The US prejudice against the FN FAL (including the inch pattern L1A1 SLR) is that they'll inevitably choke. However, Bloke's legit BSA L1A1 ran like a champ at Finnish Brutality 2023, with only one very minor hiccup at loading on the last rifle stage. Interestingly, the same hiccup that Ian's (Fo...

Everyone talks about sand cuts, and they're supposedly magic. Let's look at the most commonly-known sets of them, on a 7.62mm L1A1 SLR (British inch FN FAL) after being exposed to Finnish moon dust at Finnish Brutality 2023, and a 9mm L2A3 Sterling Mk.4 SMG after having had about 150 rounds throu...

Toni of Ensio Firearms made this unique rifle as his final project at gunsmithing school. It's a scratch-built, one-off 7.62x39 AR-15 type rifle with a 4 lug bolt, annular piston like a Vz.52, and it takes AK47 magazines that just slide in and out of the magazine housing like butter.

Ziga of Polenar Tactical wanted a go on Bloke's British L1A1 SLR (an inch-pattern FN FAL in 7.62 NATO / .308 Win). So we had to oblige!

It turns out that designing a rifle from scratch is hard. Very hard. Which is why most manufacturers don't bother and just make variations on well-established designs like the AR-15, AK, FN FAL or similar.

Ensio Firearms of Finland decided to break the mold and design their own .308 Win / .223 R...

When Armalite designed the AR-180, they needed a factory to produce it, as their own production capacity was limited. Initially a license was granted to How in Japan, but this only lasted a few years before US involvement in the Vietnam War led Japan to cease allowing arms to be shipped to the US...

Today we have both 1st and 2nd pattern semiauto FG-42s from SMG out at the range for some comparative shooting. Which is the better one to get?

While the Italian military did adopt the AR-70, it did not actually issue them to all troops. Most continued to use the 7.62mm BM-59 until 1990 when the Beretta AR-70/90 was adopted. This rifle was a substantial rework and improvement of the AR-70, using AR-pattern magazines and a 1:7" twist barr...

There has never been a proper semiauto version of the MP40 available in the US, until now. SSD (Sport-Systeme Dittrich) is a German company that has been making semiauto copies of German WW2 small arms for quite some time, and they now have a US partner in the DK Production Group. They plan to re...

The first version of the new MSBS "Grot" rifle purchased by the Polish government was actually a special version for ceremonial parade use. In order to make the gun suitable to that role, a surprising number of changes were made to it - almost every element is different than the standard service ...

Egypt purchased tooling for the Swedish AG-42 Ljungman in 1952, and adapted it to their 8mm Mauser caliber as the Hakim rifle. Later, they scaled the rifle down to 7.62x39mm as the Rasheed, and manufactured about 7,300 of them between 1966 and 1968. These rifles were issued to the District Ward R...

In 1974, Iraq and Egypt were still on good relations, and Egypt sold Iraq a batch of 300 Rasheed carbines and the production tooling to manufacture them. Iraq quickly set up production and began making their own copy of the Rasheed in 1974 or 1975, named the "Baghdad". Production ran until 1978, ...

In the 1920s, the British Army examined a number of options to replace the bolt-action Lee Enfield rifle. Several self-loading rifle systems were examined at a time when the US Army was looking at adopting the M1 Garand. One such weapon proposed in the trials was the 'Bang' rifle as covered in a ...

It's Jonathan's week off so join our Curator of Firearms Christian Wellard as he explores the bulky M3 Carbine. Developed at the end of the Second World War, the M3 was trialled by British forces in Korea and Malaya and despite its hefty size and weight, was well liked by troops.

A true unicorn of a weapon this week as Jonathan attempts to make sense of one of the strangest weapons we've featured on this channel so far. Overcomplicated and fundamentally flawed, the Kretz rifle was almost immediately obsoleted by superior designs.

When Jonathan first joined the museum 13 years ago, we came across a weapon of unknown design, maker and origin sat on one of the many racks of the Royal Armouries' stores. Having always wanted to know more about it, he believes to finally have some answers.

Experts at the time called it: 'Clumsy ill-balanced and altogether unpleasant to handle.' Charming.

Please support us at: https://www.patreon.com/capandball The story of the SVT40, and of course some fun at the range. World War 2 Soviet combined arms and infantry tactics, and the place of the SVT40 semiauto rifle in the Soviet squad. Technical specifications, disassembly-reassembly, and modern ...

Keeper of Firearms and Artillery at the Royal Armouries museum examines the last-ditch conversion of a SMLE into an LMG. The brainchild of a car mechanic from New Zealand, the Charlton was one of the more successful conversions of the Lee Enfield during the Second World War.

Damaged present on this incredible object might have actually saved a soldier's life. Jonathan examines how a French poilu, out of ammunition was likely saved by his RSC Fusil Automatique M1917 taking a bullet.

In 1928 and 1929, the Swiss Rheinmetall company produced about 50 examples of a toggle-locked rifle designed by Karl Heinemann. It was tested by the United States among other countries, but never found military acceptance. This particular example is a Heinemann rifle in sporting pattern, made by ...

Partway through 1944, the Japanese Imperial Navy began a program to provide their infantry units with better firepower than was afforded by the bolt action Arisaka rifles. The initial experimentation was based on rechambering captured US M1 Garand rifles for the 7.7 Japanese cartridge, but an inc...

We have all seen plenty of sporter CETME rifles and civilian HK-91s, but when the G3 was new to the Germany military, there was already an interest in bringing semiauto versions into the US. The Golden State Arms Corporation was the first to do so, with three batches of imports in 1962 (just 3 ye...

This CZ Model S rifle is one of many prototypes made between the world wars in Czechoslovakia in an effort to develop a military semiautomatic rifle. Similar efforts were underway in most other countries at the same time (basically every place that had a mature arms industry), and a huge variety ...