Josef Nickl was one of the chief R&D designers at Mauser after the Federle brothers, and one of his pet projects was a rotating barrel military pistol developed from the Steyr-Hahn M1912 pistol. He built a number of prototypes of it while at Mauser, but the company never put it into production be...

Nicholas Pieper designed a blowback pocket pistol which was manufactured under license by Steyr in 1908. It was a reasonably successful pistol, and can be found today in .25ACP and .32ACP calibers. This particular one is an experimental version scaled up to .45ACP, with the intention of making mi...

Before he adapted it to .45 caliber for US Army pistol trials, Jens Schouboe was building his pistol design in .32 ACP (7.65mm Browning). It was a blowback action, hammer fired, and very quick and easy to field strip. The gun was reliable and well made, but just didn't catch on in the market, and...

Grant Hammond is best known (to the extent he is known at all) for a .45 caliber pistol submitted to US military trials in 1917 and 1918. This pistol is a proof of concept prototype embodying some of the concepts that would go into the later .45 caliber pistol, and also showing some concepts that...

George A. Wilson was a designer for the High Standard company, and also a competitive bullseye pistol shooter. Formal bullseye shooting requires the use of a .45 caliber pistol, and the 1911 really isn't an ideal design for that sort of shooting - so Wilson decided to make his own pistol. Patente...

One of the more interesting (and rare!) variations on John Browning's iconic 1911 automatic pistol is the Obregon. Developed in Mexico in the mid 1930s, this pistol uses a frame nearly identical to the stock 1911, but has a completely different locking system. It uses a rotating barrel, like a St...

The New Model Melior was patented just before World War One, but did not go into production until 1920. It was a visual lookalike of the FN Model 1910, where the (retroactively named) Old Model Melior had been a copy of the FN Model 1900. The New Model was actually a remarkably well designed and ...

During World War Two, the British government contracted for about 8,000 Ballester Molina pistols from HAFDASA in Argentina. They were produced between 1942 and 1944, and are easily identified by the application of a second serial number on the left side with a "B" prefix. The exact details of the...

F.H. Audley was a saddler who ran a business in New York City starting in the 1870s. As his business in horse tackle declined with the spread of automobiles, he found himself looking for other product lines. In 1906 he moved to a location across the street form a New York police station, and foun...

In 1977, Arcadia Machine & Tool introduced the Hardballer, the first commercial stainless steel 1911. Stainless steel was a hot commodity, although there were some initial teething issues with slide/frame galling. Eventually, AMT introduced a number of additional 1911 models, including the Javeli...

In 1932, Walther made 10 custom long-barreled PP pistols for the Swiss target shooting community, sold through Glaser in Switzerland. These pistols had 127mm (5 inch) barrels chambered for .32 ACP, a fine satin "Verchromt" finish, extra checkering on the front and back straps, and a gold-plated t...

In an effort to appeal to American and British military testing commissions,
Georg Roth produced a handful of prototype Roth-Krnka pistols in .45 caliber. They used a proprietary cartridge; the 11.5mm Roth (approximately 200 grains at 660 fps, although more powerful versions of the cartridge wo...

In the late 1990s Colt was looking for pistols it could license for sale in the United States, in the wake of the failures of both eh Double Eagle and All-American 2000. They approached CZ, and also Vektor in South Africa. Vektor was just at the end of its production of the SP1 and SP2 pistols, w...

Today we're looking at the mechanics of the Bergmann-Bayard M1910/21 self-loading pistol. This particular one is a very nice example of the Danish-made late variant of the design.

A little while back during the summer I went to our monthly Backup Gun Match with, of all things, a Taurus Curve. Why do I even own one of those? Well, I found one new in the box at a local gun show for less than $200. Because it is such an unusual gun in a bunch of ways, I figured it really dese...

The 1903 Pocket Hammer was an effort by Colt to adapt the Model 1902 pistol for better civilian sales. They cut the barrel down from 6 inches to 4.5, and used the 7-round magazine and rounded grip frame of the 1902 Sporting model. Production began in 1903, and ran until 1929, when the .38 caliber...

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During World War One, the Russian Government purchased some 51,000 Colt 1911 pistols. These were standard commercial production guns, chambered for .45 ACP, and were shipped in 1916 and 1917, with JP Morgan acting as purchasing agent. They have serial numbers between about C21,000 and C89,000. Th...

The Dutch government adopted the Luger for the KNIL (Dutch East Indies colonial forces) in 1910, and placed an initial order for 4,182 pistols from DWM in Germany. These were standard 9mm New Model Lugers, with grip safeties, no stock lugs, and manual safeties marked “RUST”. When more pistols wer...

On the eve of World War One, the Royal Horse Artillery and Royal Flying Corps had both adopted the Webley Self-Loading Pistol, chambered for a special .455 caliber semi-rimmed cartridge. With the needs of wartime, Webley deliveries of these pistols were too slow, and alternatives were sought. The...

In 1974, the British Royal Army Ordnance Corps purchased about 3,000 .22lr caliber Walther PP pistols to issue as Personal Defense Weapons to service members of the Ulster Defense Regiment. These were to be issued to servicemen (and women) who faced personal threats to their lives. the choice of ...

The story of the Browning High Power pistols with Omani national crests is and interesting one. It begins with a man named Paul Van Hee brokering a contract for Cadillac-Gage “Commando” armored cars for the Omani government in the late 1960s. These were to be equipped with FN MAG machine guns, an...

Today’s video is about my project to build a custom SIG P365 at ModGuns. Like the P320, the P365 is built around a steel Fire Control Unit as the legal, serialized firearm. Everything else – barrels, grip frames, slides, etc – can be changed around like Legos. Now, there isn’t as much aftermarket...

Yesterday we took a look at the design choices I made for my P365, and how I put it together with ModGuns.com . Today, I’ve got it out at the BUG Match for a trial run! Let’s see how it handles…