Interview with Dolf Goldsmith

Dolf Goldsmith is a renowned author and machine gun expert, having written landmark books on the Maxim, Vickers, and Browning machine guns, and having been an avid shooter and gun collector for more than 60 years. We had the pleasure of speaking with him at the SAR West gun show last month, and did an interview on tape.

I haven’t published this until now because I’ve been working on the sound – there was a lot of background noise, and we were using a poor microphone. I’ve cleaned the audio up (couldn’t do anything about the train whistle, though), and transcribed subtitles for the dialogue. Mr. Goldsmith is one of those rare elderly collectors who is both extremely knowlegable about historic firearms and also in touch with current trends and excited about what the future will bring. Among other things, we talk about:

  • Where the future of machine gun collecting lies
  • What the next big area of interest might be for shooters and collectors
  • How machine gun collecting was different forty or fifty years ago
  • What the best machine gun design of all time is

I hope you enjoy watching as much as I enjoyed speaking with Dolf – so without further ado:

 

9 Comments

  1. Fascinating stuff! Thanks for posting this. Mr. Goldsmith is a grand old gentleman in the field of XX century weapons’ history. I wish him the best and many years of happy and productive life.

  2. Dolf and I have been corresponding with each other for the past 18-20 years, and the odd phone call, but we have never met. I appreciate the opportunity to see him on the video. Since the SAR show, Dolf has had a fall which required a hip replacement operation and he is currently in recovery from that. I wish him well!

  3. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Mr Goldsmith – a true gentleman, very open and happy to share his extensive knowledge. By no means all collectors are like that.

  4. I wish you would really take care of the sound issues you have on most every video. Even buying a couple wireless mics so you don’t have to use the cam mic. Love your site but don’t like the sound issues

    • Already done, Rick. We picked up a decent wireless mic a week ago. I believe this interview was my last piece of footage done without it. Interviews from SHOT this week should have much better audio quality.

  5. We all love Uncle Dolf and his “brother” Uncle Bob. Glad that they are now much closer to each other. Also, Dolf, what was the name of the book you loaned me (about 1 year ago) about the history of our government’s arsenals? I’m still looking for a Lewis. Regards from Tampa

  6. I served with Cpt. Goldsmith and he certainly is an expert on automatic weapons, an able warrior, and a gentleman.

    Respectfully,
    LTC Ray Stroud

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