Samuel Johannes Pauli was born outside Bern, Switzerland in 1766, and became an engineer of wide interests. Among them were bridge design, passenger-carrying balloons (he would work seriously on a 15-20 passenger balloon service between London and Paris later in life), and firearms. Only a few ye...

One of the most mechanically unusual rifles I have had the chance to examine is the SIG AK-53. One of a long line of interested experimental self-loading designs made by SIG between the 1920s and 1950s, the AK53 is a gas operated rifle with a fixed breechblock and a barrel that cycles forward whe...

Designed by Witold Chylewski, this was only the second pistol manufactured by SIG (the first being the 6.5mm blow-forward 1894 MAnnlicher design). It was patented prior to WW1, but only after the war was Chylewski able to find a manufacturer interested in his gun. The most notable element of the ...

When SIG was developing the pistol that would ultimately be adopted as the m/49 by the Danish Army and the P49 by the Swiss Army (P210 commercially), they initially experimented with both single stack and double stack variations. Today, we will take a look at a SIG 44/16, the double stack version...

Some of my last footage from my trip to Switzerland last year; a bit of shooting with a SIG 553R. This is the model in 7.62x39mm, and the guns here are set up with 3-round burst. Cameo by Larry Vickers. :)

Sorry that it's not a proper full video, but the time wasn't there.

Switzerland was the First Nation to adopt the Luger as a service pistol, and they purchased them DWM in Germany from 1900 until 1914. World War One stopped deliveries, of course, and after the war the Swiss opted to begin their own production at Waffenfabrik Bern. These Swiss Lugers have become k...

After the failure of the SIG 530 rifle (a gas operated, roller locked design), SIG looked for a much simpler rifle design, in both operation and manufacture. What they came up with was fundamentally AK-like, with a two-lug rotating bolt in a very AK-like carrier and a long stroke gas piston. The ...

The Chap got rather lucky a while back and managed to score himself one of the elusive Hämmerli airgun inserts for the Swiss K31 rifle. Relieved of his monies, he returned home with his prize.

This little beauty sticks into the barrel and locks into the ejection opening, and is a side-handle s...

The model 1895 Müller automatic pistol is an interesting and unusual design, despite being a simple blowback action. Where most pistols have a bolt or slide that moved directly rearward, the Müller pushes the bolt in a semicircular arc into its grip. This is similar to the Swedish Hamilton trials...

The Swiss factories of SIG and W+F Bern both produced a remarkable number and variety of experimental self-loading rifles in the 1920s, 30s, 40s, and 50s. Nothing would be adopted by the Swiss military until the StG-57, but these two firms were continuously working to develop a military self-load...

Brief clip shooting a round from a Solothurn S18/1000. Note that in normal use, the gun ejects cases automatically. The owner here had disabled the ejection in order to preserve the brass - that's why the manual unloading was necessary.

Today we are taking a look at a SIG 550-1 Sniper model. This is mechanically a SIG 550, aka Sturmgewehr 90, but made to a very high level of quality control and fitted with a number of elements suitable for a marksman's rifle. It has a long (25.6 inch / 650mm) and heavy barrel, a thoroughly;y adj...

Switzerland was an early adopter of the Luger pistol as a standard military sidearm, but by WWII that design was becoming obsolete and the Swiss began looking for a newer sidearm. Several lines of development were pursued, and we have examples of two of them here: the W+F Bern P43 and the SIG P44...

The Swiss experimented with scoped sniper rifles during World War II, and the results were the K31/42 and the K31/43. Only a couple thousand were made between the two models, and they were not considered particularly successful. Ultimately they were replaced by the ZfK-55 (a much better rifle for...

The ZfK-55 is basically a K31 action, with a bunch of modifications to convert it into a very nice marksman's rifle. The more obvious changes are the muzzle brake (very reminiscent of the second model FG-42, which makes sense as the Swiss experimented with those rifle quite a bit after the war), ...

The Sig AMT was the commercial version of the PE57 military rifle. They were built in 7.62 NATO and used a roller-delayed blowback system very similar to that developed by Germany during WWII and used in the StG45 and HK91 series of rifles. The AMT is built to typical Swiss standards of quality, ...

Today we have the SIG MKPS out at the range – and WOW! I did not anticipate just how fast-firing of a submachine gun this is. Calculating from the high speed footage, it is running at 1350 rpm – and yet it’s still very controllable. It’s a beautiful looking gun, a beautifully made gun, and a real...

SIG began making SMGs in the 1920s with a licensed copy of the Bergmann. In 1927 the license expired, and they began working on their own designs, the first of which was introduced as the Modell 1930. This was replaced in 1933 by a design from SIG engineer Gotthard End, using Pal Kiraly’s lever-d...

Make sure to check out the video on 9 Hole Reviews, with the SIG 550 on their 500yd course of fire, plus discussion with a Swiss infantry officer.

The KE-7 was the product of two Swiss designers, Pal Kiraly and Gotthard End, and was introduced in 1929 by the Swiss manufacturer SIG. It was a recoil operated design and fired from an open bolt. The guns were not adopted by the Swiss military, and were exported primarily to Latin America, Ethio...

This rifle, as best I can tell, is a prototype model made by Steyr in Switzerland in the early 1930s for use in Hungarian military trials. The Hungarians were looking to replace their old 1895 straight-pull Mannlicher rifles with something more modern. They wanted to keep their Mannlicher en bloc...

Designed by Adolf Furrer, this carbine represents a very early experiment with intermediate power ammunition. It is a long recoil semiautomatic carbine with an under barrel tube magazine - quite the interesting combination of 19th and 20th centuries! The cartridge used was the experimental Swiss ...

When Denmark decided to replace its M1910/21 Bergmann service pistols, it did not have to look far for a very high-quality option. The Swiss military was just concluding several years of handgun trials that had culminated in the SIG P210. This was an extremely well-made weapon, arguably the highe...

The SIG PE-57 is the civilian semiauto version of the Stgw57, Switzerland's first self-loading service rifle. Developed from the German MG-42 but incorporating a substantial influence form the FG-42 as well, the PE-57 is a roller-delayed blowback action chambered for the 7.5x55mm Swiss cartridge....