Firearms
Rifles
Live The AK-47 The most-produced rifle in history, told against its own folklore: who actually designed it and what Zaitsev contributed, why the first stamped receiver had to be abandoned, how to read a rifle and tell the makers apart — and a full parts-kit build on a milled Yugoslav-pattern receiver, headspace to retention groove. Live
Live .450 Bushmaster AR-15 A .45-70 shortened until it was both AR-legal and zone-legal, examined from the standards rather than the catalogues: what SAAMI actually specifies, a ballistic coefficient fitted to the maker’s own table, why box velocities for this cartridge are not comparable with each other, the magazine problem, and the Michigan rule it was bought for — which no longer exists. Live
Live The AR-15 in 5.56 Stoner’s rifle and the service lineage behind it, then the parts that matter: what mil-spec actually guarantees on a lower, how barrel length trades against gas length and dwell, why twist is set by bullet length rather than weight, and the 5.56-versus-.223 question answered from the chamber prints instead of the folklore. Live
Live FN P90 & PS90 FN’s bullpup personal defence weapon and its civilian carbine, with the 5.7×28mm cartridge treated properly: every loading, the armour argument separated into its physical and statutory halves, and the law that decides which of the two a private buyer can actually own. Live
Live Henry SPD HUSH A lever action designed around a suppressor rather than threaded for one — and the five cartridges Henry chambers it in, ranked by what each can actually do quietly. Live
Live M1 Garand The rifle America went to war with — Garand's sixteen-year road to 1936, the Springfield and Winchester serial overlap, how it works, strip to the last pin, maintenance and repair, what to feed it, bayonets and period kit, and one wartime Springfield documented part by part. Live
Live MP 40 Erma’s stamped-steel submachine gun told against the name it is always given: who actually designed it and what the 1938 trials really produced, how phenolic resin and pressed steel answered a production problem, why the safety arrived late, what it was and was not issued to — and what owning one in the United States actually involves. Live
Live The SKS The Soviet carbine that was superseded before most of them were built, and then made by everybody else for forty years — the secrecy the USSR wrapped around it, what the CIA actually learned, the whole knock-off family, takedown to the last pin, and the modern aftermarket. Live
Live STEN Gun The British WWII subgun engineered for crude wartime mass production — engineering archive + scratch-build in 9×19. Live