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With my handy new high-speed video camera, I’ve started taking some footage of interesting guns operating. First up is the Luger: The camera will do 500 frames/sec at very high quality, and just under 18,000 frames/sec at very low quality – and there is a sliding tradeoff between the two. So my goal is [...] This rifle is too light and svelte. Let’s wait 50 years until it gets popular again with a couple pounds more rail. West German soldier test firing a Dutch-made Armalite AR-10 (designated G4) during trial at Meppen in 1957. It lost out to the G1 FAL, which in turn was replaced by the H&K [...] 
Something new and something old today… RG-6 40mm grenade launcher From long-time contributor Hrachya, we have a Russian manual for the RG-6 grenade launcher. This is a pretty recent design, having gone into production in the 1990s. It fires the same 40mm caseless grenades used by the older GP-25 underbarrel unit found mounted on [...] He has to stay on guard duty, so his mates came to him for the group photo (picture from Drake Goodman – click to enlarge) German sentry in the trenches during September 1916 with a periscope and a Gewehr 98 equipped with an extended 20-round trench magazine. [...] Continuing through the trove of ammunition documents we recently got from Robert, we have three more manuals for you today. These are getting a bit more specific in their topics as we move through the collection, so I’m posting three instead of just two. First up, a 1943 German manual on 75mm ammunition for captured [...] The MG-34 and MG-42 machine guns were the mainstay of German infantry (and vehicle) firepower during World War II, and it will take several videos to properly cover them. For now, we are shooting them both, and explaining how to load, unload, and operate them (including changing barrels on the MG42). Enjoy! 
From Max Popenker, we have a set of photos of a very funky German submachine gun from the first world war (presumably 1918). The weapon is currently in possession of the weapon design department at Tula State University in Russia, and that’s where these photos were taken. Until now, the only photo available of this [...] Developed from a weapon originally designed by a priest, of all people, in the Austro-Hungarian army, the Granatenwerfer 16 was a German WWI grenade thrower which bridged the gap between hand-thrown grenades and the light minenwerfers. Throwing a small grenade with a 400g (14oz) high explosive charge to a maximum range of about 300 meters [...] Das ist was sie sagte! (photo source) The German WWI light minenwerfer worked so well that it was scaled up to a medium-sized version. And then a heavy version. And then the very heavy 38cm version. |
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Rock Island Regional Auction – July 2014
Yep, it’s time for another Rock Island Regional Auction this coming weekend! These are typically less valuable guns than the Premier auctions, and most of the lots include multiple guns instead of just one. Sometimes a lot will have a bunch of guns you want, and sometimes just one or two…but it’s always fun to [...]