW1 rearmament program. Gone is the requirement to feed archaic 8mm Lebel which frees the designers to adopt a modern design. Clearly inspired by the BAR, the FM24-29 is the precursor to the ZB-26 and eventually the BREN. Despite r...

Bloke on the Range takes you through some BREN light Machine Gun shooting technique and doctrine on its use.

Das Schiessen war selbstverständlich kantonal bewilligt!!!!!

Platoon in the Attack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOSf6aN3H2Y

.303 British LMG

What goes into preparing a gun for filming? Function checking, zeroing, and generally building some familiarity. Today we will go through that process with a Japanese Type 96 Nambu LMG. Rather like some French guns, Japanese small arms from World War Two have a thoroughly undeserved poor reputati...

In the years after World War One, the British military wanted a new machine gun, and they wanted it to replace both the Lewis and the Vickers. Through the 1920s the British would tinker with most of the light machine guns that became available, but it was not until the early 1930s that a serious ...

The British lost some 90% of their stock of Bren light machine guns in the disastrous Dunkirk evacuation, and in the following months rushed to rearm. Part of this program was a two-tiered simplification of the Bren design. First was a MkI Modified Bren (which was not marked any differently than ...

When the British military transitioned form the .303 British cartridge to 7.62mm NATO in the 1950s, it replaced the Enfield rifles with the new L1A1 SLR (the FAL) but retained the Bren gun as a support weapon. The Bren was updated to use 7.62mm, in a process more complicated than most people woul...

Sweden was a remarkably early adopted of the light machine gun, for a nation not involved in World War One. Looking over the designs that existed right after the war, Sweden opted to purchase 700 (technically, 703) commercial BAR automatic rifles from Colt (by way of FN). These were configured to...

As an open-bolt machine gun, the Lewis was not well suited to synchronization on WW1 aircraft - but it was an ideal gun for flexible mounting. To suit this use, a series of aircraft-specific Lewis variations were made. Today, we are looking at a 1918 model made by Savage for the US, chambered in ...

Yesterday we looked at the Savage M1918 aircraft version of the Lewis gun, used by American aviators during World War One. Today, we are taking it out to the range along with a very scarce original tripod mounting adapter.

I was not expecting all that much from the gun, but it is really tremen...

I really enjoy the Lewis Gun, and it's been a long time since I had a chance to put some rounds through one. This particular example is a Savage-made gun marked USN, and I think (but can't prove) that it is one of a small number purchased in .303 British caliber for the US Marine Corps. It also h...

Finland's standard light machine gun going into the Winter War was the LS-26, a gun which did not succeed in field use. It was complex and cumbersome, and Finnish troops quickly replaced it with captured Russian DP-27 LMGs. Part of the problem of the LS-26 was it's recoil-operated design. Finnish...

Today we are looking at a Chinese Type 56 RPD, but we will be focusing on the basic design and why it was adopted in the Soviet Union rather than the details of its use in China. The RPD was the result of research into reduced-power cartridges to replace the 7.62x54R for infantry use. While that ...

I am excited to take an RPD out to the range today - I've wanted to try one for quite a while. The RPD is a very light and compact weapon for a squad automatic, and I'm curious how it will actually handle. This particular example is a Chinese Type 56, with many of the improvements that were made ...