Firearms
Rifles
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How to search
sten gun- pages with both words
"sten gun"- the words together, as a phrase
sten OR sterling- either one (
|works too) sten -replica- leave out pages that mention “replica”
Without quotes, the last word also matches longer words that start with it (sten finds Stenophylla), and close word forms count (rifle finds rifles). Tick Exact words to match whole words only.
Whole deep dives are listed first, then the pages inside them.
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 Building, shooting and keeping a home-built AR-15 in .450 Bushmaster: the four parts that differ from a 5.56, what the barrel and bolt makers publish about gas, buffer, ports and threads, a corrected zero, and the Michigan rules that still bind a semi-automatic deer rifle after the straight-wall zone's repeal. 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 ArmaLite AR-7 & Explorer II The survival rifle that packs into its own floating stock — from the Air Force AR-5 and Fairchild's ArmaLite through Charter, Survival Arms, AR-7 Industries and Henry, with the Explorer II pistol, the blowback action and its magazine-borne feed ramp, upkeep from the makers' manuals, the look, the screen record and the collector market. 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 H&K PSG1 Heckler & Koch's roller-delayed police precision rifle and its family (PSG1 A1, MSG90 and its successors): the origins and what is only repeated about them, how the action is tuned for precision, how to tell the variants apart, the field strip and maintenance from the Bundeswehr's G3 manual, optics and accessories, accuracy, US imports and law, and a PSG1-pattern build from HK91 parts. Live
Live Hyper-Burst Mechanisms The search for a rifle burst that leaves before the recoil arrives: the 1950s SALVO studies, SPIW, Heckler & Koch's caseless G11, the Soviet AN-94, and the US Army's 1990 Advanced Combat Rifle trial, told from the primary reports, with non-firing kinematic models to show how the mechanisms move. 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 MAS FR-F1 and FR-F2 France's bolt-action precision rifles on the MAS 36 action: Saint-Étienne and the MAS 36, the FR-F1 of the 1960s, the FR-F2 that served from 1986 until 2,620 SCAR-H PRs replaced it in 2023, how the rear-locking action works, how to tell the variants apart, the optics and ammunition, the US imports and law, and a machinist's path to an FR-F2-pattern rifle on a MAS 36. 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 Pedersen Device John Pedersen's secret 1918 'Automatic Pistol, Caliber .30': the bolt-replacing blowback mechanism that turned an M1903 Mark I Springfield into a 40-round semi-automatic, from the Army's own manual: its history, the 1931 bonfire and the survivors, how it works, field strip and repair, identifying a Mark I, the .30-18 cartridge and its French 7.65 Longue afterlife, and the law of owning or building one. Live
Live M40A1 — the Marine Sniper Rifle, and a Clone The USMC M40 family from the 1966 Vietnam rifle to the 2016 M40A6, built from the Corps's own fact files and sniping manual; the Remington 700 action beneath all of them — how it works, how it is stripped, maintained and repaired, including the trigger record from the court and the recall; and a Remington 700 SPS Varmint being built as an M40A1 clone, documented as of September 2026. Live
Live Remington Nylon 66 The first mass-produced rifle whose receiver is plastic: DuPont's Zytel 101 moulded into a stock that holds the bolt itself, more than a million built from 1959, and the whole Nylon family — the 66 colours, the 76 lever, the 10/11/12 bolt guns, the 77 and 10C, and the Brazilian copies. Mechanism, upkeep, identification plates, dating, values and law. Live
Live Ruger 10/22 The rimfire everyone modifies — Bill Ruger and Harry Sefried's 1964 design, its blowback action, V-block and rotary magazine, every variant, the KIDD, Volquartsen and Magpul aftermarket, a from-parts build, and two owned rifles as configured in 2026. Live
Live Ruger Precision Rifle & Precision Rimfire Ruger's AR-pattern bolt rifle from its 2014 patent filings to the current model, and the rimfire trainer built to its controls — how both actions work and are kept working, from Ruger's own manuals, and one .308 and one .22 LR documented as they stood in September 2026. Live
Live SA80 (L85 Family) The British SA80 family, from the EM-2 and Enfield's 4.85 mm rifle through the troubled L85A1 and H&K's A2 rebuild to the A3, with the mechanism, maintenance, identification, and the US semi-automatic SA80s of 2026. Live
Live Savage 93R17 (.17 HMR) Savage's .17 HMR magnum rimfire bolt action from the maker's own archived catalogue, manual and service pages: which sub-model is which, the cartridge's real wind and energy numbers, why the rifle sidesteps the semi-automatic recall, and how to strip, clean and repair it. 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
Live Steyr AUG The Austrian bullpup from Steyr's 1974 patents to the Alabama-built A3 M2, its export history from Lithgow to Kuala Lumpur, and its mechanism from the maker's own manuals — with an import-kit build under US and Michigan law: the receiver the regulation names, the §922(r) count, and the select-fire parts in the box. Live
Live Thompson/Center HotShot Thompson/Center's single-shot, break-open .22 LR youth rifle of 2010 to about 2013: the maker's history from the filings, the five catalogue numbers, how the hammer-only action works and how to keep a rifle with “no user serviceable parts” running, set against the Crickett, Mini Bolt and Rascal. Live
Live Chinese Type 63 Rifle China's first home-designed rifle, told from the 1993 insider account in *Light Weapons*, the PLA's own failure record, the US Army's captured examples and the import rules: how an SKS with an AK bolt was meant to replace both, why the factories redesigned it into failure, how to tell it from an SKS, what is known of its upkeep, and why no American can own one. Live
Live Japanese Type 64 Rifle Japan's first postwar rifle, from the Howa and Defense Agency engineers' own account, the Ministry of Defense's records and Iwashita's patent: the borrowed rifles it replaced, the straight-line hammer that slows its rate of fire, sixty years with the Self-Defense Forces and Coast Guard, how to tell it from its trial rifles and replicas, what is public about its upkeep, and why none has reached a private owner in the United States. Live
Live Volcanic Repeating Arms The lever-action pistols and carbines of 1854–1860 that became the Winchester: Hunt's loaded ball and the Jennings rifle, Smith & Wesson's toggle action, the Volcanic company and Oliver Winchester, the self-primed ball and why it failed, every model and barrel legend with comparison plates, the auction record, the law on originals and copies, and a machinist's path to building one. Live