Andrew Burgess was an extremely prolific gun designer who gets very little recognition today. One of has particularly interesting weapons was a pump-action, folding shotgun. Because Spencer already had a patent on the use of the forearm as the pump, Burgess designed his gun to use a sliding sleev...

The Blake was one of many rifle designs submitted to the US Army trials that would ultimately result in the adoption of the Krag-Jorgensen as the US Army's standard rifle. The main innovation of Blake's design was a unique ammunition "packet" system which held 7 cartridges. The rifle would be loa...

Siam, now known as Thailand, was one of the few independent south Asian nations around the turn of the 20th century. Looking to modernize its military to protect against colonial imposition, is decided in 1903 to adopt a copy of the Mauser Gewehr 98 rifle. Siam (which changed its name to Thailand...

Today's book is really more of a pamphlet than a proper book, but it still serves well given its purpose. It is Rifles of the Snow by Doug Bowser and Powers Dunaway, and it is an introduction and basic handbook of Finnish military rifles - specifically Mosin-Nagants. While Finland used a wide var...

During WWII, the Turkish government wound up in possession of several thousand (between 5k and 10k) French Berthier rifles, mostly 1907/15 models, but also some Mle 1916s. There is some question as to exactly how, but the most likely explanation appears to be a shipment of arms from Syria to Iraq...

The M60 light machine gun is something of a contentious subject. Many veterans who used it in combat in Vietnam remember it very fondly despite its design defects, while many more recent users detest it. I think I know why - because many of the M60s flaws were related to its long-term durability,...

We met up with Greg - who runs Allegheny Arsenal - at a gun show a couple weeks ago, and this is the first of a couple interviews we did with him on the MG34 and its mount. Greg can do anything that needs to be done to a Lafette mount, and stocks all the parts you'll need to get your 34 running a...

Today, we take a look at a reproduction FP45 Liberator pistol. These pistols were originally designed to be scattered across occupied Europe in huge numbers, and literally a million of them were made during WWII. The plans fell through, though, and almost all of them were simply scrapped.

While we were visiting the Institute of Military Technology, we took a few minutes to check out their two 5-barrel Nordenfelt guns and chat with Joe from GardnerGuns.com about them. The Nordenfelt was one of the early manually-operated "machine guns" not seen much in the United States (the Gatlin...

This week, we will be featuring all Swiss weapons here at Forgotten Weapons. Kind of like Shark Week, but more land-locked. We'll kick off today with a video showing you around a Swiss LMG-25 light machine gun we found for sale at Cornet & Company in Brussels (a better gun shop than any I've foun...

The Sturmgewehr 45 (aka Gerat 06H) was the first functional roller-delayed blowback rifle developed, and it was slated to replace the StG44 as Germany's primary combat rifle when WWII ended. We have a reproduction of one made exactly to original spec, and we wanted to see how it would have fared ...

The Volksturmgewehr Gustloff (commonly and incorrectly called the VG1-5) was a last-ditch rifle developed by Germany at the end of World War II. Only a few thousand were made, and they did not make a significant impact on the war. The rifle was intended to are the Volksturm, the German equivalent...

We had the opportunity to take a look at a PTR-44 semiauto reproduction of a German Sturmgewehr today, and it's a gorgeous rifle. There were some issues reported by early owners (including miscut chambers due, actually, to incorrect dimensions on the original German blueprints) so we're eager to ...

It may look like we're only interested in military arms, but that's not the case. We're mostly interested in military guns, but there are plenty of other interesting corners of the firearms world to explore too.

While we were visiting one particular collector, we ended up having a great time t...

The "Bigot" was a modification of an M1911 .45 caliber pistol developed by the Office of Strategic Services during WW2. The OSS was a clandestine operations service, the predecessor of the CIA. The Bigot was intended as a way for commandos to quietly eliminate sentries - although we are not sure ...

We have another experimental German WWII piece for you today, Mauser's last-ditch "Volkspistole". It was developed at the end of the war as an extremely inexpensive home guard weapon, although how much use a pistol would have been in fighting off the Red Army and US Army is pretty questionable. T...

Charles Manville developed this weapon in the 1930s as a riot control tool, and they were built in 12ga, 25mm, and 37mm. We should point out that the 12ga version was for tear gas rounds only (like today's 12ga flare launchers) and not safe to use with high-pressure ammunition. Anyway, it was int...

We have a brief video from a friend of the Forgotten Weapons site showing a standard M1915 Chauchat in use. Although short, the video does a good job of showing the gun's rate of fire and general operation. You can see the open magazine design that caused so much trouble, and see how the heavy re...

Today we have one of the oldest guns we've looked at, a Lorenzoni repeating flintlock pistol. The system was designed by an Italian gunmaker in Florence name Michele Lorenzoni. They were made in very small numbers, and the workmanship is stunning, especially considering that they were first manuf...

Japanese Papa Nambu Pistol with Matching Stock

We have been able to find very little information on the Vitali 1910 automatic pistol, but we did have the opportunity to take a look at one recently. It is very clearly marked Vitali 1910 Terni, but bears no other markings whatsoever. The gun is much more typical of its era than the Hino-Komuro,...

Amerigo Cei-Rigotti was a major in the Italian Bersaglieri (light infantry) in 1900, wen his innovative self-loading rifle design was first introduced. Unlike many or the very early semiauto rifle designs, the Cei-Rigotti is a light, handy, and pretty compact rifle:

The rifle was select-fire, ...

Dolf Goldsmith is a renowned author and machine gun expert, having written landmark books on the Maxim, Vickers, and Browning machine guns, and having been an avid shooter and gun collector for more than 60 years. We had the pleasure of speaking with him at the SAR West gun show last month, and d...

The Hotchkiss Universal is a pretty interesting submachine gun, despite its rather clumsy appearance. The overriding design intent was to make a very compact folding carbine, and Hotchkiss certainly met that objective. However, the gun ended up being too expensive and complex to achieve any real ...