After leaving the Zeller company, Hans Stamm went looking for work at major gun manufacturers like WF Bern and SIG. He ended up hired in 1907 by a company caller Saurer. This was an automotive firm looking to open a weapons division, with hopes of winning the upcoming trials for a new Swiss milit...

Today's rifle was designed by a Swiss inventor named Hans Stamm while working for the Zeller et Cie company in Appenzell Switzerland. The company originally made embroidering machinery, but turned to military rifle parts subcontracting to bring in additional revenue in the early 1890s. Stamm had ...

Follow Capandball on his beautiful winter time hunting journey in Hungary with the iconic Swiss K31 military rifle chambered for the 7.5x55 round. Watch as he reloads the cartridges, walks the woods and makes the Hungarian goulash/stew for the table.

As the start of a looooong series looking at each of the Swiss straight-pulls from the 1889 to the K31, The Bloke gives a short (ha!) overview of the series, and the context of the Swiss militia system in which they existed.

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Bloke takes a trip through the history of the straight-pull Schmidt-Rubin 1889 rifle in 7.5x53.5 mm GP90 calibre. This video was going to be complete with a mechanical description, but a last-minute executive decision was taken to split it in a humorous way. Or, if not humorous, at least bizarre....

As mentioned in the previous video, The Bloke had to split what would have been a massive single episode into two. So this is the second part. Schmidt-Rubin striaght-pull 1889 rifle mechanics. Have at it!

The Bloke, with the help of the chap's handy hands, takes a detailed look at the Swiss Karabiner 93, a Mannlicher straight-pull with basically the same action as an M95 Steyr. This is the only Swiss straight-pull that is Austrian rather than Swiss.

Chambered in 7.5x53.5 GP90 - a smokeless (not...

The Swiss were the first country to adopt a bolt action repeating rifle with their Vetterli, and followed this by changing to a straight-pull design in the 1880s. The straight-pull Schmidt-Rubin system was quite good, but one potential flaw was that it was a quite long action. This became an issu...

So moving on with the Swiss straight-pulls series, we get up to the Schmidt-Rubin 1897 Kadettengewehr, the Cadet rifle. This might seem an irrelevant branch of the family, but it really isn't. It's the basis for another, more interesting one, which will come later. As a reminder, we're still in t...

The Swiss replaced their Vetterli rifles in the late 1880s with the new Schmidt-Rubin pattern, and this eventually trickled down to the cadet corps. These youth programs had been using short single-shot 1870 Vetterli carbines, but as those became obsolete and in need of replacement, the 1897 Kade...

And we move ever onwards with the Schmidt-Rubin straight pull rifle series. This time, the Model 1900 Kurzgewehr, or "short rifle". This one is a complete unicorn, as the Bloke explains.

Onwards and upwards with the seventh (!) episode in the Swiss Straight-Pulls series. This time, it's the Schmidt Rubin 1905 Cavalry Carbine's turn. Still with the old GP90 and GP90/03 7.5x53.5 ammunition (NOT 7.5x55 GP11), this was the replacement for the 1893 Mannlicher carbine. They seem to hav...

Finally, back in the saddle looking at the trials which led from the Schmidt-Rubin models 1889, 89/96, 1900 and 1905 firing 7.5mm GP90 to the K11 and IG11 firing GP11.

The Swiss experimented with scoped sniper rifles during World War II, and the results were the K31/42 and the K31/43. Only a couple thousand were made between the two models, and they were not considered particularly successful. Ultimately they were replaced by the ZfK-55 (a much better rifle for...

The ZfK-55 is basically a K31 action, with a bunch of modifications to convert it into a very nice marksman's rifle. The more obvious changes are the muzzle brake (very reminiscent of the second model FG-42, which makes sense as the Swiss experimented with those rifle quite a bit after the war), ...

A philosophical episode, this one - on the many lives lived by milsurp rifles. This one is a Schmidt-Rubin K00/11, a K11 converted from an earlier model 1900 short rifle. The rifle lived a number of lives, and we have a bit of the human history behind the last one.

I promised someone I'd do th...