The Dominican Republic is one of the few Central and South American nations which did not buy Mauser rifles when they were the top of the line military armament available. Instead, the Dominicans waiting until the 1950s, and bought surplus long and short Mauser rifles from Brazil. Using their new...

Germany established their colony of German South West Africa (Deutsch-Südwestafrika, now Namibia) in 1884, as part of its late attempt to become a colonial power to rival the United Kingdom. The soldiers deployed to protect German interests t here were the Kaiserliche Schutztruppen, and they were...

In the ongoing arms race between France and Germany, the Mauser 71/84 was the first German repeating rifle. Paul Mauser began work on it in the late 1870s, patented the design in 1881, and it was adopted formally in 1884. Production began in 1885, with a total of 1,161,148 rifles being delivered ...

With the development of the smokeless Gewehr 88 “Commission Rifle”, the German Army finally made a serious effort to bring their cavalry units up to a modern standard. There had never been a carbine variant of the Mauser 71/84 produced, and even by the late 1880s many German cavalrymen were still...

This Mauser is one that I simply have not been able to definitively identify. It is marked “Haiti 1957” and “CZ 29 - 53”, serial numbered 10, and chambered for an 8mm cartridge (probably 8x57 Mauser). However, the rifles known to have been purchased by Haiti were FN model 24/30 short rifles in .3...

The British military started using training rifles in 1883, with the .297/.230 Morris cartridge in adapted Martini rifles. This would give way to the .22 rimfire cartridge for training shortly after the Boer War, and a substantial variety of rifles converted to .22 rimfire. Standardization would ...

Developed by BSA immediately after World War Two, the No7 MkI training rifle was the only one of the British Enfield trainers to use a magazine. Only 2500 of these rifles were produced, contracted by the Royal Air Force and delivered in 1948. Their magazine is a commercial BSA 5-round magazine mo...

Initially intended to be used only by the British Army (the Land Service), in 1950 the No8 rifle’s role was expanded to cover all three services. Unlike the other trainers made up to this point, the No8 MkI was designed as a target and competition rifle, instead of a service rifle reduced in cali...

Peru acquired a large stock of Model 1891 Mausers from Argentina in 1901, and the carbine we are looking at today is a conversion from one of those long rifles - not a factory carbine. A few hundred of these conversions were done in the 1930s for the Peruvian Navy, and the result is a pretty inte...

In 1942, the British government instituted a development program to design a new simplified rifle to replace the No4 MkI Lee Enfield. The CSAD (Central Small Arms Department) came up with a design using a quite simple receiver machined form a small steel billet. It was a rifle wholly distinct for...

Uruguay first adopted a Mauser rifle in the 1880s, with the single-shot Mauser model 1871. After an abortive attempt to update those rifles to a small bore smokeless powder cartridge (the Dovitiis conversion), they opted to purchase Mauser 95s from DWM in the new (and excellent) 7x57mm Mauser car...

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 ...

Today's Ethiopian Oddity is a rifle that began its like as an early Lee Enfield MkI made by London Small Arms. It has the original buttstock, early style safety, volley sights, and magazine cutoff from that configuration. However, at some point it appears to have been reworked by an Ethiopian arm...

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...

Today we are taking a look at an early production M1891 Mosin Nagant rifle. This one has had quite a busy history...it was originally manufactured at the Izhevsk Arsenal in 1894, with several of the features of a very early M91 (like the palm rest on the trigger guard and the sling swivel on the ...

In 1943, experimentation began in Great Britain, Canada, and Australia into developing a shortened and lightened version of the Lee Enfield rifle. In Australia, the work was done on the No1 Mk3* rifle, as the Lithgow Arsenal had never switched over to production of the No4 rifle.

We have thre...

In 1943 the need for a lighter and handier version of the Lee Enfield rifle became clear throughout the British Commonwealth, and experimentation began in Canada, Britain, and Australia. The work in Britain would culminate in the No5 Mk1 rifle, but the Canadian arsenal at Long Branch would try so...

The original 1890 Berthier carbine was designed for cavalry, but a slightly modified version was produced (in small numbers) with a bayonet lug, for use by the Gendarmerie. In 1892, the French military would adopt that same carbine for use by an assortment of troops who were better suited with a ...

When the Modele 1890 Berthier carbine was adopted for the French cavalry, the decision was made to produce a special version for the Cuirassier troops. These were the elite heavy cavalry, equipped with steel breastplates and elaborate plumed helmets. They existed in that very brief window where t...

The Berthier was adopted in 1890 as a new repeating rifle for the French cavalry, who were at that time still using single shot Gras carbines. The Lebel rifle had been adopted in 1886 for the infantry, but because of its tube magazine it was not conducive to being shortened into carbine form. And...

Louis Marie Daudeteau was a persistent and prolific arms designer in France in the late 19th century. Born in 1845, he gained substantial military experience in the Franco-Prussian War, and afterwards turned to weapons design. He built a variety of different arms for military consideration, from ...

The sharpshooters of the French colonial forces in Indochina (the Tirailleurs Indochinois) had never been issued Lebel rifles, and were still using single shot Gras rifles at the turn of the century. The Indochinese soldiers were rather short statured, and the Lebel was simply too long of a rifle...

When World War One broke out in 1914, France mobilized millions of men into military service - and it became abundantly clear that a lot of new rifles would need to be manufactured. The 1886 Lebel was no longer in production and was a slow rifle to make in any case - but the 1907 Colonial Berthie...

The "Modifié 1916" update to the Berthier system of rifles and carbines marked a major improvement in the guns combat effectiveness - really the first substantial overhaul to the design since it was developed in 1890. The two main elements of the upgrade were the addition of an upper handguard an...