The Japanese Type 93 and its slightly-improved sister the Type 100 were the standard flame weapons of the Imperial Japanese Army for its fighting in China and the Pacific. They are a smaller and handier design than the American weapons, and less user-friendly. The Type 100 uses a rotating valve t...

Figured I'd post this since we got it all on video anyway - this is my final safety briefing/walkthrough with an M2 Flamethrower made in 1944, followed by my first short firings of it.

The gun was only partially filled with fuel, which is why the firing duration is so short.

Isaac Newton Lewis is best known as the designer of the Lewis light machine gun, of course - but that was not his only work in the firearms field. In 1919, he patented a semiauto handgun using the same gas-operated, rotating bolt mechanism as the machine gun. It is a pretty massive steel beast of...

I recently picked up one of the Pioneer Arms semiauto PM-63C pistols that are sporadically available here in the US. They have a pretty mediocre reputation and I wasn't expecting much, but the gun is so unusual that I really must have one myself (and the likelihood of me getting an original PM63 ...

Barton Jenks was parts of a family rifle with inventors. These included Joseph Jenks, who was granted the first patent in the American colony in 1646 (for a sawmill design), his uncle William Jenks who created the Jenks Mule-Ear carbine, and his father Alfred who was an innovator in textile machi...

The Le Français pistol was designed by Etienne Mimard in 1912, and listed in the Manufrance catalog in 1914. It was a .25ACP (6.35mm Browning) civilian defensive pistol for pocket carry, and designed with elements specifically for that purpose. It had a long double action trigger instead of a man...

The K-50M was a North Vietnamese modification of the PPSh-41 submachine gun to mimic the handling of a French MAT-49. Made from Chinese Type 50 guns (which were direct copies of the original PPSh-41) in small shops, the K-50M used a wholly new lower receiver assembly. This new lower fitted an AK ...

We have a monthly pistol competition here called Steelworkers - a bunch of stages of all steel targets. I finally accumulated enough stripper clips for my 1907 Roth-Steyr to be able to compete, so I figured I should give it a run!

The 1907 was used by the Austro-Hungarian cavalry, and is in my o...

The Villar Perosa is one of the first small machine guns developed and used by a military force. It was designed in Italy and introduced in 1915 as an aircraft weapon, to be used in a flexible mount by an airplane's observer. The gun consists of two independent firing actions mounted together. Ea...

Rudolf Frommer was a self-taught engineer and firearms designer who worked his way up through the FEG concern in Budapest to eventually hold the position of CEO. During this time he developed a series of long-recoil, rotating-bolt pistols culminating in the Frommer Stop, which was adopted by the ...

The Type 64 is a dedicated suppressed pistol first introduced in 1965 and used in the Vietnam War. It uses a rimless version of the .32 ACP cartridge (7.65x17mm) in a 9-round Makarov like magazine. Despite outward similarity to the Makarov (especially the grip), the design is wholly unique intern...

The FN Model D (“demontage”, or detachable) was the last and best evolution of the Browning Automatic Rifle. FN acquired a license to make the BAR in 1920 from Colt, and made its first major sale to Poland in 1928. Using that income to finance its production tooling, FN would introduce its Model ...

Today we are taking a look at the different variations in .455 caliber Webley-Fosbery automatic revolvers. The two main types are the Model 1901 and Model 1903 (the Model 1902 was the very rare .38 caliber version). The main change between the two is the change from a coil mainspring to a V mains...

In April 1940, WaPrüf 2 directed Mauser to begin development of a shortened Master carbine with a 490mm (19.3”) barrel, presumably for specialty troops. Development meandered on until July 1942, by which time just 28 rifles had been made, in two series. The first batch were numbered 3-15 and the ...

Note: In the video I mistakenly describe this as a two-stamp NFA gun. It is actually deactivated, and thus does not require a tax stamp. Sorry for the mistake!

The Swedish Bofors company developed their 40mm antiaircraft gun in the 1930s, and it would go on to be one of the most successful weap...

Patented in 1884 and designed by retired Civil War General William Franklin, this was an effort by Colt to win a military contract for a repeating rifle. It was a wholly new rifle (not a conversion) that operated like a Gras action, was chambered for .45-70 cartridges, and fed from a 9-round hopp...

William Tranter’s Model 1868 revolver was his first centerfire design, and became very popular, made in a wide variety of sizes and styles. One of the very rarest of these today is the 5-shot .577 Boxer caliber, an absolute monstrosity of a revolver made for British adventurers worried about faci...

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In the aftermath of World War Two, Brazil decided to adopt a semiautomatic rifle for its military, in .30-06 caliber...

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The Japanese Army made significant use of snipers (or in today’s terminology, designated marksmen) as part of its infantry combined arms doctrine, and produced about 22,000 Type 97 sniper rifles for use in WWII and ...

Russell Turner was a Pennsylvania gunsmith and inventor who developed this semiautomatic conversion of an SMLE bolt action rifle circa 1940. It was intended for trial and potential sale to the Canadian military, as it would allow them to retrofit existing rifles into semiautomatic configuration a...

Russell Turner was a gunsmith and inventor in Pennsylvania who submitted a rifle design to the US Light Rifle trials (which would culminate in the adoption of Winchester’s design as the M1 Carbine). Turner’s entry into the first trial was a distinctive piece with a tubular metal stock and hand gu...

(Note: I misspoke regarding Roosevelt's letter; he was President at the time and writing to the Secretary of War)

The US military adopted the Model 1903 Springfield rifle in 1903, replacing the short-lived Krag-Jorgenson rifle. However, the 1903 would undergo some pretty substantial changes in 1...

When I heard about Hi-Point releasing a 10mm pistol (the JXP 10), I knew I needed to do something fun with it. Hi-Point is often derided - and often for good reasons - but fundamentally the Hi-Point design does exactly what it is advertised to. It is a functional and extremely inexpensive pistol....

Georg Roth's company in Austria presided over a wonderful variety of interesting handgun development, and this is one example of that lineage. Roth's licensed or purchased the patent for this pistol from its inventor, Wasa Theodorovic, and turned it over to his engineer Karel Krnka to develop (I'...