As Sweden was looking to adopt a new self-loading infantry rifle in the 1950s, one of the contenders was a modernized version of the Ljungman. The Fm/57 is one of the last iterations of that project. It is chambered for 6.5x55mm but uses the short-stroke gas piston conversion that we previously s...

The ZK-381 was designed by Josef Koucký, his first design of 1938 (hence 381). This is one of the last of the Czech pre-war self-loading rifle projects, of which there were quite a lot. It uses a tilting bolt and a short-stroke gas piston, with ZB26 machine gun magazines and chambered for 7.92mm ...

When the Luftwaffe was looking for its new universal paratrooper rifle, six different German arms companies were asked to submit proposals. Only two actually did; Krieghoff and Rheinmetall. Krieghoff designed this very interesting system, clearly optimized to reduce weight and length as required ...

As Sweden experimented with updating the AG42 Ljungman in the 1950s, one of the intermediate patterns was the fm/54. This took the 7.62mm NATO short stroke piston conversion already developed and added a 20-round box magazine and a Carl Gustaf m/45 folding stock to it. Not a Carl Gustaf style sto...

When France was looking to replace the MAS 49/56 rifle for military service in the 1970s, it tested all of the major rifle options available. These included the Colt M16, FN CAL, and HK33. The HK required some modification to meet French military requirements, specifically the capability to launc...

The URZ (Univerzální Ruční Zbraň, or Universal Hand Weapon) was a 1966 project designed by Jiří Čermák (designer of the vz.58 rifle). He envisioned a weapons system family with largely interchangeable elements that could be configured as a service rifle, carbine, light machine gun, vehicular mach...

The first rifle produced by Armalite began in 1952 as a project between the brothers-in-law, Charles Dorchester and George Sullivan (no relation to later Armalite engineer L. James Sullivan). Sullivan is the chief patent attorney for the Lockheed aircraft company, and the two have the idea to pro...

Alois Tomiška, best know for the Little Tom pistol, was one of the original founders of the South Bohemia Armory, which became CZ of Strakonice. The first pistol produced by the company was his "Fox" design a .25 ACP pocket gun. As originally designed, it used a folding trigger without a trigger ...

Earlier this year I had the pleasure of visiting my friends at the Cody Firearms Museum and while having a look through their collection we came across a really interesting rifle. A Winchester prototype developed at the turn of the 20th century which had a T-shaped charging handle, something whic...

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...

Hans Stamm developed a series of firearms in Switzerland in the early 1900s, and today we are looking at a second-pattern Model 1913 semiauto rifle. This was developed while Stamm was working for the Saurer company, where he headed its small arms division. Stamm's Model 1907 straight pull rifle f...

Circa 1954, Sweden was starting to look for a new self-loading rifle to adopt for its infantry. The 6.5x55mm cartridge was a good round, but the idea of having ammunition compatibility with its neighbors was appealing, and NATO was standardizing on the new 7.62x51mm round. This rifle is an experi...

Charles François Galand is best known for his simultaneous-extraction Model 1868, but he also developed a very good solid-frame revolver. This was specifically for the French 1871 military trials, which specifically required a solid frame. The Galand was chambered for 12mm Galand (with its distin...

When CZ developed the vz.38 pistol for the Czechoslovak military, they made a number of attempts to also sell it on the international export market. This involved offering some various changes in configuration for different clients - in this case, scaling it down from .380ACP to .32 ACP. It also ...

After leaving the Zeller company, Hans Stamm went looking for work at major gun manufacturers like WF Bern and SIG. He ended up hired in 1907 by a company caller Saurer. This was an automotive firm looking to open a weapons division, with hopes of winning the upcoming trials for a new Swiss milit...

The German military began looking for a new submachine gun design in secret in the mid 1930s. There is basically no surviving documentation, but the main contenders appear to have featured: Hugo Schmeisser's MK-36,II and Erma's EMP-36. Today we are taking a look at one of two known examples of th...

The German military began looking for a new submachine gun design in secret in the mid 1930s. There is basically no surviving documentation, but the main contenders appear to have featured: Hugo Schmeisser's MK-36,II and Erma's EMP-36. Today we are taking a look at the two known examples of the S...

Today's rifle was designed by a Swiss inventor named Hans Stamm while working for the Zeller et Cie company in Appenzell Switzerland. The company originally made embroidering machinery, but turned to military rifle parts subcontracting to bring in additional revenue in the early 1890s. Stamm had ...

Military interest in a submachine gun was late in Czechoslovakia, but by the late 1930s a development program was put into place. Interestingly, the main use case for an SMG was seen as being a replacement for a rifle-caliber LMG in fortification mounts. The thought process seems to have been tha...

Today we are looking at the entire scope of Aimpoint's firearms development division...which is actually just this one firearm. Aimpoint was founded in 1975 as a partnership between Arne Ekstrand (a Swedish inventor with an idea for a brand new "red dot" type of optic) and Gunnar Sandberg (a weal...

In this special episode Matt has the privilege of field stripping a Heckler & Koch G11. He strips the rifle down into its major assemblies and then explains how the 'space magic' works!

Matt explains how the recoil management system, that compensated for the recoil of firing a 3-round burst at ...

The ZB47 was developed at Brno as a contender for Czech military submachine gun adoption in the late 1940s. The Czech Army had technically adopted a submachine gun prior to World War Two (the vz.38; video on that is coming a bit later) but production did not begin before the arrival of German tro...

Vaclav Holek's first machine gun design for the Czech military was the Praga I, built in 1922 and based heavily on the Vickers/Maxim system. However, it became clear that the military wanted something lighter and more portable, and so the next year he heavily updated the design to this, the Praga...

The Praga I was the first machine gun design from noted Czech arms designed Vaclav Holek. Three examples were made for Czech military testing in 1922, but they were not acceptable. Instead, this design served as the first stepping stone to the eventual development of the ZB-26, perhaps the best o...