France - Forgotten Weapons

Chassepot: Best of the Needle Rifles

May 3, 2019 Ian McCollum 19

Preorders now open for my book, Chassepot to FAMAS: French Military Rifles 1866-2016! Get your copy here! The Model 1866 Chassepot was France’s first military cartridge-firing rifle. It used a self-contained paper cartridge on the […]

The Hotchkiss Heavy: Shooting the Great War’s Modele 1914

April 20, 2019 Ian McCollum 13

This Hotchkiss machine gun and its tripod are lot #2027 in the upcoming April 2019 Morphy auction. The Hotchkiss was the primary heavy machine gun for the French and American forces in World War One, […]

Hotchkiss 1914: A French and American WWI Heavy MG

April 19, 2019 Ian McCollum 30

This Hotchkiss machine gun and its tripod are lot #2027 in the upcoming April 2019 Morphy auction. The gun that became the Hotchkiss 1914 and served as the bulwark of French and American forces in […]

Samuel Pauly Invents the Cartridge in 1812

April 17, 2019 Ian McCollum 45

https://youtu.be/BC7awTeuqRU This Pauly shotgun is lot #1346 at Morphy’s April 2019 auction. Samuel Johannes Pauli was born outside Bern, Switzerland in 1766, and became an engineer of wide interests. Among them were bridge design, passenger-carrying […]

Hotchkiss Revolving Cannon from San Juan Hill

April 9, 2019 Ian McCollum 34

This Hotchkiss and its accessories are lot #1116 at Morphy’s April 2019 auction: Benjamin Hotchkiss was an American artillery designer who moved to Paris in 1867 in hopes of building a business for his improvements […]

ManuFrance Commercial Luger

March 17, 2019 Ian McCollum 9

Between 1909 and 1915, the huge French mail-order firm of Manufacture Francais d’Armes et Cycles de St Etienne (later called Manufrance) sold Luger pistols (as well as many other types of firearms). They were enough […]

Bolt Action Cartridge Conversion of a French M1822 Rifle

March 10, 2019 Ian McCollum 11

This is a conversion of a French 1822 rifle to a single shot bolt action, using a newly manufactured receiver. It is unfortunately not marked with a patent name or date, and I have been […]

Project Lightening Episode 07: Conclusions

March 7, 2019 Ian McCollum 12

Project Lightening is a collaborative series with Othais and Mae of C&Rsenal in which we test all seven light machine guns and automatic rifles of World War One and put them through a series of […]

Merckelbagh Needlefire Conversion Rifle

March 3, 2019 Ian McCollum 9

This is an example of a needle fire conversion of a French 1822 rifle based on the patent of L. Merckelbagh. The conversion was done in Paris, probably in the early 1870s. Other base rifles […]

Project Lightening Episode 05: Reload

February 28, 2019 Ian McCollum 25

Project Lightening is a collaborative series with Othais and Mae of C&Rsenal in which we test all seven light machine guns and automatic rifles of World War One and put them through a series of […]