Obscure guns and variants that hold your interest

[Joe in PNG]

Browning designed pocket autos, and those odd Austrian pre-war service pistols.

[Malamute]

The Colt Richards/Mason conversions of percussion revolvers have long interested me. The early trapdoor conversions (1866) of percussion rifled muskets also have, along with the 1868 50-70 trapdoors.

The coolest of the Buffalo Sharps rifles Ive seen were conversion guns of Civil War percussion carbines converted by the factory and by gunsmiths into cartridge guns. Quite a lot of the guns purported to be 1874 Sharps are in fact conversion guns. Its simple to tell the difference if you know what to look for.

The Gemmer sporting rifles, percussion muzzle loaders converted to trapdoor breechloaders, are on my list of things to have if the budget ever allows. The ones I like the most are period correct style Hawken rifles made into 50-70 breechloaders.

The shoulder stocked Colt single Action Army revolvers, particularly the ones with carbine sights in the frame have sparked my interest. A shoulder stocked revolver is probably one of the few things that would interest me enough to get a stamp for, although an SBR Thompson carbine may also.

The Ferguson breech loading flintlock rifles are also quite interesting to me. There have been some pretty good modern handmade copies made.

[Totem Polar]

^^^super-cool pics, @Malamute. Pics are probably a good idea in this thread, so I’ll throw one of my favorites up, just because (not my collection, btw)

[Kyle Reese]

I’ve always regretted parting with my MAS 49/56 years ago, and do lust for a semi auto FAMAS, for absolutely no good or logical reason. That said, I’d like to add a pair of Dutch contract FN Mauser carbines, both Wilhelmina and Juliana marked, to my collection. Oh, and a Madsen M47 in .30-06.....


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[JSGlock34]

I spent a great deal of time deeply considering the merits of the AUG against other competing assault rifles before adding one to the safe based solely on its attributes as a combat firearm.

[PNWTO]

Northwest Trade Guns:

King Charles II of England granted a charter in May of 1670 for the Company of Adventures trading into Hudson's Bay, and a true legend was born. Guns are mentioned in the minutes of the Hudson's Bay Company as early as 1671. Various types were traded regularly, but not until 1761 was there a mention of a specific gun called a Northwest Gun: a request by a gun smith to the company for parts, "Same as for the Northwest Gun."

Essentially a do-it-all rifle that started early in the beginning of European settlement of North America and was still found in rugged places to end of the 19th Century. They were brought in as tools and trading commodities and were customized, modified, and produced by so many different makers that each one has a unique history and if you are fan of early pre-Revolution American History you can go down quite the rabbit hole with researching these. They tended to outrun settlement, so some interesting developments happened, like Alaskan Natives creating effective body armor.



From another brief source:

The second cause of problems with Northwest Guns was the treatment they received. They were designed for everyday use by people born into a Neolithic hunting culture. Never cherished or cared for, many of the surviving guns in museum collections show evidence of an incredibly hard life. Although designed to take hard use there is some abuse that no gun can withstand.

Once I had my gun at a Native camp in the Mackenzie Mountains in the Western NWT. The very presence of the gun was encouraging the Elders present to reminisce about their own guns. Many of them had begun hunting in the early part of the twentieth century using muzzleloading guns. They told me stories of having only three musket balls to last for the whole winter. If an animal was shot at and missed they would ignore the animal and go digging through the show to retrieve the ball. Big game such as moose or caribou was shot in a fleshy part so that the ball could be recovered in the skinning process without being flattened or distorted. Hunters could not afford to fire or unload their guns each night, so they stayed loaded for many days with predictable corrosive effects on the touchhole and breech plug. They were seldom cleaned and hardly ever cleaned properly.

Since these guns were carried loaded every day there was a good chance the ball would be dislodged and move away from the powder charge. Also, guns were fired when the barrel was plugged with snow. Either of these conditions would cause the barrel to burst. I was cleaning my gun while listening to these stories when I got the ramrod jammed. After giving it an extra hard tug I managed to pull off the ramrod tip, which was then stuck halfway down the barrel. No problem, the Elders told me, they would simply take the barrel out of the stock and lay it across a fire until it was red-hot. The patch would burn up allowing the ramrod tip to fall out! Most modern steels won’t take that kind of abuse, let alone an eighteenth century barrel with a lap weld along the bottom. It is no wonder so many Northwest Guns had short, brutal lives.

Significantly, all the Elders had very fond memories of their old muzzleloaders. They had the reputation as guns that never missed. At demonstrations at Fort Edmonton I enjoy telling visitors that there is no modern gun that can do what my versatile Northwest Gun can do. Light enough to be carried all day long, a 24 or 20 gauge (.58 or .62 calibre) has a large enough bore to kill big game animals, but it can also be loaded with shot and used to take small animals like muskrat or ptarmigan. And there, finally, is the reason for the longevity of the Northwest Gun. They were the first guns designed and made specifically to be used in North America and the design evolved until it fit the market demand perfectly.

[HCM]

Some of my random guns interests include:

5' S&W N frames

John Jovino and Magnaport snubby N frames

6mm Lee Navy Straight pull bolt rifle aka Lee Rifle Model of 1895, 6mm. The concept was ahead of its time. The engineering just wasn't quite advanced enough to support the concept.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1895_Lee_Navy







Winchester 1895 carbines - particularly with receiver mounted peep sights. If you were a serious gunman around the turn of the 19th century, this was the HK 416 /KAC / Hodge rifle of it's day.

Winchester 1907 self loading carbines

Styer AUG's - Logically, I know the weaknesses and limitations of bull pups, but I still love the AUG, which IMHO is the best of the bull pup breed. I've always shot them well, which doesn't hurt. Die Hard wasn't really a a factor for me with the AUG. Peter G Kokalis had good things to say about it in SOF and it always did well in the SOF three gun competitions in the days before M-4s with optics were a thing. I grew up in a non NFA state but of our local dealers used to carry all the pre ban guns. Upon handling the AUG I was hooked after discovering just how handy a an SBRish rifle was. Plus Rutger Hauer and Charles S. Dutton used them in the film "surviving the game." ;-)

I've always wanted one of the Argentine Navy FN 49 semi auto rifles in 7.62x51

What is interesting is I still like the AUG despite extensive experience with AR pattern rifles, where as the more I learned about actually shooting Handguns, the less interest I had in the HK P7. I sent my P7 M8 down the road a while back but I still have an irrational want for a P7M13.

[pangloss]

I wanted a Steyr GB through most of high school, all of college, and most of grad school. With the advent of internet auction sites, I was finally able to find one. I almost never shoot it, but I think it is an interesting pistol and I'm glad I bought it.

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[JSGlock34]

I wanted a Steyr GB through most of high school, all of college, and most of grad school. With the advent of internet auction sites, I was finally able to find one. I almost never shoot it, but I think it is an interesting pistol and I'm glad I bought it.

All of the XM9 contenders have old school 80s cool.

I've only seen two samples of the Colt entry, the SSP, in real life. Both were in museums (the Smithsonian used to have a display with all of the XM9 contenders, and the NRA Museum has a sample).

[HCM]

Not a gun, but I've always been fascinated by the WW I era Warner 1913 optic for the 1903 Springfield. Think WW I ACOG.