Comments by "ZGryphon" (@ZGryphon) on "Forgotten Weapons" channel.

  1. "This has been upgraded with a Sten part" is not something I would ever have expected to hear anyone say about anything.
    1700
  2. "Now I know what you're thinking. 'Did he fire 40 shots, or only 39?' Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I've kinda lost track myself. But seeing as this is a .25 Guycot, the least powerful handgun in the world, and it would raise a nasty welt, you've gotta ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well? Do ya, punk?"
    1400
  3. Since this rifle has basically the same inner workings as the SKS, does that mean it also shares the SKS's occasional habit of becoming an unintentional machine gun when the firing pin gets stuck forward? Boy howdy, that would be an adventure.
    1000
  4. "It's an ingenious solution to a problem that never should've existed in the first place." - James May, talking about something else
    619
  5. I love that this weapon is so bizarre that even Ian, whose whole purpose in this enterprise is to know and employ the technical terms for everything, can do no better to describe part of its function than "... engage that lock on top, so that you don't have all five grenades go kawoing out of the... thing." :)
    493
  6. Many years ago, the small-town newspaper I worked for assigned me to do a feature article on local WWII veterans for Veterans Day. One of the men I talked to, let's call him Harry, was part of the occupation force in Japan after the war. His job was to go around the countryside interacting with local leaders (the equivalents of town mayors and the like), trying to find caches of resources the IJA stashed for the invasion that never came so they could be distributed to the public. He had an English-Japanese phrasebook provided by the Army, but he usually worked through a translator rather than use it. One day, while talking with a mayor-type he was getting along with particularly well, Harry decided to use the phrasebook and ask him a question directly, so he looked up what the phrasebook said was a respectful way of asking directions to the restroom and painstakingly read it out phonetically. There was a pause while the mayor and translator stared at him in amazement, and then the mayor burst out laughing. (Harry told me it was the first time he'd seen a Japanese person laugh.) When he could speak again, he explained through the translator that what Harry had just asked him was phrased in the most familiar, vulgar way possible--the equivalent of "Hey buddy, where's the sh*thouse in this dump?" Sixty years later, he was convinced that whoever wrote that phrasebook for the Army did that on purpose. He never tried to use it again.
    442
  7. I have a double-action Nagant, and the 40,000-ton DA trigger pull makes Tsarist officers' concern that their men couldn't be trusted with the double-action version even more hilarious than it already would have been. It's hard work to make one of those things go off on purpose, let alone by accident. :)
    441
  8. "... but, at 850 rounds [per minute], it puts out a lot of cartridges." Vladof! You don't need to be a better shot; you just need to shoot more bullets.
    306
  9. I love how they had a perfectly good captive pin system in place, and then for the second diassembly pin, they decided nah, we're just going to HK this one.
    292
  10. To me, the best part of this is the example of trying to operate a regular bolt-action rifle. It's such a dead-on parody of the utter, unrealistic incompetence of the people in the corresponding bits of real informercials. "Are you tired of fumbling for your flashlight in the dark? Oh no!" says the narrator, as a person who evidently suffers from end-stage syphilitic paresis flails hopelessly around, knocking absolutely everything off a closet shelf that had a flashlight on it, and then there's a pitch for a miner's headlamp. I guess Ian watched the same lousy late-night TV I did in the '90s. :)
    282
  11. "Little unpleasant, but not as unpleasant as being downrange" has some of the same energy as Othais's recent remark about the effects a gun has on the people at the far end also being part of the ergonomics, just at a higher speed.
    264
  12. You've got to be a true Zip™ Operator™ to use these guns.
    261
  13. There's something oddly beautiful in the fact that a gun that is actually two guns was made by Dupe & Company.
    260
  14. "Several of these pieces come out when you shake the gun" is just not a sentence you want to hear...
    228
  15. "Electrolux Charlton" sounds like the name of a popular model of robot butler from a pseudo-Victorian sci-fi setting. "Ah, I see you've bought yourself a new Electrolux Charlton, Sir Henry. How do you find him?" "Oh, he's capital, old man. Makes miles better tea than the old Vickers Whitworth I used to have, you know. Better telephone voice as well!"
    226
  16. "Is that an MP5? It is! Ohhh. Now I can solve up to 800 problems a minute." - Gordon Freeman, Freeman's Mind
    217
  17. Sadly, the Craftsman did not have the tooling necessary to give it the historically appropriate and traditional BROWNINGS MAUSER FABRIQUE PATENT BREVETE PATENT BREVETE BELGIQUE BELGIQUE markings. (Also SDGD, because man, this one needs it.)
    214
  18. +Stephanie Martin (Lady Azkadelia) God help you if you forget your nail clippers in your pocket, though.
    211
  19. "Czechoslovakia, who taught you to serialize every single metal part of a gun like this?" "YOU did, Germany! I learned it from watching YOU!"
    186
  20. "Is it underpowered?" Il Duce presumably didn't think so.
    185
  21. World's deadliest Best Buy manager.
    172
  22. (obligatory "this was no boat accident" joke) It's amazing how far you've come from the early "standing in a brick tunnel, describing an obscure gun into the world's cheapest mic" days--doubly so when one considers that your principal medium is actively hostile to your subject area. It's so nice to see hard work actually pay off in this day and age.
    170
  23. I've read (but cannot personally attest) that another significant problem with the Gyrojet from a military standpoint--beyond the awkward operation, hilarious inaccuracy, ineffectuality at point-blank range, and inconsistently reliable ammunition--was that when it did work, it left a big obvous vapor trail pointing directly back to where the person who fired it was. Sort of like the sniper rifle in Halo, come to think of it. That's a bit of a liability in a combat arm. :)
    166
  24. Any time "attempted" appears in the title of a shooting video, signs points to amusement.
    166
  25. Which is impressive, since it's a royal pain in the butt to disassemble a 1911 when you're sitting at a table with all the time in the world. #*%* barrel bushing, what were you thinking, John?
    156
  26. I love that no one thought to omit the flash hider from a gun that is only to be used with tracer ammunition.
    153
  27. You broke the picnic table! How many people can say they came to Maine and smashed up an old picnic table with the bipod of a CMG-3? :)
    143
  28. As always, I love the wild optimism of the adjustable sight. 900 yards! Sure. No problem. I'll get right on that. :)
    137
  29. I love how cheerfully optimistic late-19th/early-20th-century adjustable rear sights are. Nine hundred meters, forsooth. :)
    134
  30. Players of Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas will be uncomfortably familiar with the concept of the Bushmaster device. Where do the Raiders get all those combat shotguns?
    129
  31. +DoctorWeeTodd In fairness, I would totally take Crazy Cucumber as my ninja codename.
    122
  32. It never fails to tickle me that White got screwed in the Rollin White Patent Deal himself. Whoever inked that license contract on the Smith & Wesson side must have laughed himself to sleep that night.
    121
  33. Ian's auction previews have a sort of cumulative depression effect if you watch a bunch of them in a row. You start out going "Oh hey! Cool!" and finish up face-down on the couch, sobbing "So many beautiful things! I shall never possess them!" :)
    117
  34. Remember, this is the same British Army that adopted a rifle action devised by the inventor of the detachable box magazine--the most revolutionary development in rifle magazines, basically, ever--and then chained the magazine to the rifle and refused to issue extras, because the stupid sods will only lose them if we do that, you know.
    117
  35. That's just a variation on British inshore ASW doctrine of the First World War. This called for rowboats with a couple of strong lads aboard to keep watch for German U-boat periscopes along the southwest coast of England. If they spotted one, their mission was to row up to it, throw a burlap bag over it, and then beat on it with a hammer in hopes of damaging the optics inside. I kid you not.
    117
  36. "... You know what, I'm gonna leave this spring alone." I love the little genuine touches like that. A lot of guys would edit them out. I'm glad you don't. :)
    114
  37. Heh, three-round magazine. 'Cause hey, it worked for the Berthier.* * it didn't work for the Berthier
    110
  38. "What's that, Sledge? A silencer?" "No, my dad invented this. It's called a loudener!"
    93
  39.  @Ailasher  There is such a thing as gallows humor, after all. A thing doesn't have to be pleasant to be funny.
    92
  40. Ah, the ol' "give the little guy the machine gun" gag. A classic.
    84
  41. I love how unsubtly shady things were back in those days. At least nowadays an arms company would try to PRETEND one of its founders wasn't involved in making purchasing decisions for its principal customer. (See also, the LeMat/Gen. Beauregard connection mentioned in a previous video.) Back then? Eh, who needs deniability? Meanwhile, Tucker & Sherrard were over there playing the classic Eli Whitney "spend the government's advance on something else" scam... it's all so cheerfully blatant. It's a shame industrial corruption isn't still so lacking in pretense.
    82
  42. So is a refrigerator, though, so... :)
    81
  43. I don't know if the situation has changed at any point in the last 30 years, but back when I was in high school, I came to the conclusion that once you've bought a gun magazine--as in, one issue of any one gun magazine--you have read all gun magazines. Never before in the history of human conflict have so many recycled so little by so few so many times.
    81
  44. On some level, I have to admire the pure blind confidence it takes to receive a tech package for a machine you've never seen before, look it over, and decide, "Well, all these tolerances are wrong. Must have used Budge, I don't know why they keep reprinting his books."
    78
  45. I love how the insane, baroque complexity of the Austro-Hungarian Empire is reflected in its native firearms design language.
    77
  46. Just better hope they're on the low end of that 30-50 range.
    76
  47. In addition to these fine pistols, that's where they make the immortal Mauser FABRIQUEHERSTALHERSTALBELGIQUEBELGIQUE FABRIQUE Model FABRIQUE 534545.
    75
  48. "The Pope? Bah. How many divisions has he got?" "Less than one, Comrade Stalin, but they do all have these sweet pinfire revolvers."
    75
  49. Yes, it would have been nice for Ian to address the awesome power of these things, given that Dr. Watson was shot in the shoulder and the wound gave him trouble in his leg for years thereafter. :)
    71
  50. The Yugoslavs had an interesting habit of going their own way with this stuff. For instance, take the PAP M59/66--it's a copy of the SKS, and uses the same Soviet cartridge, but the grenade launcher on it is for NATO rifle grenades. (I think their AKM-alike had the same thing going on.)
    70