Ian McCollum - Forgotten Weapons

Wheellock 101: History and Shooting (Video)

March 11, 2017 Ian McCollum 24

The wheel lock was one of the first types of early gun or firearm, developed as an alternative to the simple but problematic matchlock musket. The wheellock uses an iron pyrite set against a spinning […]

Schwarzlose 1901 Toggle-Delayed Prototype (Video)

March 10, 2017 Ian McCollum 42

https://youtu.be/ddNsrxe4ddY Andreas Schwarzlose was a German designer who created several very interesting and unusual handgun designs (in addition to his 1907 heavy machine gun, which was adopted as a standard arm of the Austro-Hungarian military). […]

Book Review: The Italian Vetterli Rifle by Robert Wilsey

March 9, 2017 Ian McCollum 36

Here in the United States, the Italian Vetterli is overwhelmingly found in the 1870/87/15 guise, and considered unsafe to shoot. However, this is simply the final transformation of a rifle which saw substantial military service […]

Walther WA-2000 (Video)

March 8, 2017 Ian McCollum 29

The Walther WA-2000 has a reputation of being the ultimate German sniper rifle, with no expense spared in its design and construction. Designed in the aftermath of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, the WA2000 was […]

Review: Semiauto DPM by SMG Guns

March 7, 2017 Ian McCollum 11

I have had a parts kit for a Soviet DPM light machine gun (actually a Polish one, but the design is identical) stashed away for many years now, with the hope to eventually have it […]

Sosso 1941 Italian Prototype Pistol (Video)

March 6, 2017 Ian McCollum 20

The Model 1941 Sosso is a huge Italian experimental semiauto pistol designed by Giulio Sosso. It uses a short recoil locking mechanism and is chambered for standard 9x19mm Parabellum ammunition, but its more unusual feature […]

Five Excellent YouTube Gun Channels You Might Not Know About…

March 5, 2017 Ian McCollum 9

While ForgottenWeapons has become a fairly large channel with a lot of visibility, there are plenty of other people out there creating excellent informative video content on historical firearms. Today I want to point out […]

Mannlicher 1901 & 1905 Pistols (Video)

March 3, 2017 Ian McCollum 25

The Model 1901 and 1905 automatic pistols were the final development of the Mannlicher system. In this iteration they used internal magazines, a straight walled 7.65mm cartridge, and a delayed blowback system in which the […]

Book Review: Testing the War Weapons by Timothy Mullin

March 2, 2017 Ian McCollum 5

Written in 1997, Timothy Mullin’s “Testing the War Weapons” sets out to provide a practical users guide to a wide variety of military rifles and light machine guns from the late 1800s to the present […]

Mannlicher Model 1896 Pistols

March 1, 2017 Ian McCollum 5

With the Model 1896 pistol, Ferdinand Mannlicher made an effort to improve the ballistics of his pistols and make them less awkward, by moving to a locked breech action and a bottlenecked higher velocity cartridge. […]