Commentary
How to Become a Professional Gun Nerd
I get an email every so often from a young person in high school or college who is interested in firearms, and wants to know what I would recommend for getting into the industry. I’ve […]
Articles by Ian McCollum
Manuals
EM-2 Rifle Manual
I recently got an email from a reader who had scanned the EM-2 manual section from the back of Thomas Dugelby’s EM2 Concept and Design and sent it to me. I thanked him (although I […]
Prototype
Savage Prototype .25ACP (Video)
So, this is a video I took over a year ago, and then lost track of – a prototype .25ACP Savage pistol. It is plain blowback, not using the rotating-barrel mechanism of the mainstream .32 […]
Aircraft MGs
Luftgekühltes Maschinen Gewehr 08/15 (Video)
I recently had a chance to do some shooting with a friend’s luftgekühltes maschinen gewehr 08/15 – the air cooled, lightened version of the German MG08 Maxim gun. These were one of the standard armaments […]
Uncategorized
Bolt Action Rifles
Vintage Saturday: Second-Rate Spoils
German troops with captured Mosin Nagant rifles (and one SVT-40).
Prototype
Slow Motion: VG1-5
This particular rifle is a prototype of the reproduction VG1-5 (or more correctly called the Gustloff MP-507) rifles that are available for sale from Chuck at GunLab.net. I will take some slow motion footage of […]
Book review
A Book For Aspiring Firearms Designers
Regular readers may recall that about a year ago I wrote a review of Firearms Anatomy I: The Thompson M1A1 Submachine Gun by David Findlay. It was a very neat book covering the Thompson from […]
Bolt Action Rifles
Repro German K98k Sniper for Sale/Trade
A friend of mine – Karl, in fact, who you’ve probably seen on InRange or 2-gun videos – is looking to sell or trade a reproduction German K98k sniper. It’s a gorgeous example of a […]
Fake
1852 Slant-Breech Sharps
Reader Kymm was kind enough to load me this rifle to video, with a particular interest in seeing the amount of gas leakage (or lack thereof) on high-speed footage. This early model of Sharps featured […]