Category: Military

The War to End All Wars was the crucible in which the modern bolt-action rifle was formed, hardened and tempered.

We’ve got a lot of ground to cover and not much bandwidth, and this will be an image-heavy post to support that.  So hang on.

Now, I’m not saying the folks at Vetterli looked across the Atlantic and noticed the feeding setup of the highly successful 1866 Winchester repeater, but if they had, it would certainly explain their adoption of a very similar mechanism for their repeating rifle…

Unlike our previous two historical studies, this one begins in Europe.  The story of bolt-action guns begins in 1824, with a German inventor named Johann Nikolaus von Dreyse…

The latest and greatest info on slightly antiquated firearms!

Animal continues his history of the lever gun.

Our story continues as Smith & Wesson pushes into the world of new-fangled metallic cartridges. Meanwhile, Colt was fixing to blow everyone’s doors off.

Turns out Sam Colt wasn’t the only guy interested in building sixguns. There was this Remington fellow up in New York, a guy named LeMat in Louisiana, and these two guys from Massachusetts named Horace Smith and Daniel B. Wesson. In the sixgun world in the late 1850s, some cages were fixin’ to get rattled.

Sam Colt made an impact with the Paterson revolvers, but that impact was short-lived. It was enough, though, to get a young Captain named Sam Walker interested. Captain Walker went north to see Sam Colt. “We need more revolvers for our new Republic of Texas,” Walker said. “Hold my beer,” replied Sam Colt, and the rest is history. Read that history here.

Revolvers! We know them, we love them, but how many know the history of the wheelgun? Animal does, and he’s here to tell ya.