Here at a forested railroad crossing outside Compiègne in Picardy, France, two rail cars met in November of 1918 - one with members of the Allied/Entente high commend and ones with representatives of Imperial Germany. They met here to end 5 years of slaughter; the German delegation being presente...

The German army captured Blanc Mont Ridge in the early months of World War One and occupied it throughout the years of fighting, fending off repeated French assaults throughout 1915 and 1916. While the ridge looks far from imposing, it is a piece of high ground which overlooks a large part of the...

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...

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 ...

Here we take up the mad minute challenge with the two main belligerents of the Franco-Prussian war, both needle-fire and both using what we now call caseless ammunition. Not ejector needed and no need to pick up your brass. Who will win this epic dual?

A tutorial for the new chassepot cartidge ...

This is a followup to an epicly long vid on the original cartridges: https://youtu.be/iahThVlF7QI

The Chap takes you through a much easier way to confect M1866 Chassepot paper needlefire cartridges for any 45-ish calibre black powder rifle bullet.

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Intro: Composer of this track: Pat...

First in a new series of at least one other video, The Chap talks about French WW2 ammo pouches and his project to make himself a reproduction pair!

Follow my fumbling steps into amateur leatherwork. I'm sure the leathersmiths amongst us with tut, roll eyes, scowl and gnash their teeth but then again, it worked!

The basic breakdown of construction of the pouches (in French) can be found at: https://enguerrandmodelisme.weebly.com/cartouch...

The Chap presents a very good, neat way to make paper tubes for your Dreyse or Chassepot needlefire rifle!

Earlier videos on the topic:

Full luxury Chassepot version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iahThVlF7QI
Simple Chassepot version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mr1cN9FXA9E

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Having previously done to death the use of .32 S&W Long wadcutter in Swiss M82 and M82/29 revolvers, we had another few revolvers handy with which to try it out: an Austro-Hungarian Gasser M98 in 8mm, a French St. Etienne Mle. 92, and a Trocaola (Eibar) "Spanish Model 92", the latter two in 8mm/9...

Chappy presents a nice little French smallbore .22 rimfire carbine of very special significance, which not only has some clever features but also has an interesting pedigree.

The Chap dug out an old French cavalry manual from the pre-WW1 era, so we thought we'd go through their revolver exercises with his St.Etienne Mle. 92 and my Trocaola (Eibar) "Spanish Mle. 92", both in 8mm/92 calibre (NOT LEBEL). How did we get on?

After some competition and mad-minuting, it's about time we take a look at the difference between the pre-war and post-war versions of the MAS 36 and see how the design was optimised for easy manufacturing without compromising on performance.

Chappy tries his hand at the début de siècle pre-WW1 French Berthier Cavalry Carbine exercises. How does he do with his 8x50R Lebel M16 Berthier Mousqueton?

Chap has in itchy trigger finger and finds a handy solution to try out his new antique shootin' iron. All you need are cases, primers and a handy rubber pellet, oh and a drill with 4mm bit.

A little teasing look at Chappie's Manhurin-built SIG SG 540 in .223 Rem on the 300m range.

Blokey likey. It's kinda the M16A1 of the SIG range :)

Also served as practice for working with a handheld Rode Wireless Go in an interview stick.

Chap takes a look at the principle of lever delayed blowback using some uniquely French examples (naturellement, notamment un FAMAS et un AA52), a spring, a brass rod and bits of wood.

We do a deep dive into the trigger mechanism, fire selector and burst fire mechanism of the FAMAS F1 using period docs and Chap's arts 'n' crafts models. The mechanisms illustrate perfectly the ingenious solutions that designers had to come up with for first generation bullpups.

Chappis strips a French MAS-44 from its original wrappings

Welcome to Bloke on the Range Strip Club, where we're only interested in one thing: Will It Strip. This episode: What to do once you've stripped your French 7.5x54 MAS 36 charger? It depends on the piece and whether you're doing it by the book. In any case nimble finger work is involved...

Welcome to Bloke on the Range Strip Club, where we're only interested in one thing: Will It Strip. This episode: can a Swiss 7.5x55 GP11 charger be used to load a French 7.5x54 bolt action rifle, namely a MAS36 or Berthier M34? Let's find out...

Mike gets a chance to have a go on a factory semiauto FAMAS bullpup rifle owned by the gentleman behind the HACH Helvetic Arms Switzerland channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcxfZ9q0qCpq3CBlDNctrCw
He ran Remote Brutality with that rifle, which you can see here: https://www.youtube.com/wa...

Welcome to Bloke on the Range Strip Club, where we're only interested in one thing: Will It Strip. Up today: What happens when you've stripped but you can't blow your load? You have to relieve all that pent up spring pressure somehow! Fear not, the French thought of that (at least for the FM1924/...

Combat in sandy places such as Algeria highlighted that tight tolerancing of the conventional MAT49 32rnd magazine and mag well could cause jamming and feeding issues. The was resolved with the issue of a (19)58 sand magazine with a number of features to render it and the SMG far less sensitive t...