While I was at InterOrdnance unpacking French rifles, I took the opportunity to pull out a couple different examples of Gras Cavalry Carbines to show the differences between original French production examples and Belgian commercial conversions. What we will see today are how to recognize:

- Fre...

The ZH-29 was an influential early semiautomatic military rifle, although not one that saw any significant adoption. As best I can tell, only two countries purchased them in any quantity: China and Ethiopia. This ZH-29 is an Ethiopian contract example, with an Ethiopian Lion of Judah on the recei...

Today's Ethiopian Oddity appears to be a factory-built Mauser short rifle, but embellished with a couple replacement parts (nosecap retainer, stock, bayonet lug) and some truly mysterious markings. The top of the receiver has been milled down flat, and hand-engraved with a quite odd crest, along ...

Today's Ethiopian Oddity is a Gewehr 1871 carbine - remarkably still with its matching bolt - rechambered for a small bore, smokeless powder cartridge. It is a quite interesting example of an Ethiopian armorer's work...

Among all the standard rifles that are coming into the US from Ethiopia through InterOrdnance, there are a handful of really unusual oddballs, and we are going to look at several of them. We have the first one today; a single shot adaptation of a French Mle 1878 Marine Kropatschek. Only a small n...

Today's Ethiopian Oddity is a rifle that appears to be a Vetterli action with a distinctly Mauser flair. The bolt is styled after the Vetterli system (including rear locking lugs) but has a non-functional Mauser flag safety lookalike instead of a functional Vetterli safety. The stock, sights, and...

Today we are looking at an interesting sub-type of Ethiopian Lebel short rifle. When InterOrdnance brought in the surviving Lebels from Ethiopian storage, eleven of one hundred were in this configuration, with barrels shortened to about 25 inches. Each rifle is a bit different - especially in fro...

Today we are looking at a uniquely Ethiopian carbine, a hybrid M90/95 Mannlicher. It began life as an Austrian-issue M90 carbine proofed in 1892. It served through World War One, and was probably given to Italy as war reparations in the early 1920s. Italy then sent it to East Africa, where is ser...

I have been able to bring you a bunch of videos of guns with Ethiopian connections over the last few months thanks to InterOrdnance, aka Royal Tiger Imports. They have purchased essentially the entire stock of obsolete arms in Ethiopian stockpiles and brought them to the collector market here in ...

Ethiopia is a fascinating and unique example of an African nation that was able to uphold its sovereignty through force of arms, and resist become a possession of any of the European powers during the age of colonial expansion. The defining event in this history was the Battle of Adwa in 1896, wh...

While helping to unpack a new shipment of French rifles at IO Inc / Royal Tiger Imports, I came across several examples of Berthiers that were modified to not use clips. There were a couple different ways the Ethiopian gunsmiths did this, so let's have a look...

Today's Ethiopian Oddity is a rifle that began its like as an early Lee Enfield MkI made by London Small Arms. It has the original buttstock, early style safety, volley sights, and magazine cutoff from that configuration. However, at some point it appears to have been reworked by an Ethiopian arm...

The Beaumont was one of the early European breechloading metallic-cartridge rifles, adopted in 1871. The rifle is a combination of elements form the Chassepot, the Mauser-Norris, and a unique V-spring firing pin system invented by John Claes of Liege. The rifle was submitted to Dutch testing by E...

This rifle began life as a German Gewehr 88 rifle in German military service. It was sent to Ethiopia, marked in Amharic, and then at some point cut down to carbine length. The shortened gun retains the infantry-type side bayonet lug and front sight, but has a slightly bent bolt handle and no rea...

In 1889, Emperor Menelik II ascended to power in Ethiopia, and would rule for 20 years, moving Ethiopia (aka Abyssinia) forward into the modern age. He brought railways, sewer systems, telegraph lines, and other modern amenities to the country, particularly the capital of Addis Ababa. In addition...

In 1930, Haile Selassie I became Emperor of Ethiopia (aka Abysinia), and would rule for almost 45 years, with a brief exception when the country was occupied by fascist Italy. During that time, he paid particular attention to Ethiopia’s military strength. As part of his coronation celebration he ...

After World War Two, the Czech economy was in serious need of money to recover from the ravages of war. The arms factory at Brno was not bound by the same restrictions as German manufacturers, and still had a production line for the Mauser K98k, which they had been making for the Wehrmacht. Eager...

The last batch of Mauser K98k rifles made by Brno after World War Two was a run in 1950 for East German border guards. These rifles have receivers marked “tgf 1950” in a style just like the wartime German arsenal codes, but where the codes were random letters, this one stands for “Tschekoslovakis...

Century International Arms has imported a quantity of Ethiopian ammunition, and asked me to do a video on it. So, I have a three-part evaluation here: appearance and packaging, live fire testing (including velocity and consistency), and teardown and bullet weight consistency. This ammunition was ...

Century International Arms has imported a quantity of Ethiopian ammunition, and asked me to do a video on it. So, I have a three-part evaluation here: appearance and packaging, live fire testing (including velocity and consistency), and teardown and bullet weight consistency. This ammunition was ...

Century International Arms has imported a quantity of Ethiopian ammunition, and asked me to do a video on it. So, I have a three-part evaluation here: appearance and packaging, live fire testing (including velocity and consistency), and teardown and bullet weight consistency. This ammunition was ...