The famous American jewelry company Tiffany & Co has a long history of offering decorative firearms, and today I'm looking at two of them. One is a cartridge conversion Colt from the 1870s, engraved by Nimschke and fitted with a silver-plated Tiffany "Mexican Eagle" grip. The other is a modern-pr...

This revolver looks like it is a Smith & Wesson DA from the early 20th century, right down to the S&W grips. However, it is actually a Spanish Eibar-made copy, and you can tell when you take a close look at the patent markings atop the barrel. Instead of "Smith & Wesson, Springfield, Mass, USA", ...

One of the less common accessories for Colt percussion pistols is the original factory shoulder stock. And far less common still is the factory stock made with a canteen inside it! The stocks were made of two pieces of wood pressed together over a pewter drinking water canteen in the center of th...

The Crossfire MkI is a combination gun - both a rifle and shotgun with the two barrels sharing a single pump action mechanism. The shotgun is a 12ga bore, with a 4-round tubular magazine located on top of the buttstock. The rifle is a 5.56mm NATO barrel feeding from a bottom-mounted AR-15 pattern...

We humans have built pretty much everything into weapons over time, and here's an example of that. There are a variety of types of key pistols in existence, varying from the elaborate and complex to the ones as rudimentary as this one. This example is simply a large(ish) key with the stem hollowe...

I have been unable to find any history on this particular rifle, which is an experimental mixture of parts, including a bayonet lug and a sporter-style rear sight on a 7x57mm 1893 model Mauser action. What is interesting about it, though, it the automatic muzzle cover connected to the trigger. Th...

The Remington Rolling Block, introduced in 1866, was one of the most prolific single shot military rifles in the world. The combination of aggressive marketing, low cost, and an excellent design led to Remington selling literally millions of Rolling Block rifles to a huge number of military force...

What was the first true semiautomatic pistol? Let's take a look...

Before there were self-loading pistols, there were manually operated repeating pistols with magazines - like the 1850s Volcanics. A surprising number of this type of pistol were developed in Austria in the 1880s, and they led d...

I am kicking off a long series of videos from the Rock Island Auction Company, and my backdrop this time is a set of deer antler mounts called the "Imperial Twins". These two deer were from a joint hunt with Kaiser Wilhelm I and Emperor Franz Joseph in 1873. The antlers are original, but the orig...

The Guycot chain pistol was the development of two Frenchmen, Henri Guenot and Paulin Gay in 1879. It is chambered for a unique 6.5mm caseless rocket ball type cartridge in which the base of the projectile is hollowed out and contains the propellant powder and a primer. Upon firing, the entirely ...

Now that the February 2016 Regional auction at Rock Island Auction Company is complete, we can take a look at the final prices realized for each of the guns that I looked at in videos!

Final prices from the September 2016 Rock Island Premier auction - these include the 15% buyer's premium on top of the auctioneer's hammer price.

Germany was one of the first nations to really get into the sniping business during World War I, and this is an example of their sniper rifle of the period. The base rifle is a standard Gewehr 98 in 8mm Mauser. Optics form a multitude of different commercial manufacturers were used, mostly 3x and...

A brief Christmas reading, as translated from the original ancient manuscripts by Fr. Frog (http://www.frfrogspad.com/jmb.htm).

This is a 4-Bore single-barrel rifle built on an Army Navy Supply frame by J.J. Perodeau of Enid Oklahoma. I am firing 1750 grain lead bullets over charges of 325gr of Goex Fg. Muzzle velocity is approximately 1340fps, generating about 7,000 ftlb of muzzle energy.

This is the largest rifle eve...

Well, another Rock Island Premier auction is finished, so it's time to check out the hammer prices for the pieces that we looked at in videos. Hang on to your wallets... :)

Now that the June 2016 Regional auction at Rock Island Auction Company is complete, we can take a look at the final prices realized for each of the guns that I looked at in videos. Most of the guns in this auction were sold in batches, so the prices don't generally reflect the value of individual...

The Astra Model F was the final evolution of the Astra 900, a C96 Mauser lookalike. The Model F used detachable magazines and was select-fire, with a very effective rate reducing mechanism in the grip. It was adopted by the Guardia Civil in 1934, and 1,126 of the guns were produced in 1935.

O...

Most people assume that the AR15/M16 safety/selector lever was designed specifically to be very ergonomic and shooter-friendly, with the "safe" position putting the lever right under the thumb to allow a quick and easy snap into semiauto mode. Well, that's not actually the way Eugene Stoner initi...

It's that time again! The March 2016 James D. Julia auction is all finished, and it's time to look at the final sale prices on the guns we saw videos on. The Confederate revolvers in this auction brought some pretty impressive prices - as did the gorgeous Holland & Holland 4-bore double rifle!

Final prices from the October 2016 James D Julia auction - these include the 15% buyer's premium on top of the auctioneer's hammer price.

Guy and Leonard A-R-West have published their third book about black powder military breechloaders, "Development of the Podewils & Werder Rifles of the Bavarian Army". It follows the same format at their previous books on the Chassepot and Dreyse systems, including the hand-drawn illustrations. T...

Let me preface this by saying that I remain a big fan of the Scout Rifle concept and the Steyr Scout in particular. When I ordered a copy of Richard Mann's "The Scout Rifle Study", I was hoping to find a critical assessment of the concept. I was hoping to see pros and cons of the forward-mounted ...