A true unicorn of a weapon this week as Jonathan attempts to make sense of one of the strangest weapons we've featured on this channel so far. Overcomplicated and fundamentally flawed, the Kretz rifle was almost immediately obsoleted by superior designs.

Post-war Britain was looking for a new service pistol and turned to the tried and test German Walther P38 for inspiration. However, this new weapon's designer, Marion Karol Jurek decided to make a few changes. Jonathan Ferguson explains.

In 1908, Britain sought to improve its venerable .303 cartridge by making the bullet lighter and faster. That combined with the 1910 trial for a new rifle which led to the Enfield Pattern 1913.

The Sterling Story draws to a close with its final production rifle, the SAR 87. Building on the more commercially successful SAR 80, the later variant came too late to ultimately save the Sterling Armament Company from going out of business.

Soon after Prussia revealed it's ground-breaking, bolt-action Dreyse 'needle rifle', RSAF Enfield were hard at work making their own variant. This super rare weapon was the first official bolt-action rifle used by the British military.

The unreliability and issues with reload associated with new pistols in British service like the Enfield Marks I & II meant many officers preferred the large calibre Lancaster for a sidearm.

This is very much an anti-riot gun that's had two lives. That of which it was intended from it's development in the late 70s, and then it's popular culture life as a wholly different weapon altogether. Join Jonathan as he examines both of these stories as well as some incredible promotional foota...

Few weapons, if any have had a greater impact on history in a shorter space of time than the Minié rifle. Introduced in a limited capacity in British service during the Crimean War (1853-56). The Minié with its revolutionary ammunition had a devastating impact against Russian troops during the co...

Described by Jonathan as an 18th century Winchester repeater, this Lorenzoni repeater pistol combines intricate craftmanship with an ingenious mechanism for reloading on the fly. Join our Keeper of Firearms and Artillery as he delves into how this remarkable weapon functions, but also who would h...

To mark the 100th episode of What is this Weapon, the Royal Armouries hosted a special live episode at our flagship museum in Leeds in the UK. Befitting such a prestigious landmark for the series, our 100th weapon is one of Jonathan's all time favourites and has a back story immersed in the stale...

At the end of the Second World War, Britain looked to modernise it's small arms arsenal. With the Vickers MG a reliable but ageing weapon and the Bren limited to its 30-round magazine capacity, a more modern, belt-fed, 'general purpose machine gun' was sought. Despite excellent existing designs s...

Jonathan Ferguson pulls another obscure weapon out of our stores, focusing this week on a Colt AR-15 variant sent to the UK for testing by the British Army. Britain was looking to re-equip its infantry squad with a full package of AR-type rifles, with this example with heavier barrell and bi-pod ...

Join Jonathan Ferguson as he examines the third instalment in our Sterling assault rifle series: the SAR80. Attempting to create a legally different yet ultimately still a copy of the AR18, Sterling made huge strides from its predecessor, the LAR. But, was it enough to achieve commercial success?

Please support us: https://www.patreon.com/capandball For buying our Civil War cartridge boxes: http://stores.ebay.com/Capandball?_trksid=p2047675.l2563 Just a little fin shooting to end the year the usual way. The rifle this time is my original P56 Enfield muzzle loading military rifle made by B...

Please support us at: https://www.patreon.com/capandball This is something I promissed you long before: a review of the Whitworth rifle with hexagonal rifling. Thanks to a friend of mine I was able to testfire one of those old Parker Hale rifles. Well, here is the result. And of course some histo...

Please support us at: https://www.patreon.com/capandball Finally some action with the new Pedersoli Whitworth rifle. Some testshooting to 50 m and 100 m distance. Want to support our work? By a Capandball product: http://kapszli.hu/en/termek-kategoria/capandball-products-2/ Magyar szöveg: http://...

Please support us: https://www.patreon.com/capandball For buying our Civil War cartridge boxes: http://stores.ebay.com/Capandball?_trksid=p2047675.l2563 This year's muzzle loading World Championships will be held in Austria, Eisenstadt. I am documenting my preparation, while I'll be sharing every...

Please support us at: https://www.patreon.com/capandball Capandball Civil War cartridge boxes and more: http://kapszli.hu/en/termek-kategoria/capandball-products-2/ The Enfield percussion military rifle plays an important part in military history being one of the first "small calibre" military ar...

Please support us at https://www.patreon.com/capandball For buying Capandball Civil War cartridge boxes and cartridge formers: http://stores.ebay.com/Capandball?_trksid=p2047675.l2563 Capandball Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/KapszliCapandball I have been working on my original British m...

Marketed for people of 'short-stature', this BSA Model 13 has been heavily modified to include the iconic Martini action.

Keeper of Firearms and Artillery at the Royal Armouries museum examines the last-ditch conversion of a SMLE into an LMG. The brainchild of a car mechanic from New Zealand, the Charlton was one of the more successful conversions of the Lee Enfield during the Second World War.

Humans have been killing animals for thousands of years, and with the development of the self-contained cartridge, the Greener company started making a compact and efficient Humane Horse Killer. Used by veterinarians for euthanizing creatures (versions were made for pretty much all major domestic...

The L85A1 (part of the SA80 small arms family) was adopted by the British military in 1985 as a new generation of small arms to replace the L1A1 FAL (one quick note, where "A1" indicates a revision in American designations, it is simply the first iteration in British ones - there was no "L85"). A...

William Whiting was an engineer who spent his entire adult career with the Webley company, and was responsible for all of their in-house self-loading pistol designs. This work initially focused on a behemoth of a pistol, the Model 1904 intended for military contracts. The gun proved insufficientl...