Rifles - Forgotten Weapons

Gewehr 71/84: Germany’s Transitional Repeating Rifle

June 10, 2018 Ian McCollum 16

This rifle is coming up for auction at RIA here. In the ongoing arms race between France and Germany, the Mauser 71/84 was the first German repeating rifle. Paul Mauser began work on it in […]

Citadel Martini – British Guns Rebuilt in Cairo

June 9, 2018 Ian McCollum 5

This rifle is part of a lot coming up for auction at Rock Island here. In 1903, the British government shipped a load of spare/surplus Martini parts and tooling to Egypt, where it was set […]

Britains First Standard Trainer: the No 2 Mk IV*

June 6, 2018 Ian McCollum 16

This rifle is coming up for sale at RIA on June 23. The British military started using training rifles in 1883, with the .297/.230 Morris cartridge in adapted Martini rifles. This would give way to […]

Serbian 1899 Mauser – Like Boers in Europe

June 4, 2018 Ian McCollum 13

Rifle in this video is selling at auction here. Serbia in the 1890s was not a large or wealthy kingdom, and they had no domestic arms manufacturing capacity – but they did appreciate a good […]

Demro XF-7 Wasp – An Open Bolt Semiauto From the 70s

June 1, 2018 Ian McCollum 29

The carbine in this video is selling at auction here. Designed by Gerry Fox in the early 1970s, this carbine saw production sequentially as the Fox Carbine, the TAC-1, and the XF-7 Wasp, as it […]

The Very Neat Peruvian Navy 1891 Mauser Carbine

May 31, 2018 Ian McCollum 14

This carbine is coming up for sale here. Peru acquired a large stock of Model 1891 Mausers from Argentina in 1901, and the carbine we are looking at today is a conversion form one of […]

Romania Doesn’t Make the Dragunov: The PSL

May 28, 2018 Ian McCollum 23

This rifle is available at Rock Island’s next auction here. When Romania vocally objected to the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, it lost some of its opportunities for technology transfer form the Soviet Union. […]

Germany’s First Smokeless Carbines: the Kar 88 and Gewehr 91

May 27, 2018 Ian McCollum 5

The Kar88 in this video is coming up for auction here, and the Gewehr 91 here. With the development of the smokeless Gewehr 88 “Commission Rifle”, the German Army finally made a serious effort to […]

Gevarm A6: An Open Bolt Semiauto .22 Sporting Rifle

May 26, 2018 Ian McCollum 58

Gevarm, a gunmaking offshoot of the Gevelot cartridge company, produced a line of open-bolt semiautomatic rimfire sporting rifles from the early 1960s until 1995. This is an A6 model, the base type. It is chambered […]

PTRD 41: The Simple Soviet Antitank Rifle of WWII

May 25, 2018 Ian McCollum 46

The Soviet Union had originally eschewed the use of large numbers of antitank rifles, anticipating that any potential combat use of them would be largely against tanks impervious to AT rifle cartridges. However, when […]