The HS Produkt company, best known for making the XD pistols sold in the US by Springfield, was originally called IM Metal, and was a general fabrication company in Croatia. When the Croatian Homeland War began, there was a clear need for domestic small arms production, and the two engineers at I...

The original Scorpion was adopted in .32 ACP caliber as the vz.61 by the Czechoslovakian military – but development of the Scorpion did not end there. Prototypes were also developed in .380, 9×18 Makarov, and 9x19mm. In particular, the 9x19mm version, designated vz.68, got as far as field trials ...

The vz.52 pistol was originally adopted by Czechoslovakia as a short-term option, with an intention to quickly replace it with something better. The problem was that without a viable domestic pistol, the Soviet Union would have forced Czechoslovakia to start production of the TT-33 Tokarev. Out o...

During the late 1920 and early 1930s, the Walther company worked on developing a military pistol in 9x19mm. They began from the basis of the PP/PPK design, and produced three separate designs, the first two designed “MP” (Military Pistol) and the third being the Armee Pistole (which was followed ...

As the end of World War Two loomed close, the German arms industry turned to a number of Volkssturm rifle designs. These were the crudest and simplest rifles that could be made to work with minimal time, labor, and raw materials. Most were bolt action rifles chambered for 8x57mm, like the Walther...

William Dodge and his brother were inventors in Washington DC who in the 1870s patented a bunch of different improvements to the Remington Rolling Block, among other guns. This particular one I cannot identify with a specific patent, but to my eye it is a way to give the Rolling Block system a sa...

Isaac Newton Lewis is best known for the Lewis light machine gun, but that was not his only foray into firearms design. He also patented two different types of handguns - one gas operated and this short recoil design. Very little information about this pistol is available, although it was apparen...

The M1915 Howell Automatic Rifle is a conversion of a standard No1 MkIII Lee Enfield rifle into a semiautomatic, through the addition of a gas piston onto the right side of the barrel. Despite its very steampunk appearance, the Howell is actually a quite simple conversion mechanically. The rifle ...

W.E. Knoble of Tacoma, Washington is not a well-known gun designer, and was in fact not a successful gun designer. But he did enter a .45 caliber pistol in the 1907 US pistol trials, and in so doing put his name permanently in the annals of firearms history. In addition to that design, he also ma...

One of the domestic American pistols entered in the US 1907 pistol trials was this short recoil, toggle locked design by W.E. Knoble of Tacoma Washington. Knoble submitted two experimental pistols to the trial, one with a single action trigger and one with a double action trigger - although he wa...

In 1947, the US Army Air Corps (it had not yet become the Air Force) was assessing its pilot survival equipment, and decided that it wanted a smaller and lighter handgun than the Colt 1911. It put forth a tender for new designs in .30 to .35 caliber, and two companies were chosen to produce proto...

The SMLE No1 Mk3 was the iconic British infantry rifle of World War 1, but not the final evolution of the Lee Enfield design. By World War 2 it had been replaced by the new No4 Mk1 Lee Enfield, and this is the story of the interim models.

At the end of WW1, the British recognized several areas...

One of the British lessons form the Boer War was that the distinction between infantry rifles and cavalry carbines was becoming obsolete. In 1902, they would initiate troop trials on a new short rifle pattern, intermediate in length between the old rifles and carbines, and intended to be issued u...

White's experiments in handgun design did not begin with the White-Merrill 1907 submitted to US handgun trials. In 1905 he submitted a patent for features in these two .38 caliber semiauto prototype pistols. These are both short recoil actions, one with a C96-like locking block and one with a rot...

In the aftermath of their rejection in the US 1907 pistol trials, Joseph White and Samuel Merrill continued working on handgun designs. In 1911, Merrill wrote to the Ordnance Department to inquire about whether they would be interested in testing his new design. While the Department was willing, ...

One of the domestic US made pistols entered in the US military pistol trials of 1907 was this White-Merrill design. It is particularly interesting because White and Merrill submitted a manual along with the gun, which describes some of their intentions and thought processes in developing the pist...

Had it not been for the German and Russian invasions in 1939, Poland might have entered the 1940s with a very modern semiauto infantry battle rifle - the wz.38M. Designed by Josef Maroszek (notably also the designer of the wz.35 Ur antitank rifle), the wz.38M is a simple and efficient rifle which...

The Korsac EM-1 (not to be confused with the Thorpe EM-1, which is a completely different rifle) was a bullpup light machine gun based on captured examples of the German FG-42 patatroop rifle. It was developed between 1945 and 1947 by a team led by Polish refugee designer named Korsac.

It was ...

The EM-1 was one of the British post-WWII rifle development projects with the ambitious goal of replacing both the infantry rifle and the submachine gun with a single select-fire weapon optimized for combat within 600 meters (as opposed to the prior doctrine of 1000m effective ranges). The design...

The EM-2 was the rifle that the British pushed for NATO trials in 1950. It was a rifle well ahead of its time in several areas - as a select-fire bullpup rifle, it was intended to replace both the infantry rifle and the submachine gun. Its .280 caliber cartridge was designed with combat ranges of...

I had 10 rounds of .280 British ammunition to work with today, so I opted for several rounds in semiauto (including some slow motion shots) and then one burst at the end. The .280 cartridge is less powerful than the 7.62mm NATO, but in my opinion the EM-2 remains a rifle much better used in semia...

George Fosbery was the British officer (Major, at the time of this particular design) responsible for the quite famous Webley-Fosbery self-cocking revolver, as well as the Paradox system for shotgun slugs and many other lesser known firearms inventions. This rifle was his entry into British trial...

I am joined today by Cy Hudson, to take a look at the early prototypes of the Hudson H9 pistol - nicknamed the Brick and the Boat Anchor - and to discuss the development process of the gun from the initial sketch in MS Paint to the final production guns that are coming off the production line now...

Paul Ribeyrolles was the manager of the Gladiator bicycle factory, and by 1918 he had significant experience in small arms design, having been a core member of the team that designed and built the 1915 CSRG Chauchat automatic rifle and the RSC-1917 semiautomatic rifle. These were forward-looking ...