A little while back I had a chance to take an Austen MkII out to the range. There were only a couple hundred of these ever made, at the end of World War Two in Australia. The Mk I Austen was essentially a Sten made with some die-cast components, as this was a specialty of the Australian firm cont...

Engraved pistols are not just the domain of antiques; they are being made right now, on the most modern platforms. This is the "Arabesque", a project between Walther and Bottega Incisioni Giovanelli. The base gun is a Walther Q5 Match, and engraver Dario Cortini put nearly 140 hours of work into ...

The American Legion was founded in 1919 as a veterans service organization for soldiers who served in World War One, and they chose the 10th anniversary of America's entrance into the war to make a mass pilgrimage back to France. Calling themselves the Second American Expeditionary Force, some 20...

Designed by one Frank Thomas Jr. in the 1970s, this pistol was produced by the AJ Ordnance company of Covina California, and named after its creator. It was designed to be a concealed carry pistol chambered for .45 ACP ammunition without needing a manual safety. Thomas wanted to avoid exposed ham...

In 2004, a trio of small arms enthusiasts began an effort to reproduce the Vietnam-era China Lake 40mm pump action grenade launcher. They displayed their first prototype at SHOT Show, and (not surprisingly) got quite a lot of interest in it. Their production plans quickly went form 1 to 3 to 10 a...

Today is a look at a Yugoslav M48 Mauser. This was the standardized model that Yugoslavia adopted to replace its assortment of repaired and rebuild older Mauser rifles in the aftermath of World War Two. It was a very finely made rifle, with all milled parts, and 238,000 were made between 1950 and...

I have been wanting one of these rifles for a long time, and with this example I think I have found a fantastic example. This is a Kar98a carbine made in 1918 and used in World War One, and then refurbished by the Weimar government and used by police forces. It probably remained in police use thr...

When I got this Model 1891 Argentine rifle, I assumed it was the unfortunately result of someone's experimenting with chrome plating parts. All the small parts are chromed and then heavily worn, while the barrel and receiver remain blued. Frankly, I think it looks awful, but it was in the lot wit...

After World War Two, the new NATO defense alliance held a series of trials to adopt a standard cartridge and infantry rifle. This would eventually devolve and the goal of a standardized rifle would be abandoned, but during the early trials there were three main contenders: the British EM-2, the A...

After World War One, the French military set up a program to modernize all of its weaponry, and that included a replacement for the Mle 1916 light infantry cannon. An anti-tank gun had not been necessary during the Great War, as Germany never fielded tanks in substantial numbers - but as a pionee...

Colonel Thomas Thornton was a wealthy and somewhat flamboyant character in England in the late 18th and early 19th century. He commanded a militia unit with which he had some disagreement, and which mutinied against his comment at Roborough Camp in 1795. Some years later, he commissioned this qu...

The United States adopted the Vickers gun as the Model 1915, but one of its uses was as an aircraft machine gun. Since it fired from a closed bolt, the design was easily fitted with synchronizer or interruptor gear systems to fire through the arc of a propeller. The French developed an incendiary...

Today, courtesy of Mike Carrick from Arms Heritage magazine, we are taking a look at a quite old Indian matchlock "toradar". Not just any matchlock, but one with a 4-shot revolving cylinder. Matchlocks appeared in India in the 1500s, and repeating ones like this appeared by the 1600s - firearms d...

I'm getting in some more practice for Finnish Brutality this week, once again running a match with the M39 Mosin and TT33 Tokarev that I am planning to take with me to Finland. This time, the match only has 18 shooters, so the match director decided to combine stages together to create two long s...

Another month, another Q&A!

00:24 - Why did the British adopted the Besa?
03:51 - Reproduction French WW1 uniforms
04:54 - Could the Magpul Masada/ACR worked as a replacement AR upper?
08:02 - Why are auto-ejecting magazines not popular?
11:03 - What smaller countries have impressive small...

I recently had the chance to do some collaborative filming with Nicolas Moran , and figured it would be a good chance to do a Q&A specifically on issues related to tanks. Nicolas is a Major in the US Army Reserve, who deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan in Abrams tanks and Bradley APCs, and is ...

Today's Q&A is brought to you by the Patrons who make Forgotten Weapons possible! Not actually by Glenlivet Nadurra (pelted cask) - although maybe that's why it went longer than normal. Our questions this month are:

0:00:50 - Why not post a series of videos all back-to-back?
0:02:58 - Most I...

0:00:36 - Why so few .380 ACP military pistols?
0:02:09 - Thoughts on the NGSW program guns
0:03:24 - Exciting new things in the firearms industry today
0:04:21 - Why did the USSR not use detachable mags on the SKS?
0:06:40 - Books on the Krag and Trapdoor Springfield
0:08:05 - Ideal guns fo...

The Cody Firearms Museum recently held its third annual Arsenals of History symposium, gathering professionals from firearms museums across the world to discuss issues specifically related to this particular speciality within the museum world. This year the symposium had a particular focus on soc...

Time for another monthly Q&A!

00:18 - Guns that exceeded and fell short of my expectations?
03:14 - Why did the US keep the 1903 instead of the 1917 after WW1?
04:59 - Bren guns in .30-06
07:07 - Book on French handguns or bayonets
08:45 - My jobs before Forgotten Weapons became full-time
...

Samuel Johannes Pauli was born outside Bern, Switzerland in 1766, and became an engineer of wide interests. Among them were bridge design, passenger-carrying balloons (he would work seriously on a 15-20 passenger balloon service between London and Paris later in life), and firearms. Only a few ye...

The pinfire system was an early cartridge type which saw widespread use in Europe, but was not widely adopted in the United States. First invented by a French designer named Pauly, it was made commercially feasible by Casimir Lefacheaux. It was Casimir's son Eugene, however, who took the pinfire ...

Arne Boberg founded Boberg Arms in 2009 and released his first pistol in 2011, the XR9-S. This was followed by the longer XR9-L, and then the XR-45S in 2014. The conceit of the Boberg pistol is basically that of the Bullpup rifle: maximizing barrel length while minimizing overall length. To this ...

The end of the year means I am going to take a moment for a bit of a retrospective, this time on the cannons that have appeared on Forgotten Weapons over the years. From 20mm up to 76mm, let's enjoy some properly big guns!