Antiques - Forgotten Weapons

Movie Conversions: The Flintlock Trapdoor Springfield

March 29, 2021 Ian McCollum 20

The movie industry has always had special requirements for firearms. Flintlocks, for example, can be rather finicky guns for folks to use without practice and care, and that does not work will in a filming […]

Manton’s Waterproof Flintlock

March 25, 2021 Ian McCollum 20

How does one keep a flintlock action reliable in wet, riany weather? Well, let’s have a look at a flintlock shotgun designed specifically to be waterproof! This is a Joseph Manton shotgun from about 1815. […]

The First Trapdoor Springfield Carbine, Model 1870

March 24, 2021 Ian McCollum 13

The first production of a carbine model of the Trapdoor Springfield was the Model 1870 (excluding 4 prototypes produced in 1868). There was a focus infantry rifles in theTrapdoor program, and just 362 of these […]

1896 Bittner: The Most Beautiful Steampunk Pistol

March 22, 2021 Ian McCollum 57

One of the very last, most common, and best looking of the Austrian manually operated pistols is the Bittner. Designed by Gustav Bittner in 1893 and going into production in 1896 (the known examples were […]

Maxim-Silverman .455 Caliber Behemoth of a Pistol

March 20, 2021 Ian McCollum 28

Hiram Maxim’s hired shop supervisor was a man named Louis Silverman. He was a skilled engineer, who was treated rather poorly by Maxim, and whose contributions were systematically understated. One of the most interesting projects […]

Reiger Model 1889: Quick-Change Revolver Clips!

March 18, 2021 Ian McCollum 6

Edwin Reiger was an Austrian designer who took the basic mechanism of the Passler & Seidl ring trigger manual pistol and added a sort of revolver magazine to it. Reiger used a drop-in 6-round clip […]

Clement Pottet: Father of the Shotgun Shell

March 8, 2021 Ian McCollum 17

Clement Pottet was one of the original fathers of the modern shotgun shell. He took the work of men like Pauly and developed a paper-walled, metallic-base shell for shotgun use. He had two main French […]

Experimental Gras-Vetterli Repeating Rifle

February 1, 2021 Ian McCollum 4

In the 1870s and 1880s, France experimented with a huge variety of repeating rifle designs, including tube magazines hopper magazines, box magazines, and all sorts of other unique systems (more than 40 different types in […]

Indian 4-Shot Repeating Matchlock Toradar

January 15, 2021 Ian McCollum 21

Today, courtesy of Mike Carrick from Arms Heritage magazine, we are taking a look at a quite old Indian matchlock “toradar”. Not just any matchlock, but one with a 4-shot revolving cylinder. Matchlocks appeared in […]

1854 Treuille de Beaulieu: Open-Bolt Pinfire for the Imperial Guard

December 30, 2020 Ian McCollum 16

The Mousqueton Modele 1854, named for General Antoine Hector Thésée Treuille de Beaulieu, was the first breechloader adopted by the French military. It was issued to the Cent Gardes (personal bodyguard) of Emperor Napoleon III […]