ForgottenWeapons

Heckfire by ShootingSight: The Best Trigger for H&K & Clone Rifles (9mm / 5.56 / 7.62) (Ad-free)

One of the shortcomings of H&K roller-delayed long guns has always been their triggers. As they come form the factory (with the exception of niche items like the PSG-1 trigger pack) they are long, heavy, and generally unpleasant. Good smiths c...

2-Gun on the Elbe: SVT40 vs M1 Garand

Today I'm taking an SVT-40 to the monthly 2-Gun Action Challenge Match, and I'm joined by my friend Tom shooting an M1 Garand. We're both using moderately accurate gear, and so naturally I have a TT-33 Tokarev for my pistol and Tom has a 1911. So,...

The 1950 Marketing Contest to Name the S&W Chiefs Special (ad-free)

Today we're taking a look at a Smith & Wesson Chiefs Special, but not just any Chiefs Special. This is serial number 29, factory engraved and gifted to Chief Edward Book of Passaic New Jersey in 1950. When S&W introduced the new revolver t...

MAS-49 Carabine Mitrailleuse: A French Prototype Lever-Delayed Assault Rifle (Ad-free)

When France was developing it's new suite of small arms in the late 1940s, there was a debate over whether to adopt an intermediate-power cartridge or retain the full-power 7.5x54mm round for the infantry rifle. Initially, a French 7.65x35mm cartr...

Hammerli FK-31: Diopter Competition Rifles for the Haganah

In 1949, Israel was still fighting its war of independence, and purchasing arms internationally was difficult to do. The recently-formalized IDF wanted sniper rifles, and looked to Hammerli in Switzerland for a variant of the K-31 straight-pull bo...

Historical What-If: The CAR-15 SD

What is the MP5 was never adopted, and instead the vented barrel and telescoping silencer used by the SD model was instead developed for the AR-15? Broad River Tactical thought it would be fun to follow this line of thought, and builds an MP5SD st...

Hi-Point YC-9 Yeet Cannon at the BUG Match (Ad-free)

Hi-Point finally released their double-stack YC-9 Yeet Cannon a few months ago, and they sent me one to try out so I figured I'd take it to the monthly BackUp Gun Match.

The new YC-9 is exactly what you would expect from Hi-Point, because th...

Cape Esperance and the Japanese Evacuation of Guadalcanal (Ad-free)

Today we return to Guadalcanal, to the site of the last actuals of the campaign. For the Japanese, the defeat at Edson's Ridge (aka Bloody Ridge) forced a disastrous and uncoordinated retreat into the jungle. With their supply lines destroyed, Jap...

SVT-40: The Soviet Standard Semiauto from WW2 (Ad-free)

The Red Army was interested in developing a semiautomatic rifle clear back to the mid 1920s, and they spent about 15 years running trials and development programs to find one. First in 1930 a Degtyarev design was adopted, followed by the Simonov A...

PT-83

Scheduled for February 5.

Beecher's Bible: A Sharps 1853 from John Brown's Raid on Harpers Ferry (Ad-free)

On October 16, 1859 John Brown and 19 men left the Kennedy farmhouse and made their way a few miles south to the Harpers Ferry Arsenal. They planned to seize the Arsenal and use its arms - along with 200 Sharps 1853 carbines and 1,000 pikes they h...

Meetup & Book Signing: Las Vegas, January 27

I will be doing a public book signing (so, not limited to Patrons) at the Antique Arms Show in Las Vegas this month. The show is held at the Westgate Resort & Casino off the Las Vegas Strip on Friday and Saturday January 26 & 27, and I wil...

Variations on Gras Cavalry Carbines & Conversions from Ethiopia (Ad-free)

While I was at InterOrdnance unpacking French rifles, I took the opportunity to pull out a couple different examples of Gras Cavalry Carbines to show the differences between original French production examples and Belgian commercial conversions. W...

Hogue Avenger vs M1911 at the Range (Ad-free)

Yesterday we looked at where the Hogue Avenger came from and how it works; today I'm out at the range to test it out against a nicely customized M1911...

Hogue Avenger: Precision Accuracy Via Delayed Blowback (Ad-free)

The Avenger is a flapper-delayed blowback, fixed barrel conversion upper assembly for the Model 1911 pistol. It was designed by Austrian Peter Spielberger, and manufactured by Hogue in the US and PowerSpeed in Austria. It is a product that came cl...

Ero: The Croatian Uzi (With Israeli Help?) (Ad-free)

The best of the submachine guns made in Croatia during the Homeland War was the Ero, made by a company called Arma. The Ero is a basically perfect, parts-interchangeable copy of the Israeli Uzi that was developed in 1992 and adopted into Croatian ...

State of the Channel: 2024

For 2024, you can look forward to an additional video each week. I will, of course, continue to upload ad-free videos for all of you here on Patreon; thank you for your continued support!

Replacing Beretta: the S&W XM10 Trials Pistol (Ad-free)

When the US adopted the Beretta Model 92 as the new M9 standard issue handgun in 1985, it was not without controversy. In particular, there was a scandal of cracked and broken M9 slides shortly after procurement began. The military did not budge o...

Cold War Belgium: Comparing the Vigneron M1 and M2 SMGs (Ad-free)

The Vigneron was Belgium's standard submachine gun during the early years of the Cold War. It was originally adopted as the M1 in 1953, and about 21,300 were made. In 1954, several modifications were made, resulting in the M2 pattern. Many of the ...

M90A Close Assault Weapons System Prototype (Ad-Free)

Thanks to Nathan Frisque for loaning us this very cool project to film - a very merry Christmas to him and to all of you watching! If you haven't caught on, this is a real-life recreation of the M90A CAWS shotgun from the Halo series of video game...

Angstadt Vanquish: An Inexpensive Integrally-Silenced 9mm AR Barrel (Ad-free)

Angstadt Arms has released an interesting integrally silenced (suppressed, if you prefer) barrel for 9mm AR carbines. It uses a full-length barrel with venting ports (similar to the MP5SD system), combined with a tubular shroud 1.5 inches in diame...

Making Do: South Africa's 7.62mm NATO Bren Gun Conversions (Ad-free)

During World War Two, the South African military used a lot of .303 caliber Bren guns. When 7.62mm NATO became the standard cartridge after the wa,r the Bren guns were put into storage, as converting them to the new rimless cartridge was a fairly ...

Overview of Soviet Military Handguns: Nagant, Tokarev, Makarov (Ad-Free)

Today we are looking at an overview of Soviet military service sidearms. This begins with the Model 1895 Nagant revolver, inherited from the Czarist Russian Army. The Nagant was adopted as the standard Red Army handgun, specifically in double acti...

Hamas Claims to Make Sniper Rifles in Gaza - Are They Really? (Ad-free)

Hamas - or rather its specific military wing the Al Qassam Brigade - posted a video on Twitter / X yesterday purporting to show the manufacture of .50 caliber sniper rifles in Gaza. I was curious to have a look at it, as I've seen a lot of rifle f...

Gear-Ratio-Delayed? Yep, It's a Thing: French MAT 1955 Prototype (Ad-free)

In the search for an improvement to the MAS 1949 rifle for the French military, all the French arsenals proposed new designs. MAS supplied an updated version that was ultimately adopted as the MAS 49/56, but the Tulle Arsenal (MAT) had a wacky ide...

Extra Firepower for Vietnam: the Aussie "B!tch" (Ad-free)

Many of the special forces groups that operated during the Vietnam War found they standard issue weapons a but unwieldy for use in confined jungle environments. They also found a need for something that could deliver an immediate large volume of f...

PMM: Russia's Modernized Makarov (Now With 50% More Mag Capacity!) (Ad-free)

Having served as the standard Soviet military sidearm for several decades, the PM Makarov was getting a bit obsolescent by the late 1980s. More of the world was using locked breech, 9x19mm service pistols but the Soviet Union still had essentially...

Weirdest of the French Trials SMGs: the EROP 1954 (Ad-free)

"EROP" was a small company based in Paris, which produced about 18 submachine gun prototypes between 1954 and 1956. These were submitted to French military trials in several different configurations first in 1954 and later in 1956, and none of the...

Headstamp Book Title Contest

In the next few months Headstamp will be releasing a new book about Hungarian AK rifles, written by a Hungarian researcher. It covers their history, variations, accessories, and such and has a ton of cool information that hasn't been published bef...

Gorilla GF-10: Lightweight Hunting Semiauto in 8.6mm Blackout (w/ Ballistics Gel) (ad-free)

Today I've got one of Gorilla Ammo's GF-10 rifles to do some shooting with. It's an AR-10 platform chambered for 8.6mm Blackout (they also offer it in .243 Win, .260 Rem, 6.5CM, and .308 Win). It weighs in at just 7.2 pounds with a 16" barrel, so ...