At the end of World War Two, the Mauser factory complex was in the French occupation zone, and more than a few Mauser engineers went to work for the French. Among them were Ludwig Vorgimmler and Theodor Löffler. These two men joined the Centre d’Etudes et d’Armement de Mulhouse (CEAM) and worked ...

With the end of World War Two, it was finally time for France to replace the Hotchkiss 1914 heavy machine gun with something more modern. The German universal machine gun concept had garnered a lot of attention with militaries worldwide, and the French opted to look for just such a design. They w...

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The Chap takes you through how original French Chassepot M1866 paper needlefire cartridges were made, and how he does it. Contains lashings of black powder, and better-than-a-Dryse cartridges!

The Chap takes you through a new metallic conversion kit for the 11mm Chassepot Needle Rifle, which easily converts it to use particular metallic cartridges, and takes it out to the range and shoots it!

The kit is from H&C Collection

Both The Chap and The Bloke try their hands at a rapid fire unlimited mad minute with a MAS 36 in 7.5x54mm French.

This one was rather fun. Also includes a discussion about charger clip automatic ejection at the end.

Bloke and Chap take this well-worn French M16 Berthier Carbine in 8x50R Lebel for a spin. We could say it was fast and smooth, but we'd be totally lying.....

We belive this WW1 piece is in Battlefield 1....

Did you know that the French army had soldiers load 8mm Lebel reduced power gallery cartridges powered by magician's flashpaper? Let The Chap tell you all about them!

Extra keywords:
8x50 berthier flash paper

Monsieur Le Chap and Monsieur Le Bloke shoot a pair of French model 92 revolvers side by side: a proper St. Etienne Mle 92, and a Trocaola-made Mle 92 Espagnol, a Smith & Wesson M&P clone made in the Eibar valley. But which one is better?

So, does the French 7.5x54 MAS-36 automatically eject clips or not? Here is the definitive answer!

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Music Created By : EternalSushi
Song Title: Undertale - Megalovania Elevator Jazz
Credit link: https://goo.gl/PrF6MA
License: https://creativecommons.org

Bloke and Chap discuss the whys and wherefores of how the French 1886 Lebel rifle came about, and why it was obsolete the minute it was introduced. Also digresses into tolerancing, rifle grenades, etc etc etc.

The Chap takes you through his French MAS-36 rifle, and gives it a good wringing out on the range.

Adopted by France for rear echelon troops while front line soldiers were supposed to get a shiny new semiauto, this rifle ended up as a state of the art front line weapon instead. The Germans als...

The Chap shoots some combustible paper cartridges he made to the original pattern in his French M1866 Chassepot Needle Rifle!

The Darne company was one of relatively few private arms manufacturers in France, best known for shotguns. During World War One they got into the machine gun trade, making licensed Lewis guns for the French air service. After making a few thousand of those, Regis Darne designed his own belt-fed m...

The R-5 was a French-made copy of the Sten produced after the 1944 liberation of France. It was built by Gnome et Rhône, a French company best known for making aircraft engines. The Sten was familiar to French forces, as many had been supplied as military aid to the Free French as well as Resista...

I have previously filmed a semiauto Hotchkiss Universal, but until today I'd not had a chance to try shooting an intact, original automatic one. Thanks to Battlefield Vegas, I have the chance today!

Turns out, the French absolutely made the right choice taking the MAT-49 over the Hotchkiss Un...

Every year, the Rio Salado Sportsman's Club host's the Arizona PCC (Pistol-Caliber Carbine) Championships. I signed up initially planning to use my Calico carbine, but my travel schedule kept me from getting the gun in shape to use in time. Instead, I polled my Patrons to choose a replacement, an...

In 1986, the French Army adopted the FR-F2 (Fusil à Répétition F2) as its standard sniper rifle. The F2 was never manufactured new; it was an improvement made on existing FR-F1 rifle by giving them new 7.62mm NATO barrels, new flexible bipods, and thermal sleeves over the barrels. Of 6,000 FR-F1 ...

Today I've taken the FR-F2 to the range to try it out. I'm using the early French Army scope, an APX L806-04. This is a 3.85x optic basically modeled on the German WW2 ZF-4. It has a big simple German post reticle, and the -04 variation indicated that the BDC cam has been calibrated for 7.62mm NATO.

Among all the standard rifles that are coming into the US from Ethiopia through InterOrdnance, there are a handful of really unusual oddballs, and we are going to look at several of them. We have the first one today; a single shot adaptation of a French Mle 1878 Marine Kropatschek. Only a small n...

Long associated with Parisian street gangs called "Apaches" (after the American Indian tribe), there were two main patterns of combination knife/knuckle/firearm made in the mid/late 1800s in France. This one was designed by J. Delhaxhe, and features a solid frame set up as brass knuckles. The fir...

While the French military adopted a .22 rimfire training version of the MAS-36, that rifle (the "Tir Réduit 5.5mm") was intended for military training, and not for formal competition. During World War Two, the design shop as MAS continued working on rimfire designs, and developed an experimental ...

The rarest pattern of factory-made Chassepot is the fusil modèle 1866 pour la cavalerie d'afrique - the Model 1866 rifle for African cavalry. Just 12,000 of these were made by St Etienne in the spring of 1869, as a way to equip the mounted French troops in Algeria with the new needlefire rifle th...

At the Fall 2021 meeting of the American Society of Arms Collectors, I had the opportunity to make a presentation on the development of French military repeating rifles. The story begins with the Mle 1874 Gras, and proceeds through three different patterns of tube-magazine Kropatschek type rifles...