Shotgun
Serbu Super Shorty: Is It Awesome or Just Dumb?
The Super Shorty is a pump action shotgun reduced to a 2-round tube capacity and a 6.5″ barrel made by Serbu Firearms. The first one was made in 1998 and since then Mark Serbu has […]
United States
Prototype
DSA’s Unique Titanium FAL Project
DS Arms got some billet titanium and decided to make a batch of titanium receivers and other parts. This turned out to be a nightmarish amount of work, and two of the receivers had to […]
Antiques
ASAC Presentation: Bullet Strikes From the First Day of the American Revolution
This lecture was presented at the Spring 2025 meeting of the American Society of Arms Collectors. It was given by Joel Bohy, coauthor of a new book of the same name, published by Mowbray. You […]
Antiques
Fenian Needham Conversion: Just the Thing for Invading Canada
The Fenian Brotherhood was formed in the US in 1858, a partner organization to the Irish Republican Brotherhood. The groups were militant organizations looking to procure Irish independence from the British, and they found significant […]
Antiques
Military-Issue Colt Model 1839 Paterson Revolving Rifle
The first rifle made in Sam Colt’s Paterson NJ factory was the 1837 “ring lever” rifle. These were rather fragile and underpowered and while they were used successfully in the First Seminole War, they needed […]
Light MGs
M1922 BAR Cavalry Light Machine Gun
After World War One, there was a lot of tinkering with the BAR by the US military. It was recognized as being a very good platform, but the original M1918 configuration left a lot to […]
Antiques
Model 1875 Officer’s Pattern: The Finest Trapdoor Springfield
As the main national armory, Springfield got a number of requests to make specialty rifles for commissioned officers and important dignitaries each year. These were essentially all custom sporting rifles, and the orders were duly […]
Shotgun
Influencer Marketing in 1900: Charles Young’s Repeating Shotgun
Charles Sparrow Young was an extremely talent trap shooter around the turn of the century, sponsored by the Peters ammunition company. He was also a mechanical tinkerer, and developed several patents, including a shotgun release […]
Competition
Savage 1915 at the BackUp Gun Match
Savage launched its model 1907 pistol with a lot of marketing fanfare. It was “10 Shots Quick!” and promoted with testimonials form personalities like Buffalo Bill Cody and Sheriff Bat Masterson. It was intended as […]
Competition
Department of Energy 633 Clone at a PCSL 2-Gun Match
The new Colt 633 Department of Energy clone from PSA/H&R was really quite a lot of fun to shoot, so I decided to take it to a PCSL match. This was basically a USPSA pistol […]