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HomePrototype

Prototype

Bolt Action Rifles

Stamm-Saurer Model 1907: A New Swiss Straight-Pull Bolt Action Rifle

April 2, 2025 Ian McCollum 4
After leaving the Zeller company, Hans Stamm went looking for work at major gun manufacturers like WF Bern and SIG. He ended up hired in 1907 by a company caller Saurer. This was an automotive […]
Prototype

Erma EMP36: External Form Factor of the MP40

March 26, 2025 Ian McCollum 24
The German military began looking for a new submachine gun design in secret in the mid 1930s. There is basically no surviving documentation, but the main contenders appear to have featured: Hugo Schmeisser’s MK-36,II and […]
Prototype

Schmeisser MK-36,II – The Mechanics of the MP40

March 24, 2025 Ian McCollum 9
The German military began looking for a new submachine gun design in secret in the mid 1930s. There is basically no surviving documentation, but the main contenders appear to have featured: Hugo Schmeisser’s MK-36,II and […]
Prototype

Aimpoint’s Only Gun: The PC-80 Symmetrical Action

February 15, 2025 Ian McCollum 56
Today we are looking at the entire scope of Aimpoint’s firearms development division…which is actually just this one firearm. Aimpoint was founded in 1975 as a partnership between Arne Ekstrand (a Swedish inventor with an […]
Light MGs

Praga I-23: Prototype Belt-Fed Predecessor of the ZB26

February 3, 2025 Ian McCollum 52
Vaclav Holek’s first machine gun design for the Czech military was the Praga I, built in 1922 and based heavily on the Vickers/Maxim system. However, it became clear that the military wanted something lighter and […]
Heavy MGs

Praga I: A Blow-Forward Bullpup Semi-Auto-Selectable Vickers Gun

January 15, 2025 Ian McCollum 19
The Praga I was the first machine gun design from noted Czech arms designed Vaclav Holek. Three examples were made for Czech military testing in 1922, but they were not acceptable. Instead, this design served […]
Prototype

ZB47: A Truly Weird Czech SMG

December 23, 2024 Ian McCollum 35
The ZB47 was developed at Brno as a contender for Czech military submachine gun adoption in the late 1940s. The Czech Army had technically adopted a submachine gun prior to World War Two (the vz.38; […]
Prototype

sa81 KRASA: Czechoslovakia’s Ultra-Compact Lost PDW

October 14, 2024 Ian McCollum 29
The Krása project (which translates as “beauty”, but is also a shortening of “short assault rifle” – “KRÁtký SAmopal”) is a fascinating piece of Czech small arms development. In 1976, the Czechoslovakian military requested development […]
Light MGs

Samostril Netsch: Bizarre Prototype Czech Automatic Rifle

October 2, 2024 Ian McCollum 0
When Czechoslovakia began looking for new small arms in the early 1920s, one of the things they were interested in was a “samostřil” – something akin to the automatic rifle in English. A select-fire weapon […]
Prototype

WF-54: The Swiss FG-42 Scaled up to 7.5×55

August 19, 2024 Ian McCollum 20
After World War Two the Swiss needed a new self-loading military rifle to replace their K-31 bolt actions. Two major design tracks followed; one being a roller-delayed system based on the G3 at SIG and […]

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