The Colt Model 639 was the export version of the Colt Model 629, which was type classified by the US military as the XM177E2 and issued to MACVSOG special operations units in 1967 and 1968. Improved from the Model 609 carbine, the 629/639 has an 11.5 inch barrel and an interesting small muzzle de...

The hype? Yeah, it's real. The FG42 is the nicest full-auto full-power rifle I have yet fired. This is a recut of a previous video that YouTube decided to squash.

The Stoner 63 was a remarkably advanced and clever modular firearm designed by Eugene Stoner (along with Bob Fremont and Jim Sullivan) after he left Armalite. The was tested by DARPA and the uS Marine Corps in 1963, and showed significant potential - enough that the US Navy SEALs adopted it and k...

I have been waiting for a long time to have a chance to make this video - the Heckler & Koch G11! Specifically, a G11K2, the final version approved for use by the West German Bundeswehr, before being cancelled for political and economic reasons.

The G11 was a combined effort by H&K and Dynamit...

When the G11 program was cancelled and German reunified, the West German military was still using the 7.62mm G3 rifle, while the East German forces had AK-74 variants. Neither of these were suitable for a new unified German NATO-member Bundeswehr - a rifle in 5.56mm NATO was needed. Heckler & Koc...

The H&K G41 was developed for the NATO trials of the early 1980s, which were set up to look at both rifles and cartridges for NATO standardization (although they did not end up choosing a rifle). The gun is a basically an HK33 roller-delayed system set up to use standard M16 magazines and with a ...

Want to play He-Man shooting a BAR from the shoulder? This one has been built for just that purpose. It’s chambered in 7x57mm for reduced recoil, has a 21” barrel to improve handling, a custom lengthened pistol grip, safe-semi-full trigger group, good early M1918 pattern sights, and Bren Gun trip...

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 ...

I have been trying to get my hands on Fedorov M1916 rifle for a while, and I finally had the opportunity at the NFC, part of the British Royal Armouries. The Fedorov was designed in the years just before World War One, and originally chambered for a proprietary 6.5mm cartridge (also designed by F...

Thanks to the generosity of a collector in the Association of Maltese Arms Collectors and Shooters, we have a chance today to take a look at a pre-production FG-42, serial number 015. This is one of the guns manufactured by Rheinmetall (the series production would be handed over to Krieghoff) in ...

The CAL (Carabine Automatique Leger; Light Automatic Carbine) was FN's first attempt to produce a 5.56mm rifle as a counterpart to the 7.62mm FAL. While light and handy, the CAL was a relatively complex and expensive design, and failed to garner many sales. About 12,000 were made in total before ...

The AR-10 rifle was developed in the United States (Hollywood California, specifically) by Eugene Stoner, but the Armalite company did not have a suitable large scale manufacturing facility to produce the number of guns they expected to sell to military forces. Instead, a deal was struck to licen...

Today at the Kessler auction house in Kreuzlingen Switzerland we are taking a look at the W+F Bern C42 and E22 rifles. These are the guns supplied by Bern to compete for the Swiss military Sturmgewehr 90 trials. The C=type ones are chambered for the 5.56mm cartridge, but Swiss adoption of that ca...

Amerigo Cei-Rigotti was a major in the Italian Bersaglieri (light infantry) in 1900, wen his innovative self-loading rifle design was first introduced. Unlike many or the very early semiauto rifle designs, the Cei-Rigotti is a light, handy, and pretty compact rifle:

The rifle was select-fire, ...

Bloke and Chap take you through the Swiss Stgw 57 (not StG, that's German), in a video liberally sprinkled with live fire footage from "Kampf der Infanterie". Also known as the SIG 510, this rifle was in Swiss service from 1960 until the 1990's, and fires 7.5x55 GP11 .

Footage from "Der Kampf ...

The Swiss Sturmgewehr 57 (aka SIG 510) is an interesting and unique piece - far heavier and more awkward than its contemporaries, there are however very interesting reasons why it ended up like that. In this video, Dale explains the whys and wherefores of the Stgw 57 design, which fully explain h...

Continuing on from last time, Dale takes us through the various models of practice grenade and the three types of battle ammunition.

We do a deep dive into the trigger mechanism, fire selector and burst fire mechanism of the FAMAS F1 using period docs and Chap's arts 'n' crafts models. The mechanisms illustrate perfectly the ingenious solutions that designers had to come up with for first generation bullpups.

Chappy has a go at launching Carrots of DOOM under the command and watchful eye of Dale Guardian and custodian of Stgw.57 lore.

Stgw SIG 510 7.5 mm GP11 7.5x55 rifle grenade

A bit of a nerdgasm here on the first three generations of 30 round magazines for the British Army's fabled Enfield 5.56mm SA80 rifle series: Colt, RG (Radway Green), HK (Heckler & Koch, aka Hasst Kunden).

From the late 70's onwards, a number of AR-18 derivative rifles start to appear on the world markets. Given that Armalite's patenting game around the AR-10 and AR-15 systems was so on-point, how come they didn't have a patent preventing such things as the Steyr AUG, Enfield SA80 (L85), Sterling S...

Retrofitting an optics mount for the FAMAS was no easy feat considering the wobbly top cover construction. The designers finally came up with a novel if somewhat bulky solution.

Dale takes us through the historical background leading to the Swiss Sturmgewehr 57 rifle grenade series, starting from the WW2 and post-WW2 perspective. In part 2, he dives deep into the various models of practice grenade and the three types of battle ammunition.

Bloke takes a look at why Enfield nicked the Armalite AR-18 design and bullpupped it to make the L85 series of rifles, rather than "just" scaling down the .280 / 7mm EM-2 rifle from the late-40's/early-50's.

Turns out it's not as trivial as all that...