In our continuing series on the development of the British Lee Enfield rifles, we are looking at the CLLE conversions today. In 1907 the British adopted a new universal short rifle (the SMLE) that used charger (aka stripper) clips. Previous models of the Lee in British service had to be loaded on...

In the aftermath of the Boer War, the British military needed to address critical issues of practical marksmanship with its troops. The Long Lee rifles it had deployed to South Africa suffered significant problems in making real-world hits on the battlefield. In addition to investing in better mu...

When the British adopted a new high-velocity spitzer bullet for the .303 cartridge, they had to update their rifles to use it. Specifically, the sights had to be recalibrated for the flatter trajectory of the new MkVII ammunition. In addition, the sight picture was changed form a barleycorn front...

This is a rifle I have not been able to find any specific documentation about or even reference to - but we can tell what it it, and that's a very interesting story. The rifle is mechanically a Schlegelmilch design, from Louis Schlegelmilch of the Spandau Arsenal in Germany. An earlier 1896 patte...

The Schultz & Larsen company in Otterup, Denmark was a venture formed by a gunsmithing shop and a very successful target shooter to make precision rifles. In 1919, they are able to purchase a bunch of German arsenal tooling for pennies because of the Treaty of Versailles. They made a number of ri...

There is a ton to go over in this video...I noticed the Fix when it first came out, but it didn't become really interesting to me until the version in 8.6mm Blackout hit the market. Fundamentally, the Fix is a very light, modular, and ergonomic bolt action utility rifle. In 8.6mm, I think it is a...

The Japanese military made the decision to move from a 6.5mm infantry rifle to a more powerful 7.7mm cartridge in the 1930s, with specifications for the new rifle proposed in 1938. In response, the Nagoya and Kokura Arsenals developed new models of rifle and carbine.

What we are looking at tod...

When the German Army announced in 1934 that it would be adopting a new standard rifle, the JP Sauer company jumped at the chance to submit a model for consideration. Auger has a complete production line for the Mauser pattern rifles, having produced Gewehr 98s during World War One, and it had acc...

The German company Erma (Erfurter Maschinenfabrik) developed a .22 rimfire kit for the Mauser 98 for the German Army in the 1920s. It was used for training, both to allow for more effective fundamental practice without the noise and recoil of full size cartridges but also to reduce ammunition cos...

The British Royal Navy tended to accumulate some of the obsolescent patterns of Enfield rifles around the turn of the 19th century, as the Army had higher priority for the new types of rifle. This resulted in a rather odd and poorly-documented pattern, the Charger-Loading Lee Enfield (CLLE) MkI N...

Today we have a very odd BSA prototype Long Lee rifle. The details of its production are unknown, but it has good provenance; the Charnwood Ordnance collection. What makes the rifle unusual is a unique style of split charger guide unlike either the SMLE type fixed guides or the earlier CLLE guide...

Today's Ethiopian Oddity is a rifle that appears to be a Vetterli action with a distinctly Mauser flair. The bolt is styled after the Vetterli system (including rear locking lugs) but has a non-functional Mauser flag safety lookalike instead of a functional Vetterli safety. The stock, sights, and...

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...

Today's Ethiopian Oddity is a Gewehr 1871 carbine - remarkably still with its matching bolt - rechambered for a small bore, smokeless powder cartridge. It is a quite interesting example of an Ethiopian armorer's work...

Today's Ethiopian Oddity appears to be a factory-built Mauser short rifle, but embellished with a couple replacement parts (nosecap retainer, stock, bayonet lug) and some truly mysterious markings. The top of the receiver has been milled down flat, and hand-engraved with a quite odd crest, along ...

There were many different versions of the Ross straight-pull bolt action rifle made and adopted by the Canadian military. However, the version that Sir Charles Ross thought would be best was only ever made as a small run of prototypes. this rifle was called the Military Match M10, in .280 Ross ca...

In the 1930s, Portugal was looking to update its small arms, and wanted to get some top-shelf K98k Mausers to replace its 1904 Mauser-Vergueiros. The country was on good terms with Germany, and so Portugal placed an order for 100,000 K98k rifles in 7.92mm Mauser caliber from Mauser Oberndorf in 1...

When the Finnish Army adopted the m/27 improved pattern of the Mosin Nagant rifle, there was one group of soldiers who were not really satisfied with it. Finland had a cavalry brigade - one of the elite elements of the force - who wanted something more like the German Kar98AZ carbines they had be...

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...

While helping to unpack a new shipment of French rifles at IO Inc / Royal Tiger Imports, I came across several examples of Berthiers that were modified to not use clips. There were a couple different ways the Ethiopian gunsmiths did this, so let's have a look...

When Estonia declared independence from Russia in 1918, it had no formal military. After winning a 2-year War of Independence, the nation needed to set up its own armed forces. The rifles available in Estonia were a mix of Mosin Nagants, Arisakas, Pattern 1914 Enfields, and German Mausers. The mo...

During 1944, the US and UK cooperatively ran a major effort to drop arms and equipment to French Resistance forces in preparation for the Allied landings in France. It began as Operation Carpetbagger with night drops from B24 Liberators in January 1944, and escalated into the summer. Eventually a...

During the Russo-Japanese War, the Japanese government helped smuggle arms to potential revolutionaries in Russia, in hopes of provoking a domestic crisis that would divert Russia military force form the war. This included a plot to buy many thousands of surplus Vetterli rifles (as well as C96 Ma...

Greenland is a remote and desolate land without a significant industrial base, but there is a demand for hunting rifles there. As the place has long been a Danish colony since 1814, its trade was restricted to Denmark - including rifles. The Danish military received a substantial number of M1917 ...