Today I’m at B&T in Thun, Switzerland taking a look at the whole history of the company’s suppressors. They began back in the 90s when founder Karl Brügger was working as a machinist and had spare time available – so he started making silencers for himself and his friends. That grew into a small business, then a larger business getting contracts for Swiss police departments and making commercial sales, and eventually into the major industry player it is today. B&T is not the best-known name in the United States, but they have a long history of making OEM suppressors for major European arms companies like H&K.
Select-fire Rifles
SIG AK-53: A Truly Weird Forward-Operating Rifle
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 […]
Bolt Action Rifles
Hammerli FK-31: Diopter Competition Rifles for the Haganah
In 1949, Israel was still fighting its war of independence, and purchasing arms internationally was difficult to do. The recently-formalized IDF wanted sniper rifles, and looked to Hammerli in Switzerland for a variant of the […]
Bolt Action Rifles
Mondragon 1894 Bolt Action Rifle (Video)
Manuel Mondragon was a talented lifelong gun designer born in Mexico. He worked extensively at the Swiss SIG factory, and was the man behind the first military-issue semiautomatic rifle. Before that, though, he designed this […]
Had to check myself – 4.3mm, yep never adopted but interesting that B&T was making a suppressor for the HK 36. Great vid.
HK36 (not to be confused with Bundeswehr G36 which originally was called HK50 if I remember correctly) fired a 4.6 mm x 36 cartridge.
I was going to say that I wondered why the project was so short-lived but the energetics of that round probably tell the whole story. ~1k J v 5.56 @ 1.7k and my favorite “forgotten” 6.5 Grendle @ ~2.5k
12:09 – I think brain surgery might be easier than attaching this can?
😀