Heavy MGs
Vintage Saturday: Maxim’s First Maxim
Not actually a photo, but a good likeness of both Maxim and his first working machine gun. That lever on the side is to set the rate of fire, and one of these is still […]
United Kingdom
Prototype
Howard Francis 7.63mm SMLE
The Howard Francis carbine was a design submitted to the British Ordnance Board for consideration in 1943 – one of many weapons proposed to help meet wartime requirements. Specifically, the Howard Francis carbine was a […]
Bolt Action Rifles
Belgian 1886 Rifle Trials Report (Translated to English)
Our friend Thibaud has spent some time translating a report from the Belgian 1886 rifle trials into English – thank you, Thibaud! He notes that the text has a lot of specifically Belgian terminology and […]
Semiauto Rifles
RIA: Pedersen PA Carbine
We have done a number of videos recently on various different Pedersen long guns (the PA rifle, the Japanese copy, shooting the PB rifle, etc), but there was one version that I have not covered […]
Anti-Tank Rifles
RIA: Boys Anti-Tank Rifle
Pretty much every major military had an antitank rifle in service when WW2 kicked off, and the British example was the Boys AT rifle, named after the Captain Boys who designed it. It was a […]
Heavy MGs
Heavy Machine Guns of the Western Front, WWI
I have been really enjoying The Great War series on YouTube (a rolling weekly account of what happened in WWI this week 100 years ago), so I figured I ought to take advantage of an opportunity […]
Bolt Action Rifles
2-Gun Action Challenge Match: SMLE vs Kar 98AZ (Video)
In this month’s 2-Gun Action Challenge Match, we decided to both run World War I rifles – Karl with a 1914/1920 Kar 98AZ and I had a 1918 no1 MkIII* SMLE. In the previous enfield/Mauser matchup the […]
Heavy MGs
Slow Motion Video from the Pattern Room
As someone who is very interested in the practical handling of old firearms, the idea of gun museums leaves me a bit conflicted. On the one hand, I am absolutely in favor of guns being […]
Anti-Tank Rifles
Vintage Saturday: Big Boys Toy
The Republic of Ireland opted to copy the German WWI Stahlhelm design rather than use British Brodie-style helmets. Until 1940, anyway, and I think it’s pretty clear why they changed. The rifle here, of course, […]
Prototype
Danish Bang Rifle for British Trials
One of the first semiautomatic rifles tested by the US military was a design by a Dane named Søren Hansen Bang, which was first presented to the government in 1911. The rifles used a […]