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…

The Portuguese Army purchased 5,000 7.65mm Luger pistols in 1908, and the Navy followed suit the next year - but the Navy opted for 9mm ones, with 100mm barrels. A contract for 350 was placed in November 1909, with the guns delivered in 1910. These were in a standalone serial number range startin...

Today we are going to take a looks at a series of six prototype Roth Theodorovic pistols. These were a design that competed in Austrian pistol trials around the turn of the century, and eventually lost out to the Roth Krnka (adopted as the Roth-Steyr M.7).

Today we are looking at a high-end C96 Mauser pattern sporting carbine made by the Tsingtao Ironworks. Only a few dozen of these were made, and this one survives in excellent condition. It is a good example of how some guns in Warlord China were made by skilled craftsmen with excellent tools and ...

Today we are looking at a second Chinese Warlord-Era C96 Mauser carbine. These were made as fancy sporting or presentation arms for important people - just as the original Mauser-made C96 carbines were. This example was made at the Taku Naval Dockyard, a facility initially set up to maintain the ...

Today I'm at SIG Sauer Parts (soon to be ModGuns) to play around with assembling a SIG 320. I've always been interested in stocked pistols, and so I'm going to take this opportunity to put together a USW (Universal Service Weapon). This originated as a complete pistol made by B&T (based on the CZ...

Star introduced their first compact tilting-barrel pistol (the Model D) in 1922. The Spanish military was interested in something along these lines, but the Model D was intended to be a civilian pocket-carry gun, and was just too small for military use. What was needed was something still compact...

Time for another practice session on the spinner...I am improving!

This time, I stopped trying to make double taps, and focused instead on getting a single properly timed hit at each presentation. Hitting twice is good, but not if it causes me to miss a following shot - perfect consistency is ...

When the Allies occupied German at the end of World War Two, the Walther factory at Zella Mehlis was initially garrisoned by American soldiers (who did a pretty thorough job liberating all the guns they could find there) but eventually ended up in the Soviet occupation zone (and later East German...

For this month's BackUp Gun Match, I decided to bring out the CZ38 - one of the top contenders for ugliest service pistol ever adopted. It's a single-stack, double-action-only .380 with a weirdly bulky grip, so it's not winning any ergonomic awards either...

Today I'm taking an original (made in 1918) Artillery Luger rig out to a 6-stage USPSA match. I'm entered in PCC (pistol-caliber carbine) division using the detachable shoulder stock (note that this is exempted from the NFA, so it does not need to be registered) and the snail drum magazine. Happi...

Historically speaking, the AutoMag 180 pistol has been a reaper of investors. Between 1971 and 1982, no fewer than six different companies went bankrupt trying to make a profit building Auto Mags. However, we may have finally reached the end of that streak...

In 2015, all the existing tools, par...

The Lange Pistole 08 (long pistol), or Artillery Luger as it is commonly known today, has an interesting history. It was originally developed as a personal defense weapon for German field artillery and air crews. While the foot artillery had been issued carbines, the field artillery were mounted ...

The SIG 320 was adopted by the US Army as its new M17 full-size service pistol, but that was only have of the Modular Handgun System. The other half was the M18, a compact version of the same pistol, with a 3.9" barrel (compared to the 4.7" barrel of the M17). The Army did also adopt the M18 for ...

My favorite pattern of domestic Chinese pistol form he Warlord Era is the one I have termed the "Luger Grip Type". The Luger was not a very common pistol in this period in China, and it is rare to see elements of it copied on Chinese designs. This pattern, however, very specifically uses the grip...