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.
Heavy MGs
MG11: The Magnificent Swiss Maxim Gun
The Swiss were one of the first countries to test Hiram Maxim’s new automatic machine gun in 1887, and they found it far superior to their just-recently-purchased Gardner guns. The first Swiss maxims were delivered […]
Antiques
Enjoying Black Powder Episode 9: 1869 Swiss Vetterli
For the full episode with the hand loading instructional section, click here: https://forgottenweapons.vhx.tv/videos/ep-9-swiss-vetterli-app Black powder military rifles of the 1860s-1880s are a really enjoyable group of guns. A lot of them are relatively reasonably priced, […]
Shotgun
Samuel Pauly Invents the Cartridge in 1812
https://youtu.be/BC7awTeuqRU This Pauly shotgun is lot #1346 at Morphy’s April 2019 auction. Samuel Johannes Pauli was born outside Bern, Switzerland in 1766, and became an engineer of wide interests. Among them were bridge design, passenger-carrying […]
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?
😀