Has anyone seen some unusual firearm designs?
This bloke seems to find a lot of interesting ones. I saw this video and got to wondering what people had seen or collected, and what else might be out there.
Thoughts?
1 Like
That’s a weird design. Made in France. Can’t say I’ve ever seen anything like that before. Interesting though.
There seems to be a few weird and wonderful things shown on that channel. Like the howell conversion of the no1mk3, a 2 bore rifle paired with a 2 bore handgun, improvised firearms, and generally fun guns
I found this on the internet about the maker. Mainly into revolvers I think.
French… weird design… kind’a goes hand in hand.
1 Like
I don’t know if this one is particularly well known, but it was new to me. The howell conversion of the no1mk3
What a cluster fuck looking thing that is!!! 
As much as we all love to hang it on the frogs, they really did do a lot of ground breaking development work with firearms. The darne sliding breach shotgun is another different French design, they are still made today I think!
I think the well trained soldier could do a better job than that contraption. Reading on Wikki the other night about 303
The Lee bolt-action and 10-round magazine capacity enabled a well-trained rifleman to perform the “mad minute” firing 20 to 30 aimed rounds in 60 seconds,
The current world record for aimed bolt-action fire was set in 1914 by a musketry instructor in the British Army—Sergeant Instructor Snoxall—who placed 38 rounds into a 12-inch-wide (300 mm) target at 300 yards (270 m) in one minute
I have a few unusual shotguns. Martini action, francotte falling block’s, Jones rotary underlever, complain action and probably some others I can’t remember off the top of my head.
I also have a few old military rifles converted to shotgun, a French gras, a couple of 1871 Mausers and a snider.
@sungazer, not to mention the detrimental effect that contraption must have on rifle accuracy/precision…
@GUN-DMC. Don’t worry, I quite like French design but if you’ve ever had a French car you’ll know that what we call logical and simple design is not really on their radar!!!
Yeah mate the French had some interesting ideas but it generally took Birmingham or Liege to make them work.
And French car are stupid!
Mmmmm, not quite, @sungazer. It’s myth afaik. They had training qualifications that required some minimum scores to qualify as a rifleman, but nothing to do with minutes…
YouTube channel: britishmuzzleloaders has a bunch of multi part series on all that and I am fairly certain that he also talks about mad minute or the folklore of it.
Its a long video but there is a good bit of info about the mad minute myth.
That’s the one I was thinking about!
1 Like
Australian and other Commonwealth countries still have milsurp clubs that run the mad minute as regular events as part of comps.
Why are they getting cozy with a whisky on the bed??? 
Just because an idea has no solid factual history, doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea…
1 Like
The mad minute is probably hocum, but I have read in a couple of different books based on diggers personal diaries from WW1 about “5 rounds rapid” being used as suppression fire. I remember reading somewhere that in the early encounters, the Turkish defenders at Gallipoli thought we had a heap of machine guns…so there might be some historical basis to it even it was never a “thing” in the formal sense