Handgun - Forgotten Weapons

RIA: Warwinck Copy of the Savage Automatic Pistol

February 20, 2016 Ian McCollum 22

The Eibar region of Spain is known as the center of a lot of pistol production from WWI through the Spanish Civil War, typically pistols called Ruby clones. Well, the various small gunmakers there were […]

RIA: Simple Key Pistol

February 14, 2016 Ian McCollum 45

We humans have built pretty much everything into weapons over time, and here’s an example of that. There are a variety of types of key pistols in existence, varying from the elaborate and complex to […]

RIA: Colt Richards Conversion 1860 Army

February 13, 2016 Ian McCollum 7

Colt, like all the other manufacturers in the US, was prevented from making cartridge revolvers by the Rollin white patent, which finally expired in 1869. This left them limited to their percussion revolvers, the 1849, […]

RIA: Polish Ng30 Nagant Revolver

February 11, 2016 Ian McCollum 31

The Model 1895 Nagant revolver is pretty common in the US thanks to large imports of Russian revolvers, but we rarely see Polish Nagants. These were adopted as a sidearms for police organizations under the […]

RIA: Radom’s Vis 35: Poland’s Excellent Automatic Pistol

February 9, 2016 Ian McCollum 23

In the 1920s Poland began looking for a new standard military pistol, and tested a variety of compact .380s. The representative from FN brought along an early iteration of the High Power (along with their […]

RIA: Norwegian M1914 Kongsberg Colt (Video)

February 1, 2016 Ian McCollum 36

After a series of pistol trials, Norway adopted a copy of the Colt 1911 in .45 ACP as its standard service pistol in 1914. A license was purchased from FN (while under German occupation, interestingly) […]

Le Français .32ACP Pistol (Video)

January 31, 2016 Ian McCollum 88

The Le Français was a staple of Manufrance production, being first designed in 1912 and produced until the late 1960s. This example is in .32ACP caliber, which was only made for the commercial market in […]

Viet Cong Handmade Luger Lookalike

January 27, 2016 Ian McCollum 51

In the continuing occasional series on crude handmade firearms, we have an entry sent to me by a reader on Facebook (thanks!). It’s a Vietnamese Luger lookalike, which was being sold by Arundel Militaria in […]

Swedish Hamilton Trials Pistol (Video)

January 21, 2016 Ian McCollum 23

The Hamilton was a handgun entered into the Swedish military pistol trials of 1903, where it competed against guns like the Luger and Colt/Browning 1903. The Hamilton was a simply blowback action chambered for 6.5mm […]

Grant Hammond .45ACP Trials Pistol

January 14, 2016 Ian McCollum 33

The Grant Hammond .45 pistol is a gun which was too late to take part in the major 1907 US military pistol trials, and which was instead presented proactively to the military in hopes of […]