In a last hopeful attempt to get a rifle adopted and produced for the US military, John Pedersen designed his own copy of the M1 Garand rifle in the late 1930s (approximately 1939). His toggle-locked rifles had been irreversibly rejected, and the Garand rifle fully adopted by 1936. Pedersen's exa...

The Swiss factories of SIG and W+F Bern both produced a remarkable number and variety of experimental self-loading rifles in the 1920s, 30s, 40s, and 50s. Nothing would be adopted by the Swiss military until the StG-57, but these two firms were continuously working to develop a military self-load...

The Colt 1907 was one of the significant developmental iterations of the design that would eventually be adopted as the Model 1911 by the US military. This pistol began as John Browning’s Model 1900 in .38 caliber, with the .45ACP cartridge being first created for the Model 1905 iteration. That 1...

On October 1, 1928, the US War Department published a request for semiautomatic rifle designs. The Colt company submitted this .276 caliber rifle to the ensuing trials in 1929. It was designed by Jonathan Edward "Ed" Browning (half brother of John Moses Browning) and was a recoil-operated, tiltin...

Like most other nations with modern military forces. Czechoslovakia was interested in developing a semiautomatic infantry rifle in the 1920s and 1930s. The most successful such rifle to come out of Czech factory during this time was The ZH-29, but it did have competition. A major series of trials...

With the failure of the G30M and G30R to lead to any military orders (American or otherwise), the Winchester company took the advice of the Ordnance Department to scale the design up to an automatic rifle. The BAR had a number of known shortcomings in WWII, and the military was interested in repl...

In the 1930s, the Italian military (like all major military forces at the time) was investigating options for a semiautomatic service rifle. Beretta's Tulio Marengoni developed one such rifle, and submitted it in two forms.

The first version of the rifle was produced in 1931, chambered for the t...

With the death of Jonathan "Ed" Browning in 1939, development of the Winchester G30 rifle was passed into the hands of a new employee at Winchester by the name of David Marshall Williams. Williams would become widely known as "Carbine" Williams in later years thanks to Jimmy Stewart and Hollywood...

During the 1920s, a lot of experimental rifle development work was being done in the US. The military was interested in finding a semiautomatic rifle, and plenty of inventors were eager to get that valuable military contract. One particular item of interest to the military was the possibility of ...

When the German military finally could no longer tolerate the expense of the P.08 Luger in the late 1930s, they held a trial of possible replacements. The three main entrants were BSW with a gas-operated pistol, Walther with what would ultimately be accepted as the P.38, and Mauser with it's expe...

After Jonathan Edward "Ed" Browning had his 1929 rifle dropped form US military testing, he took the design back to his shop in Utah and kept working on it. By 1938 he had made enough improvements that he was ready to present the gun to Winchester, hoping they would be interested in purchasing th...

The Japanese military experimented with self-loading rifle designs through the 1930s, and had 4 major rifles in testing during that period. One was a new design by Kijiro Nambu, one was a Pedersen copy made by the Tokyo Army Arsenal, one was a gas operated toggle locking rifle by the Nippon Speci...

Today we continue our series on the development of Croatian pistols towards the XD line. Last week we saw Marko Vukovic's first design, and today we are looking at his second. This was the V.M.18, a step towards a more proven system instead of the really unusual flapper locking of the Kordun. The...

Colt .380 Prototype Pistol

This is a factory prototype of the Colt's entry into the Offensive Handgun Weapon System as requested by US SOCOM in the early 1990s. It featured a rotating barrel locking system, double action trigger system (with manual safety and decocker), and single stack 10-round magazine. Only about 30 wer...

Colt-Jolidon Prototype Pistol

We have often touched on the series of US magazine rifle trials that took place through the late 1800s - those trials brought out a slew of interesting new ideas and clever (or not so clever) designs. However, the trials were also responsible for an experimental version of the old standby Allin c...

Before standardizing on the Type 2 paratroop rifle (a 7.7mm Arisaka that broke in half at the chamber), the Japanese military tested a variant of the Type 38 carbine with a folding stock retrofitted into place. Very few of these were made.

As the Second World War started to really take a toll on German industrial production, several companies started to work on alternatives to the P38 handgun in an effort to reduce production cost and time. This is one such example made by Walther, with a normal type of milled slide and an experime...

This prototype 1895 Krnka automatic pistol, serial number 7, was the first in the developmental line that led to the 1907 Roth-Steyr cavalry pistol.

Thanks to web site reader John D, we have a chance today to look at a very scarce Danish-made copy of the AG-42B Ljungman rifle. The Madsen company in Denmark made about 50 of these rifles for military trials, in several different calibers. This one, and a few others, were imported with a batch o...

This prototype Webley was one of just under 1,000 Model 1910 pistols produced by the company in an effort to get some military and police interest in their .38/9mm automatics. It was tested by a number of organizations (including, notably, the London Metropolitan Police) but not adopted by any. T...

Note: This video was filmed over a year ago, but I have been holding it in anticipation of the rifle going to auction. That doesn't seem to be happening, so I'm posting the video now.

Only three example of this 1925 prototype rifle from MBT (Metallurgica Brescia gia Tempini) were ever made, an...

The P66 was a prototype .22LR semiauto pistol designed by a German immigrant to the United States by the name of Rolf Dieckmann. It never went into production, but had a number of interesting features, including a removable firing mechanism and a combination extractor and firing pin.