If you've not seen Forgotten Weapons

Status
Not open for further replies.
hso

Very neat bit of engineering!

I seem to recall there was a somewhat similar conversion of Lee-Metford and Lee-Enfield rifles that was made in New Zealand and was called the Charlton Automatic Rifle, sometime in the early 1940s.
 
That is cool. Would not want to be a lefty shooting that one:)
 
forgotten weapons has great stuff. watching their videos shows a lot of the trial and error that has gone into firearms development and highlights the external factors that can make even a great design fail
 
Have heard of the Charlton conversion but never this one. The SMLE is already known as one of the fastest to cycle bolt action rifles so I don't know if this thing was all that valuable. I also wonder if Rube Goldberg had the patent for it. The thing does seem to have some of his design elements.
 
jim in Anchorage said:
I would not shoot that gun if you paid me. What a contraption.
Click to expand...
Awwwww.... come on Jim. I'll try it if you will.....you go first....:uhoh:

I'll bet we both wouldn't mind having what it sold for. Wouldn't be surprised if it crept into five figures. You are a hunter, Jim. That gun is as useful to you as a farrier is to a pig farmer. But collectors of martial arms absolutely DROOL over such oddities.

Having said all that; You are right. What a contraption! I would not try to fire it.
 
tark said:
Awwwww.... come on Jim. I'll try it if you will.....you go first....:uhoh:

I'll bet we both wouldn't mind having what it sold for. Wouldn't be surprised if it crept into five figures. You are a hunter, Jim. That gun is as useful to you as a farrier is to a pig farmer. But collectors of martial arms absolutely DROOL over such oddities.

Having said all that; You are right. What a contraption! I would not try to fire it.
Click to expand...
I would wonder if it really has any historical value. Was it a British arsenal attempt to make a semi auto, or just a crackpot working in his barn?
That was never explained, that I saw.
 
I'd totally shoot it!

Semi-auto capability at that time was a big thing. It isn't just how fast one can cycle a gun, but what someone's split times are with hits. With even a primitive semi-auto there shouldn't be a disturbance of sight picture and grip like there would be with a manual bolt action... unless you chicken out and jerk your head away from that flying THING coming back right at your eyeball... (if it was slow enough to notice)... didn't one of the Mauser clan have an issue with that sort of thing?

I recently discovered his videos, and pretty much binge watched all of them over several weeks. I don't enjoy his other channel as much, probably because I am more of a (or at least different kind of) history nerd than his friend on the other channel.
 
Some friends and I were just talking about that setup a couple of weeks ago.

Forgotten Weapons is a great youtube channel. Some neat stuff on there.
 
That is the weirdest work around I've ever seen, but it does two things - shows how ingenious people can be, and eliminates the Fudd saying of "Ain't nobody gonna ban my bolt action rifle, it ain't no machinegun!" That right there, if built to, would be a bolt action machinegun.
Thanks for sharing, very interesting, and I met Ian very, very briefly at SHOT 2015. Heckuva nice guy.
 
Jim, that gun has an enormous historical value, ugly or not. It was a serious (remember, this was 1915) attempt by the Brits to come up with a semi-auto rifle, without having to trash the large numbers of S.M.L.E.s they had in the inventory. They DID adopt it but never really put it into production. Only a handful exist today. I can't seem to find a source for value on these contraptions, but just the rarity factor alone would almost guarantee five figures, perhaps well into five figures.

Personally, you would have to GIVE me one in order for me to add it to my collection. I like to collect guns that look like guns.....and I wouldn't give anybody a wooden nickel for that thing.
 
I don't find it all that ugly. Then again, as an engineering student (and an admitted fan of 'steampunk'/'dieselpunk' aesthetics) I see beauty in function. Since there's not much added to it that doesn't actually do something, there's not much to be ugly.
Besides, that's pretty good for British engineering. :p

And if you pay attention to it, it's essentially just an oversized version of the current AK or AR locked-bolt system.
 
Wow.....31 grand for that Howell conversion....... The rest of that video was very interesting too..... Must be some real serious collectors out there; thanks for posting.
 
There are so many excellent videos on youtube by Ian at Forgotten Weapons. You could spend half a day watching them.
 
You could spend much more time than that! I recently discovered his channel, and it took a while to catch up, but I think I watched all of them (up until some of the very recent ones, I don't watch every day).
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top