2020 - Forgotten Weapons

FN Model D: The Last and Best BAR

August 21, 2020 Ian McCollum 18

Lot 1485 in the September 2020 RIA Premier auction. The FN Model D (“demontage”, or detachable) was the last and best evolution of the Browning Automatic Rifle. FN acquired a license to make the BAR […]

Chichester “Pocket Shotgun” Revolver

August 20, 2020 Ian McCollum 16

Lot 1059 in the September 2020 RIA Premier auction. The Chichester Rifle Company (actually of Jersey City, NJ) was one of many small firms that sold branded guns made by the Hopkins & Allen company. […]

Prototype Tube-Magazine Trapdoor Springfield

August 19, 2020 Ian McCollum 15

Lot 1078 in the September 2020 RIA Premier auction. This experimental repeating conversion of a Trapdoor Springfield was most likely made by Augustine Sheridan Jones, of the Dakota Territory in the 1880s. We know he […]

Hopkins & Allen XL Navy Rimfire .38 Service Revolver

August 18, 2020 Ian McCollum 14

Lot 3204 in the September 2020 RIA Premier auction. At the top end of Hopkins & Allen’s revolver line were the XL Navy, XL Police, and XL-8 Army. We covered the Army in a separate […]

Neither Fish nor Fowl: the Colt 1903 Pocket Hammer

August 17, 2020 Ian McCollum 21

Lots 102 (round hammer) and 1416 (spur hammer) in the September 2020 RIA Premier auction. The 1903 Pocket Hammer was an effort by Colt to adapt the Model 1902 pistol for better civilian sales. They […]

Double Barrel Folding Knife Pistol

August 15, 2020 Ian McCollum 20

Lot 3264 in the September 2020 RIA Premier auction. Historically, there are a variety of combination knife/gun/knuckles combination weapons, typically made in the late 19th century. This one is…rather larger than most of those. This […]

The Coolest Gun You Will See All Day: China’s Type 64 Silenced Pistol

August 14, 2020 Ian McCollum 19

Lot 1487 in the September 2020 RIA Premier auction. The Type 64 is a dedicated suppressed pistol first introduced in 1965 and used in the Vietnam War. It uses a rimless version of the .32 […]

Book Review: Textbook of Pistol Technology and Design

August 13, 2020 Ian McCollum 26

Peter Dallhammer is a mechanical engineer who works for the Walther company, and has written an excellent book on firearms manufacture. If you were going to design a university program around the design and production […]

CETME-L Comparison: HMG and MarColMar

August 12, 2020 Ian McCollum 6

Today, a comparison between a semiauto CETME-L rifle from MarColMar Firearms and one from HMG (albeit an example I built myself).

Q&A 44: My Workout Routine, NATO-Caliber Brownings, & Defend the Alamo!

August 11, 2020 Ian McCollum 21

00:59 – Is there a future in balanced recoil type systems? 02:05 – Does 8mm Kurz have a place today? 03:44 – Was there ever an M1 Carbine in .223? 06:05 – How is Floatplane […]