Submachine Guns
Franchi LF-57
The LF57 was the first production submachine gun made by the Italian Franchi company. It was introduced (as you might expect) in 1957, and was adopted by the Italian Navy a few years later, in […]
Articles by Ian McCollum
Book review
Book Review: The Evolution of Military Automatic Pistols
Today we have a book with a wider appeal than most, as it covers a broad range of different gun designs and has lots of good information for both the very technical collector and the […]
Submachine Guns
Italian FNA-B43 Submachine Gun
The FNA-B43 (Fabbrica Nazionale d’Armie) was developed in Brescia, Italy during World War II. The Beretta M38 series of submachine guns were serving very well, but the volume of guns demanded by the war allowed […]
Parts
Mystery parts
We have a couple unusual parts that we dug out of the bin and can’t identify – one is clearly a bolt and one a rear sight, but we have no idea what they came […]
Uncategorized
Chinese C96 Mauser Stock/Bayonet
Here’s an interesting item we ran across recently – a combination bayonet and shoulder stock made by the Chinese for the C96 “Broomhandle” Mauser (and also the TT33 Tokarev, I believe). This design is relatively […]
Vintage photo
Vintage Saturday: Japanese ZB
Japanese troops with a ZB light machine gun in China, circa 1937
Select-fire Rifles
X8E1 & X8E2 SLR Manual
Before the British adopted the FAL as the L1A1 rifle, batches of several different variants were made for extended troop trials. The first two were the X8E1 and X8E2 – the X8E1 used standard FAL […]
Book review
Book Review: The Dutch Mannlicher M.95
In the 1880s, the Dutch decided that their single-shot Beaumont rifles were obsolete and needed replacement. They started a program to modify them with 4-round magazines, and simultaneously set about finding a more modern rifle […]
Semiauto Rifles
Sjogren Shotgun Photos
Thanks to reader David, we have several photos of a Sjogren 12ga shotgun. The Sjogren was a very early Swedish semiauto design using a recoil action with a fixed barrel. Most recoil orated firearms function […]
Uncategorized
Cutaway Oerlikon Cannon
So a funny thing happened on the way back from the Naval training faciliity… We were at a museum in Europe looking around with a guide, and noticed a nice Oerlikon cannon on a naval […]