Manual machine guns – Forgotten Weapons

Puckle Gun (Video)

December 25, 2016 Ian McCollum 32

The Puckle Gun is probably best known as that thing that had round bullets for Christians and square bullets for Turks, but there is much more to it than just that (and in addition, the […]

The mitrailleuse was one of the early types of mechanical machine gun, along with the Gatling, Gardner, Nordenfelt, and others. “Mitrailleuse” is actually a general name for a volley gun – one with many barrels […]

Reproduction Nordenfelt Gun

December 5, 2014 Ian McCollum 18

A few days ago I was at a small machine gun shoot (which wound up being a bit larger than I’d expected), and was happily surprised to discover that one of the attendees had brought […]

Montigny Mitrailleuse Photos

January 29, 2014 Ian McCollum 41

The Mitrailleuse was one of the first pseudo-machine guns – the first ones were developed prior to the Gattling, but they continued to be purchased by military forces through the 1870s. There were several versions, […]

Union Repeating Gun

August 23, 2013 Ian McCollum 20

The Gatling is commonly seen as the first manual machine gun used by the US military, but it was preceded by several other designs, including the Union Repeating Gun. Also known as the Ager Gun […]

Book Review: Bullets and Bureaucrats

April 18, 2013 Ian McCollum 24

For a while now I’ve been following the rabbit hole of machine gun use in the second half of the 19th century – the days of the manually-operated machine gun (Gatling, Gardner, Nordenfelt, etc) and […]

Book Review: Mr. Gatling’s Terrible Marvel

April 4, 2013 Ian McCollum 14

I hate to perpetuate stereotypes, but this is a case where there is more than a kernel of truth to one. The unfortunate subject is Julia Keller, author of Mr. Gatling’s Terrible Marvel, and she […]

Gatling Gun Feeding Mechanisms

January 23, 2013 Ian McCollum 22

The Gatling Gun is interested for many reasons, and one of them is the variety of feeding mechanisms that were developed and used with it. Most firearms are designed around a single specific feeding mechanism, […]

Shooting an 1877 Bulldog Gatling

January 21, 2013 Ian McCollum 17

Thanks to a friendly collector, we had the chance to take out one of the new, gorgeous reproduction 1877 Gatling guns being sold by Colt. It’s a near-exact replica, with the added feature of being […]

Book Review: The Gatling Gun by Wahl and Toppel

January 10, 2013 Ian McCollum 7

Today’s book review is a re-run, because I’ve been re-reading this book in preparation for doing some video on an 1877 Gatling gun: The book we’re looking at is Paul Wahl and Donald Toppel’s The […]