Two of the scarcest and least known of John Pedersen's designs are the Model GY and GX rifles, which are basically copies of the production model of the M1 Garand. After losing out in the Army rifle trials with his toggle-locked rifle design, Pedersen made one last attempt to garner a US military...

Good inventors are always trying out new solutions to problems. Those solutions may or may not work (hence Thomas Edison’s 10,000 ways not to make a light bulb), but the attempts can often give us interesting insight into the designer’s intentions. In this case, we have a toolroom S&W No3 revolve...

Elbonia had a brief partnership with Egypt in the mid 1950s through which they acquired some early-production Hakim rifles. These were used along with Israeli surplus MG-34 machine gun barrel jackets to build an experimental Hakim LMG for Elbonian service. The gun was fed by adapted German MG-13 ...

In 1904, a man named Orlando Scott from Ontario filed a patent application for a safety device for breechloading rifles and shotguns. His idea was basically a spring loaded grip safety in the fore-end of the stock, which would have to be depressed in order to either cock or fire the weapon. His p...

In the mid 1950s, the Winchester company designed a compact 9mm submachine gun for military use. It was internally called the. "NATO Burp Gun", and according to Winchester historian Herbert House, was developed in part (or with the assistance of) Melvin Johnson. The design was a simple tubular re...

In August 1913, the British War Office wrote to Sir Charles Ross requesting a sample automatic rifle for trials in the UK. Ross was able to submit a prototype on May 1914, which was tested at Enfield - but only fired 308 rounds before the test ended, suggesting that something important probably b...

Today we are taking a look at a very unusual prototype rifle, courtesy of Legacy Collectibles. I suspect - but have no direct evidence - that this was designed by one Francis K. Young, a man who patented several very similar systems. What makes it unusual is that it operates by having the cartrid...

Today we are taking a look at the history of the monolithic polymer AR-15 lower receiver. By "monolithic" I mean a design which integrates the receiver, grip, and buttstock all into a single unit, rather than the various attempts to simply make a standard AR receiver out of polymer. This is impor...

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...

Patented in 1868 by Colonel G.H. Money and Mr. M. Walker, this rifle was one of the 10 finalists in the British breechloading rifle trials of 1868. It is a simple falling block system with an internal hammer. In the second set of trials, it proved to be middle of the pack in rapidity of fire (20...

This unique Bergmann Model 1910 was made by Anciens Etablissements Pieper with a grip angled slightly back compared to the standard model. It was also fitted with a square front sight and square rear notch in place of the standard barleycorn style sights. Its serial number (8800) puts it right in...

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...

Romania adopted the PKM in 1966, and began manufacturing their own direct copy at Cugir. In the 1990s, the plant designed a model intended for paratroopers, with a shortened barrel and unique side folding stock. Romanian special operations and paratroop units tested them, but declined to purchase...

Today we are going to take a looks at a series of six prototype Roth Theodorovic pistols. These were a design that competed in Austrian pistol trials around the turn of the century, and eventually lost out to the Roth Krnka (adopted as the Roth-Steyr M.7).

Yesterday we looked at the development of the Skorpion PDW/SMG in 9x19mm Parabellum both in the 1960s and then when it was revisited in the 1990s at CZ. Today I have the chance to take one of the 1990s Skorpion 9×19 models out the the range for some firing. I was expecting it to be a fairly viole...

Harrington & Richardson was one of the main contractors for the M14 rifle program, and they also had been a major producer of the M1 Garand rifle. In particular, H&R had produced a .22 rimfire training rifle to mimic the handling of the M1 Garand, which was adopted by the US military as the MC-58...

Immediately upon the liberation of France in 1944, the French military began a process of developing a whole new suite of small arms. As it applied to SMGs, the desire was for a design in 9mm Parabellum (no more 7.65mm French Long), with an emphasis on something light, handy, and foldable. All th...

The final iteration of the Danish Schouboe pistol is this, the model 1916. Produced in prototype quantities only, it took the features of the 1910 pattern (safety and external barrel pivot) and made a few more changes. The slide no longer telescopes over the barrel - possibly to add mass and red...

With the impending success of Colt’s program to develop new .45 caliber pistol for the US military (the 1911), the company began to look for ways to exploit the work that had gone into it. They had previously sold lots of .38 caliber automatic pistols, so why not offer a .38 caliber version of t...

Once Lee-Metford rifle production was in place, the British began working on a carbine version of the same action for their cavalry. In 1893 a trial run of 100 carbines were made, and today we are looking at serial number 32 of that batch. These carbines differ in several ways from the ultimately...

Before the Austro-Hungarian Empire adopted the Roth Steyr Model 1907 as its official cavalry pistol, they of course went through a series of pistol trials. The winners of two sets of trials were the Roth Steyr Models of 1904 and 1906, and today we have an example of each to look at.

Finland's standard light machine gun going into the Winter War was the LS-26, a gun which did not succeed in field use. It was complex and cumbersome, and Finnish troops quickly replaced it with captured Russian DP-27 LMGs. Part of the problem of the LS-26 was it's recoil-operated design. Finnish...

Development of the CZ-2000 began in the 1970s as a replacement for the vz.58 rifle. The project was named "Lada", and was essentially an improved AK-74 rifle chambered for the 5.45x39mm cartridge. The new rifle was mechanically an AK, but had a number improved features including a thumb-operated ...

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...