Today we are looking at the Tanker M1 rig I put together about 15 years ago. This is an original WW2 production receiver rebuilt with an 18" 7.62mm NATO barrel in the 1980s by Arlington Ordnance. In pursuit of a universal do-it-all practical rifle, I then added a forward scope mount with a Burris...

I bought an M11A1 machine pistol several years ago, when I first heard about the Lage Max11/15 project (I chose the M11A1 because I wanted the shortest registered receiver possible). Well, the M11A1 version of that upper sat in ATF purgatory for more than two years, but it is finally out! (Note: ...

Of all the classic 7.62mm battle rifles of the Cold War, only the G3 remains in modern military service updated to serve alongside the more recent 5.56mm rifles (no, the M14 DMR rifles don't count). Why the G3, and how? Today we will take a look at a clone of a Norwegian AG3F2 and a sort-of clone...

The AR-14 was the subject of a widely-seen political gaffe a while back - but what was the real AR-14? Because yes, there was one! It was one of many firearms planned by Armalite, but not put into production...

There are a lot of guns out there attributed to German leaders and politicians of the Second World War. Many of these are completely specious, and many more are true simply because these men had a lot of guns. What we are looking at today is an exception; one of the rather small number of guns wh...

Aside from the German widespread issue of the ZF-41 type scope, I have only come across three other military uses of long eye relief optics - and they are all Norwegian! One is simply Norwegian reuse of surrendered German K98k-ZF41 scopes, including updating them to .30-06 in the 1950s (these wer...

I don't cover politics here, but I know many of you folks are interested or invested in gun law current events. I recently found the FuddBusters channel, and it was a real breath of fresh air in this realm - and I figured many of you would also appreciate it.

Matt Larosiere is a gun rights att...

The Model 700 Special was an attempt by Astra to piggyback on the popularity of the FN Model 1910 automatic pistol. Astra took their Model 100 (a renamed Ruby pistol of WWI lineage) and changed the styling to resemble the FN gun, including adding a rotating mainspring cap around the barrel, as th...

Everyone is aware of the Mosin Nagant rifle, but not everyone realizes that about 2 million of them were actually manufactured in the United States. Russia had been producing M91 Mosin Nagant rifles in their three major arsenals (Tula, Izhevsk, and Sestroyesk) since the mid 1890s, but when World ...

In the late 1880 or early 1890s, a British engineer and adventurer settled himself in Kabul, Afghanistan and at the request of Emir Abdul Rahman organized and build a rifle factory for the Afghan government. This factory would operate for nearly 30 years, producing a series of different types of ...

The first new breech-loading cartridge rifle adopted by the Austro-Hungarian military was the Model 1867 Werndl, firing the 11x42R black powder cartridge. It used an interesting rotating breech locking system, and replaced the Lorenz muzzleloading muskets and the Wanzl breechloading conversions o...

The Wilson family was a gunmaking dynasty in London that began in 1730 when Richard Wilson was accepted as a Master Gunmaker by the Gunmakers' Company. Wilson's eldest son William Wilson would receive the same recognition in 1755, and William's son William (junior) completed his apprenticeship in...

The standard American grenade launching system in World War One was the Vivien-Bessiere, borrowed directly form the French. It had been adopted by France in 1916, replacing copies of the British Martin-Hale rod grenades. The V-B was a cup type launcher using a pass-through type of grenade and sta...

After the Winter War and Continuation War, Finland settled a peace treaty with the Soviet Union, and started looking to modernize its infantry rifles - something semiautomatic was needed to replace the Mosin Nagants it was still using. A variety of rifles were tested, including the AR-10, Sig AM-...

The Japanese Navy used several different types of flare pistols during World War Two (and in the decades before), but the most impressive looking of the bunch was the three-barreled Type 90 (not to be confused with the two-barreled model also designated Type 90). The three barrels were not simply...

The Japanese Army and Navy of the 1920s and 30s often used quite different equipment, and had a substantial interservice rivalry. Flare guns were one example of this separation, with the services using not just different flare pistols, but totally different flare cartridges. The Navy used a 28mm ...

This rifle, as best I can tell, is a prototype model made by Steyr in Switzerland in the early 1930s for use in Hungarian military trials. The Hungarians were looking to replace their old 1895 straight-pull Mannlicher rifles with something more modern. They wanted to keep their Mannlicher en bloc...

The British began World War Two with the Boys antitank rifle, but like all antitank rifles it rather quickly became obsolete. The replacement for it was adopted in 1942 as the PIAT - Projector, Infantry, Anti-Tank. This was a unique sort of weapon which fired a 3 pound (~1.35kg) hollow charge pro...

Combination knife/gun weapons have been popular gadgets for literally hundreds of years, and this is one of the nicest examples I have yet seen. This sort of thing is usually very flimsy, and not particularly well made. This one, however, has a blade which locks in place securely and would seem t...

Combination knife-gun devices have been popular for hundreds of years, spurred initially by the single-shot nature of early firearms. The designs evolved to incorporate revolver cylinders when the revolver was invented, and remain interesting to people even to the present day. Global Research And...

Made by Carl Gebert, a master gunsmith in Munich, this custom sporting rifle exhibits all the fancy options available in the 1870s or 1880s! The base action is an 1871 Mauser, which was a single shot rifle. However, this specially made one had been modified to us a fixed box magazine holding 3 or...

Virtually all nations in World War One had a periscope trench rifle of some sort, and the United States was no exception - although it was not formally adopted. The Cameron-Yaggi conversion was developed by James Cameron and Lawrence Yaggi of Cleveland Ohio, and submitted to the US Ordnance Depar...

The Burnside carbine was originally invented by Ambrose Burnside - the man who would later command the Army of the Potomac and after whom sideburns would be named. Burnside came up with the idea while stationed in Mexico as a young officer, and resigned his commission in 1853. A substantial amoun...

The M1915 bolo bayonet was originally the brainchild of US Army Captain Hugh D. Wise, Quartermaster with the 9th Infantry in the Philippines. In 1902, he recommended the implement in a letter to his superior officers, noting that a bolo style of bayonet (ie, one with a widened machete-like blade...