-
Experimental Remington-Keene: Preventing Magazine Detonations
This is a fascinating experimental Remington Keene rifle, build in an attempt to alleviate concerns about magazine tube detonation. With centerfire ammunition in a linear tube magazine, there was an ever-present (if very slim) risk of a bullet detonating the primer ahead that it was resting again...
-
Colt Sidehammer "Root" Dragoon Prototype
During the development of the 1860 Army revolver, Colt did consider mechanical options other than simply scaling up the 1851 Navy pattern. One of these, as evidenced by this Colt prototype, was an enlarged version of the 1855 Pocket, aka Root, revolver. That 1855 design used a solid frame and had...
-
Italian Trials Czech ZK-391 Semiauto Rifle
The ZK-391 is one in a series of Czech developmental semiautomatic rifles designed by Josef KouckĂ˝. It was developed initially in 1939 (hence the "39" in the designation), and was tested by the Italian military in 1943. It was ultimately not put into production, but nonetheless is an interesting ...
-
SA80 History: The First L85 Mockups (Sterling and Stoner)
The British military had been working towards a reduced-power cartridge since the end of World War 2, and the ultimate adoption of the FAL/SLR in 7.62x51mm NATO did not end their interest in the concept. It would not be long before the roots of SA80 would take hold, and today we are looking at th...
-
SA80 History: XL60 Series in 4.85mm
Once the basic configuration of the new British rifle was determined, the next step was to build a series of prototypes. The design that took form was basically a bullpup copy of the Armalite AR-18. The design team at Enfield were mostly senior draftsmen, with virtually no firearms experience amo...
-
SA80 History: XL70 Series Final Prototypes (Individual Weapon and LSW)
By 1980, the scheduled deadline for adopting the L85 and L86 was rapidly approaching, and the weapons should have been in the last stages of fine-tuning before production began. This was not the case, however - testing was still uncovering critical problems in the guns.
The goal for these weap...
-
SA80 History: The Pre-Production XL85 and XL86
The SA80 saga continues today with the final pre-production versions of the L85A1 and L86A1, although at this point they still both carry XL designations, as they were not yet formally adopted weapons. In these weapons we can see a couple last distinctive mechanical changes, but perhaps more impo...
-
SA80 History: L22A2 and Experimental L85 Carbines
One of the original design intentions of the SA80 project was to replace the infantry rifle and the submachine gun with a single weapon that could fulfill both roles - hence the choice of a bullpup configuration. This would, theoretically, allow rifle ballistics and also SMG handling and maneuver...
-
1891 Salvator-Dormus: The First Automatic Pistol
The Salvator-Dormus has the distinction of being the world’s first semiauto pistol, being patented in 1891. It is chambered for the 8mm Dormus cartridge, and holds 5 rounds in a Mannlicher type clip. Only about 50 of these pistol were made, mostly for an Austrian military trial in 1896/7 (this pa...
-
Savage .25 ACP Prototype Pocket Pistols
Savage was very successful with their .32 ACP and .380 ACP pocket pistols, and in the 1910s was interested in also breaking into the .25 ACP market, to compete with the Colt 1908 "Baby Browning". Savage invested in all the tooling to make a new blowback .25, but never put them into serial product...
-
Schwarzlose 1901 Toggle-Delayed Prototype
Andreas Schwarzlose was a German designer who created several very interesting and unusual handgun designs (in addition to his 1907 heavy machine gun, which was adopted as a standard arm of the Austro-Hungarian military). His first handgun was the model 1898, a short recoil, rotating bolt pistol ...
-
Sosso 1941 Italian Prototype Pistol
The Model 1941 Sosso is a huge Italian experimental semiauto pistol designed by Giulio Sosso. It uses a short recoil locking mechanism and is chambered for standard 9x19mm Parabellum ammunition, but its more unusual feature is its magazine. Instead of using a traditional spring and follower, the ...
-
Prototype Friberg/Kjellman Flapper-Locking Semiauto Rifle
The origins of flap-locking (as used in the G41(W), G43, DShK, DP, and RPD, among others) goes back to a Swedish Lieutenant Friberg in 1870, who patented the system. At that time, however, the fouling endemic to black powder made self-loading firearms effectively impossible and so the concept wou...
-
Unique Ross Experimental A2 Pistol Prototype
This is a very rare Ross automatic pistol, patented in 1903 by Charles Ross, of the Ross Rifle Company in Quebec. It is a short recoil, toggle locked design, made for the .45 Ross proprietary cartridge (although efforts were made, unsuccessfully, to make a .45 ACP version for the US 1907 pistol t...
-
SIG AK-53: A Truly Weird Forward-Operating Rifle
One of the most mechanically unusual rifles I have had the chance to examine is the SIG AK-53. One of a long line of interested experimental self-loading designs made by SIG between the 1920s and 1950s, the AK53 is a gas operated rifle with a fixed breechblock and a barrel that cycles forward whe...
-
Belgian GP35: The First Military Browning High Power
The Grande Puissance - High Power - was John Browning's last firearms design. In fact, he only began the design; it was taken to completion by his protege Dieudonné Saive at FN in Belgium. It was the best military handgun of the time, with a double-stack 13-round magazine capacity, and chambered ...
-
Smith & Beecham Prototype Polymer High Power
The South African company Smith and Beecham was not a large operation, and their most notable product was a .380 caliber compact pistol, of which not more than 2000 were ever made (it was not a success). Experimentally, the company also developed a polymer frame for the Browning High Power, howev...
-
FAL in the North: The Canadian C1A1
Canada was the first country to adopt the FAL rifle, purchasing trials rifles from FN within weeks of the formal standardization of the 7.62mm NATO cartridge. Canada acquired production rights to the rifle along with the technical package form FN, and spent 18 months converting the drawings into ...
-
Hiram's Extra Light Maxim Gun
Designed in an effort to compete with the then-new Colt/Browning air cooled 1895 machine gun, the Extra-Light Maxim weighted in at just 27 (maybe 28) pounds for the gun, and 44 pounds with tripod. This may sound heavy, but it was a remarkable improvement over the 100+ pounds of most models of Max...
-
Finnish m/44 Prototype Blowback 9mm Pistol
The m/44 pistol was intended to be a lower-cost replacement for the Lahti L35 pistol for the Finnish Defense Forces, but production delays resulted in the first batch of 25 examples not being completed until after the end of the Continuation War. Treaties limited Finland's right to conduct arms d...
-
FN Grand Browning: The European 1911 that Never Happened
When John Browning licensed his handgun patents, the North American rights were granted to Colt, and the Western European rights to FN in Belgium. Browning provided the patents and patent model guns to the companies, and they were then free to interpret the design however they thought best. In th...
-
H&K Mk23 SOCOM .45 Development
The H&K Mk 23 pistol was developed in the 1990s for the US Special Operations Command and US Navy. The goal was to produce an "offensive handgun" that could serve as a primary armament for a special forces operator as well as a backup arm. It was required to be no more than 12 inches long, fit a ...
-
HK-32 Prototype in 7.62x39mm
Among the large family of roller-delayed rifles produced by Heckler & Koch, one of the rarest and least known is the HK32. This was the select-fire shoulder rifle chambered in 7.62x39mm. These rifles appeared in H&K sales literature for a time, but were only made in very small numbers for one or ...
-
Lightweight Experimental Lanchester SMGs
George Lanchester was the engineer responsible for originally reverse engineering the German MP28 submachine gun for production by the British, under the designation Lanchester. Once he finished that design work, the gun was put into production by the Sterling Engineering Company, and Lanchester ...