Here we take up the mad minute challenge with the two main belligerents of the Franco-Prussian war, both needle-fire and both using what we now call caseless ammunition. Not ejector needed and no need to pick up your brass. Who will win this epic dual?

A tutorial for the new chassepot cartidge ...

The Chap explains the mechanics behind this curious rifle and gives a potted history of the concept more extensively used by the Norwegians. All this followed by a trip to the range to see how it performs.

Update: Since filming this it appears that the lastest dated rifle was 1864 despite tran...

Was there any real speed advantage to a bolt action over other breechloading actions before the advent of repeating mechanisms? The chap aims to find out with a mad minute modified to reflect the 1870s

Further research has enabled us to guestimate the composition of the cartridges for the 1837 chasseur carbine. We have both the extensively trialed (but never adopted) Brunéel cartridge and the cartridge for the 1840 chasseur carbine, a carbine using the same Delvigne breech, calibre and rifling ...

Chasseurs à pied (aka riflemen or jaegers) were a relatively late addition to the French army, with the first battalions being officially created in 1839. A new firearm was needed for these chasseurs as future sharpshooters and shock troops. Luckily a new rifled percussion carbine had already req...

Switzerland was a bit late in the game when it came to universally adopting rifled longarms, and the path do to so was long and tortuous. We explore this journey and also the service cartridge. Once the 1859 modification was approved, the service life of the musket was short due to the arrival of...

The first production of a carbine model of the Trapdoor Springfield was the Model 1870 (excluding 4 prototypes produced in 1868). There was a focus infantry rifles in theTrapdoor program, and just 362 of these carbines were made in 1870. They use the short receiver of the 1870 rifle, a 21 3/4” b...

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...

Remington introduced the No.7 Rolling Block in 1903, and it was the last pattern of the action to be introduced. They were expensive, hand fitted guns, costing $24 in 1903 (compared to $12 for a standard No.2 pattern Rolling Block). The only reason Remington made them was that they were built on...

The movie industry has always had special requirements for firearms. Flintlocks, for example, can be rather finicky guns for folks to use without practice and care, and that does not work will in a filming environment where a whole scene's setup would be wasted it a flintlock fails to fire proper...

This is an interesting single-shot breechloading system built by Kuhn of Besançon - a city near Switzerland in eastern France. It is clearly a sporting rifle, firing an 11mm black powder cartridge and probably dates to the 1870s or 1880s. It automatically ejects an empty case when opened and aut...

Designed by brothers Charles and Sebre Howard and first patented in 1862, this is a single shot lever action produced by the Whitneyville Armory between 1866 and 1870. It is a really neat compact design that is all contained within a tube. The system was made in rifle, sporting rifle, and shotgun...

In 1865, brothers William and George Miller of Meriden CT patented a system to convert percussion muskets to use the new Rimfire ammunition that was becoming available. Between 1865 and 1867, the local Meridan Manufacturing Company converted 2,000 surplus US Model 1861 muskets (mostly made by Par...

The Norwegian Kongsberg factory has a history of making firearms-based tools for maritime use, and one of the more recent is the M52 line-throwing gun, introduced in the 1950s and sold through the 1970s. It uses a repurposed Mauser action paired with a new smoothbore barrel and a 12mm blank cartr...

Brigadier General Benjamin Stone Roberts designed and patented a fall-block style of breech loading conversion to .58 Rimfire. Over the course of the decade after the Civil War, he was able to sell approximately 23,000 of these conversions. The work was done by the Providence Tool Company, and in...

In 1867, a Russian delegation came to the United States to source new small arms for the Czar. In addition to purchasing Gatling guns, they met with Hiram Berdan and agreed to purchase a trapdoor single shot rifle he had designed. Berdan had been very active in the years immediately after the Ci...

The Chassepot was the French answer to the Dreyse needle rifle, and also the only other needlefire rifle to see major military service. It was adopted in 1866 and served as a primary French infantry rifle until being replaced by the 1874 Gras rifle, which was basically a conversion of the Chassep...

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...

Today's Ethiopian Oddity is a Gewehr 1871 carbine - remarkably still with its matching bolt - rechambered for a small bore, smokeless powder cartridge. It is a quite interesting example of an Ethiopian armorer's work...

Among all the standard rifles that are coming into the US from Ethiopia through InterOrdnance, there are a handful of really unusual oddballs, and we are going to look at several of them. We have the first one today; a single shot adaptation of a French Mle 1878 Marine Kropatschek. Only a small n...

The Beaumont was one of the early European breechloading metallic-cartridge rifles, adopted in 1871. The rifle is a combination of elements form the Chassepot, the Mauser-Norris, and a unique V-spring firing pin system invented by John Claes of Liege. The rifle was submitted to Dutch testing by E...