Karel Krnka, although born in Romania, was Czech (Bohemia was at that time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire). After the empire's end and foundation of the Czechoslovak Republic he worked for Praga and then for Zbrojovka Brno, which you might have heard of. And you got the pronunciation just right ;-) Thanks for a nice and informative review.
I'm glad you are at RIA and doing these videos of some really odd and rare guns. No one has done this before and it is nice to actually see a video of these firearms.
Fun fact, I was confused a little bit with the time frame but anyhow the father Krnka developed rifle for russian military they used it a lot in 1876-1878 war against Turkey. The son continued with the family business I guess. They are from Bohemia which is part of Czechs republic now and part of Austria-hungaria at that time.
+Forgotten Weapons+Rd Dn You are nearly correct but Bohemia is historical name for part of Czech republic not Czechs. I am Czech myself and I studied with one Krnka myself. It is not so common name but not that unusual either. First name Karel (in that direct spelling) says it all because there are tens of thousand of Karels living here. Karel Krnka was BORN in Oradea (It used to be called Großwardein by that time). This town used to be part of A-H empire and some skilled weaponsmiths moved there from far away to work in very important Hungarian arms factory. As far as I know one of them was quite important designer Sylvestr Krnka who became a father of Karel Krnka. A decade or two later, Sylvestr moved back to Prague, where he worked as weaponsmith until his death. It might be intersting for You that Karel worked for Roth factory during his early life and later moved back to Bohemia (It was after WW 1 so he practically moved to newborn Czechoslovakia) too, where he worked for Zbrojovka Praga (Praga armory). At the end of his live he even shortly worked for Zbrojovka Brno at the time when famous LMG vz.26(which became a BREN) was designed. These two men are quite forgotten today even in here.
Vojtěch Ptáček I am actually the owner of a model 1857 musket designed by Sylvestr. However I cannot find any information about it on the internet aside from a breach loading conversion done to this model later in 1867.
You know, Ian, I was thinking a lot about how you said it's a a stripper clip reloader pistol. We tend to automatically assume that it's an old obsolete mechanism, to reload via stripper clip with such a gun, but until recently I've never went into a gun shop. At the shop I saw that their SIG pistol mags were about 40 dollars, and that their glock ones were about 32. I always assumed it would be much, much cheaper... Probably not for serious police/military/body guard, but perhaps for hunting and maybe a cheap carry gun it would be wise to design it either with a fixed mag or a detachable mag that can also use stripper clips fed down, into the gun from above. That way if you're hunting you don't particularly need to worry about losing the clips, and the weight and cost for each "ammo unit" would be heavily decreased. I forget which video, but you said that there was a special stripper clip you found that had a special thumb rest, to make applying the clip into the firearm easier. Even a more expensive stripper clip would be dirt cheap compared to some of these detachable magazines...
That special thumb-rest clip was actually for the 1907 Roth-Steyr, which was descended from this design. We probably won't see any new clip-loaded pistol designs, simply because selling the spare magazines is a nice extra income stream for both manufacturers and retailers... :)
Forgotten Weapons So you think it might be a good idea, if not for profit for usability? I am wanting to be an engineer also design certain things, one of them being firearms.
David Smith The biggest problems with the stripper clip style reloading system are speed and possible feed problems. The reason all modern militaries have gone to a magazine style system is that it is a lot quicker, and more importantly in a stressful situations easier to just remove an empty magazine and shove in a loaded one, stripper clip loading can be very temperamental, which could be life or death in a tough situation. As for reliability with a stripper clip system you have a lot more permanent parts in the magazine which can be damaged and make the firearm a single shot weapon, whereas in a magazine fed weapon you just switch to another magazine. A good historical example of that problem is the stripper clip fed Breda machine gun.
Stripper clips are indeed cost, size and weight effective and with a little practice on gun of choice and you can reload fast enough. People think of Vietnam being full of AK47's, but there were probably just as many SKS's. You can carry quite a few more rounds, and the soldier's rate of fire also calms down a little bit, they aim more carefully because theyre more reluctant to spray their ammo everywhere. But 10 rounds in this gun or the SKS is plenty to get a job done. Fire, duck while other people are covering you, reload, and in about 5 seconds you should be back in business. Also remember that the M16 does have stripper clips. Really not a bad system.
It might be worth noting that even though Krnka was born in the Hungarian part of the Dual monarchy, he was actually ethnically Czech. After WWI he even worked for the Brno factory as well as for the Praga company based in Prague.
I really appreciate all your time and effort you have put into these very informative videos of these extremely rare and fascinating firearms!! You have created basically a free dictionary of firearm videos for all of us! And I'm sure I speak for everyone when I say how much we appreciate this!
Has anyone else noticed the amazingly refreshing lack of safety Nazis lurking on the Forgotten Weapons channel? Normally if a mosquito flies in front of a barrel or someone looks at a trigger sideways someone somewhere literally fills their adult diapers, but here no one flips out for no reason. Its great
How to design such things without any CAD or cientific calculators? Even being so awkward, this thing has much more brains than many modern junk pistols.
I have this really weird Krnka rifle (don't even know if the term applies) at home used in the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878 and I can't find any information about it. It is smooth bore muzzle loader, which was converted to a breech loader.
Guess what- I have the smooth bore muzzle loader you mention, but it hasn’t been converted. It’s a model 1857 Six Line Rifle Musket. 10 years later, they converted them in breach loaders, named the model 1857/67 Krnka.
Ian, wanted to say thanks for doing these, esp. also the Gyrojet and the FG-42. Have posted stuff on youtube for folks so I know its not as easy creating these as it looks!
Looking at the grip, the trigger and the triggerguard, it looks like it was designed with the users wearing enormous clunky gloves, like the Cavalary. Then again, it might also be awkward ergonomics design :-/
Two thoughts come to mind 1. It looks like it was designed with a T square to look like a T square. 2. Ergonomics- we don't need no ergonomics. These are not meant to be critical in way, shape or form. The designers of this time were charting unknown territory and even their earliest models display their ingenuity and engineering prowess.
I didn't have any idea/hope that I will see your vid about any of Krnka's guns. Just one small note - Karel Krnka was born in Romania yes. But he is Czech. He and his father were both gundesigners and are known mostly only in ex-Austro-Hungarian countries.
I wonder. Would it be possible to make a video about the Mexican Mondragon rifle sometime? I am mainly interested in seeing the mechanics of that rifle and learning about its alleged reliability issues and why it never seemed to really caught on.
another cool video thanks just a thought could the large trigger guard and trigger have been made so it can be fire whilst wherein heavy waiter gloves?
First I thought it was an Chinese clone of the Frommer. And Ian, is it normal that the barrel move with the bolt when you manually pull the bolt to the rear, with the long recoil action?
Good catch - on the long-recoil Frommers and the Mars, the barrels stay in place when the bolts are manually pulled back. This design is a bit unusual in that opening the bolt manually will cycle the barrel.
wow, almost like a mini semi- auto rifle. I can almost see that Browning probably had a little access to one of those, because the hammer and a few of the lines look slightly like a 1911, but I think Browning used it as an example to improve on everything. The Colt 1903 seems quite intermediate between them, but hard work and talent seems to have produced a gun not much later that fixes all of the short comings of this gun... hard hitting round, nice lines, simpler action, detachable mag. Yes, I can see that Browning may have partially used this as an example and said 'Cool gun, but I can do better!!!"
Excellent video, Ian. Love it when you demo the really funky pistols. One question though, why do you never place a cloth or something soft beneath any of the old pistols you demonstrate, especially when they have (or at least appear to have) an incredible stiff action that you really need to put force in to work? I was cringing every time I heard the barrel scrape against the table.
The scraping noise sounds way worse on camera than it actually was. I was using a plastic table, and there was no danger of damaging the guns, but my microphone did a great job picking up noise any time a gun touched the surface.
Forgotten Weapons Even without the chance to damage the guns, wouldn't a gray or midrange bright/dark cloth make filming easier? I find it harder to see details when the white of the tables washes out the iris. If you get the chance to go back with the same "freedom" you do with these series of videos, I for one would appreciate a darker background to brighten up the gun. Just a thought.
Could you take a look at the "French Bayle 1879 Wallet-Style Palm Pistol" I believe it is at the rock island armory as well. It is a very interesting looking firearm.
Very cool, I realize this is an early video, however would you consider, perhaps in the future, using, say an M1911A1 along side as a comparison in size so a person could really judge on just how large such a gun would be, also, if available, a cartridge for each gun would be neat, or even a photo of such a cartridge would be cool to look at when viewing the guns, well for the rounds that are not considered "standard" now days.
I think you may be wrong about this being the first model of this. I saw one on this website this guy made about Hungarian firearms from the 1800's to the present. the first model had an extremely interesting internal five round REVOLVING magazine. I'm not sure if it was actually even built as a prototype because the only picture on the site was of a drawn diagram of the weapon. I don't know if you could find any information on that.
your videos are really cool man, the close view of the mecanisms are awesome. but i think you could take a look at your audio EQ, because it seems to have too much lows when speaking near your microfone and some noise from background when speaking far from cam.
Unfortunately, I have been unable to find any more information about the cartridge, except that it appears to be different from the 8mm Roth-Steyr used in the 1907 pistol.
Forgotten Weapons Are you sure it's not chambered for 8x19 roth-steyr? According to municion.org, the 8x19 round is sometimes called the 8x19 roth-krnka.
Cameron Jenkins Hungariae.com claims it's in 8x21, and their info is usually very good - and I haven't been able to find any conflicting info. Could be wrong, though. You'd need to do a chamber cast on one to know for sure.
... and I thought the TT33 had a rather vertical grip... damn, this one looks like a right-angle. Use it to see if corners are a perfect 90 degrees lol
I expect you're about 6 feet tall, and the grip was originally made for someone 5'5". So it's way awkwardly missized for the era. I had an opportunity to pick up a Walther PPK cheap, but I recognized it would rip through my skin, but there was an Astra 900 at the same estate sale which didn't rip up my XXXL hands. It's been a fun range gun, but unconcealable.
Maybe made so for a cavalry officer, they had gloves on while riding a horse!I think it why the trigger guard is so big and why the gun is made that way, remember at that time the lance and sword were still very mutch the primary weapons of the cavalry up until the first year of WW1 actually!
I love these early development semiautos. I recently watched a video on the Dardick 1500, such a strange handgun, especially for the time it was developed. I would love to hear your thoughts on the design, outside their poor build quality and awful looks.
On the subject of interesting Austro-Hungarian firearms, it'd be great to see the Frommer M.1917 Maschinenpistole in action . . . video here Rare Frommer Stop Pistol Machine Gun
This is very cool indeed. If you *ever* get a chance, I'd love to see you review the Lancaster line of pistols. Great for putting down tigers and those pesky rebels to the British Empire and the Great White Queen Victoria.
His father was born in Velky Bor. His son, the designer of the gun, Karel was born in Oradea (Nagyvárad), then part of the Austrian Empire and now part of Romania.
You know many other channels will put up a known size pistol beside the behemoth type guns so the viewer can compare, perhaps a M1911A1 or oven an old Model 19 Smith, would make it much more meaningful. Also, if rounds are available (I realize many times they are not) putting them on the table side by side with say a 9mm or even a .32ACP would give a good clue for comparison. Just suggestion. I love your channel, and believe me if I weren't so damn broke I would surely be giving you a buck a month but since Workers Comp declared me retired last year, I can barely afford to pay attention.
It must be on your end, because the videos are coming in, nice and crisp. Try seeing if your headphones are plugged in all the way, I used to have a faulty speaker that didn't link with the headphones completely.
i cant see it being hardware seeing as most UA-cam vids i watch are fine but i do have the same problem with other vids thats why i asked because i know its on my end but ive tried everything
It's strange the Ad sounds play just fine but once the video turns on there is no sound. It only happens with my USB headset, once I use my speakers it works fine.
Ian I don't watch all of your videos in order but I do love the history in all of you videos. I know this was years ago but you seem like you were irritated at the time of this video which is uncharacteristic for you personality. I just wonder why.
the trigger and guard are made for gloved hands in cold weather. thank you Ian for another excellent presentation
Karel Krnka, although born in Romania, was Czech (Bohemia was at that time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire). After the empire's end and foundation of the Czechoslovak Republic he worked for Praga and then for Zbrojovka Brno, which you might have heard of. And you got the pronunciation just right ;-) Thanks for a nice and informative review.
I'm glad you are at RIA and doing these videos of some really odd and rare guns. No one has done this before and it is nice to actually see a video of these firearms.
Fun fact, I was confused a little bit with the time frame but anyhow the father Krnka developed rifle for russian military they used it a lot in 1876-1878 war against Turkey. The son continued with the family business I guess. They are from Bohemia which is part of Czechs republic now and part of Austria-hungaria at that time.
+Forgotten Weapons+Rd Dn
You are nearly correct but Bohemia is historical name for part of Czech republic not Czechs.
I am Czech myself and I studied with one Krnka myself. It is not so common name but not that unusual either. First name Karel (in that direct spelling) says it all because there are tens of thousand of Karels living here.
Karel Krnka was BORN in Oradea (It used to be called Großwardein by that time). This town used to be part of A-H empire and some skilled weaponsmiths moved there from far away to work in very important Hungarian arms factory. As far as I know one of them was quite important designer Sylvestr Krnka who became a father of Karel Krnka. A decade or two later, Sylvestr moved back to Prague, where he worked as weaponsmith until his death.
It might be intersting for You that Karel worked for Roth factory during his early life and later moved back to Bohemia (It was after WW 1 so he practically moved to newborn Czechoslovakia) too, where he worked for Zbrojovka Praga (Praga armory). At the end of his live he even shortly worked for Zbrojovka Brno at the time when famous LMG vz.26(which became a BREN) was designed. These two men are quite forgotten today even in here.
nice details Vojtech :) We all love Ceska Zbroiovka home of famous CZ :)
Vojtěch Ptáček I am actually the owner of a model 1857 musket designed by Sylvestr. However I cannot find any information about it on the internet aside from a breach loading conversion done to this model later in 1867.
And if you throw it, it comes back to you.
Oh God, why can't it just go away!
and hay if you run out of ammo you have a bomerang weapon!
If that trigger guard was any larger, you could have a gunfight inside of it.
I love your videos. Because of your videos I get to see guns that I would never see.
Do u have a seeing disability?
"If I was going to do that..."
>Proceeds to do it anyways
That was when the security guard began to get nervous.
That table is really tall.
I'm just hunkering way down behind it so we can get a better shot of the gun in the frame.
Forgotten Weapons
You seem to get this question a lot...
+hornmonk3zit plot twist he's really a midget
"If i was going to do that..." smart move.
2:39 The facial expression says everything.
7:10 "I can't do that" - Does it...
You know, Ian, I was thinking a lot about how you said it's a a stripper clip reloader pistol. We tend to automatically assume that it's an old obsolete mechanism, to reload via stripper clip with such a gun, but until recently I've never went into a gun shop. At the shop I saw that their SIG pistol mags were about 40 dollars, and that their glock ones were about 32. I always assumed it would be much, much cheaper...
Probably not for serious police/military/body guard, but perhaps for hunting and maybe a cheap carry gun it would be wise to design it either with a fixed mag or a detachable mag that can also use stripper clips fed down, into the gun from above. That way if you're hunting you don't particularly need to worry about losing the clips, and the weight and cost for each "ammo unit" would be heavily decreased. I forget which video, but you said that there was a special stripper clip you found that had a special thumb rest, to make applying the clip into the firearm easier. Even a more expensive stripper clip would be dirt cheap compared to some of these detachable magazines...
That special thumb-rest clip was actually for the 1907 Roth-Steyr, which was descended from this design.
We probably won't see any new clip-loaded pistol designs, simply because selling the spare magazines is a nice extra income stream for both manufacturers and retailers... :)
Forgotten Weapons
So you think it might be a good idea, if not for profit for usability? I am wanting to be an engineer also design certain things, one of them being firearms.
David Smith The biggest problems with the stripper clip style reloading system are speed and possible feed problems. The reason all modern militaries have gone to a magazine style system is that it is a lot quicker, and more importantly in a stressful situations easier to just remove an empty magazine and shove in a loaded one, stripper clip loading can be very temperamental, which could be life or death in a tough situation. As for reliability with a stripper clip system you have a lot more permanent parts in the magazine which can be damaged and make the firearm a single shot weapon, whereas in a magazine fed weapon you just switch to another magazine. A good historical example of that problem is the stripper clip fed Breda machine gun.
Stripper clips are indeed cost, size and weight effective and with a little practice on gun of choice and you can reload fast enough. People think of Vietnam being full of AK47's, but there were probably just as many SKS's. You can carry quite a few more rounds, and the soldier's rate of fire also calms down a little bit, they aim more carefully because theyre more reluctant to spray their ammo everywhere. But 10 rounds in this gun or the SKS is plenty to get a job done. Fire, duck while other people are covering you, reload, and in about 5 seconds you should be back in business. Also remember that the M16 does have stripper clips. Really not a bad system.
It might be worth noting that even though Krnka was born in the Hungarian part of the Dual monarchy, he was actually ethnically Czech. After WWI he even worked for the Brno factory as well as for the Praga company based in Prague.
Looks like a cross between a long barreled M9, a Browning Hi-Power, and a flare gun. Jesus, what a funky looking gun.
Krnka. What a unique little design. It be cool to see a Dardick 1500 review
I really appreciate all your time and effort you have put into these very informative videos of these extremely rare and fascinating firearms!! You have created basically a free dictionary of firearm videos for all of us! And I'm sure I speak for everyone when I say how much we appreciate this!
I really like that you update the description to tell us how much it sold for.
HAHAHA Ian you are killing me. 2:35 you can't hide what you are thinking (WTF)
Has anyone else noticed the amazingly refreshing lack of safety Nazis lurking on the Forgotten Weapons channel? Normally if a mosquito flies in front of a barrel or someone looks at a trigger sideways someone somewhere literally fills their adult diapers, but here no one flips out for no reason. Its great
Its because these guns are in an auction house, so theyve been triple, and quadruple checked to be unloaded, and safe for disassembly
I'd say in 1985 you'd be pretty lucky to carry something like this. Very charming design!
How to design such things without any CAD or cientific calculators? Even being so awkward, this thing has much more brains than many modern junk pistols.
Looking at design I think the high bore is because it was intended to look and feel similar to the revolvers of the time.
I have this really weird Krnka rifle (don't even know if the term applies) at home used in the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878 and I can't find any information about it. It is smooth bore muzzle loader, which was converted to a breech loader.
+Dimitar Nazarov
ohh I'd really like to see that!
Guess what- I have the smooth bore muzzle loader you mention, but it hasn’t been converted. It’s a model 1857 Six Line Rifle Musket. 10 years later, they converted them in breach loaders, named the model 1857/67 Krnka.
keep up the great work. History of firearms defines the history of the common world.
This gun is the most steampunk real-life object I have ever seen.
it'd be nice if you would show a picture or comparison to a modern bullet of what these older bullets looked like
Ian, wanted to say thanks for doing these, esp. also the Gyrojet
and the FG-42. Have posted stuff on youtube for folks so I know
its not as easy creating these as it looks!
Yet another great video Ian!
Another great video
So that's the granddaddy of the Roth-Steyr? Number 7! Wow!
Reading your name, says enough to me.
Looking at the grip, the trigger and the triggerguard, it looks like it was designed with the users wearing enormous clunky gloves, like the Cavalary.
Then again, it might also be awkward ergonomics design :-/
Two thoughts come to mind
1. It looks like it was designed with a T square to look like a T square.
2. Ergonomics- we don't need no ergonomics.
These are not meant to be critical in way, shape or form. The designers of this time were charting unknown territory and even their earliest models display their ingenuity and engineering prowess.
I didn't have any idea/hope that I will see your vid about any of Krnka's guns.
Just one small note - Karel Krnka was born in Romania yes. But he is Czech. He and his father were both gundesigners and are known mostly only in ex-Austro-Hungarian countries.
P.S. his father's name is Sylvestr Krnka.
I wonder. Would it be possible to make a video about the Mexican Mondragon rifle sometime? I am mainly interested in seeing the mechanics of that rifle and learning about its alleged reliability issues and why it never seemed to really caught on.
another cool video thanks
just a thought could the large trigger guard and trigger have been made so it can be fire whilst wherein heavy waiter gloves?
Great video, thanks for posting.
First I thought it was an Chinese clone of the Frommer.
And Ian, is it normal that the barrel move with the bolt when you manually pull the bolt to the rear, with the long recoil action?
Good catch - on the long-recoil Frommers and the Mars, the barrels stay in place when the bolts are manually pulled back. This design is a bit unusual in that opening the bolt manually will cycle the barrel.
Great video interesting pistol large trigger guard high bore axis thanks for the video.
Weirdly beautiful
wow, almost like a mini semi- auto rifle. I can almost see that Browning probably had a little access to one of those, because the hammer and a few of the lines look slightly like a 1911, but I think Browning used it as an example to improve on everything. The Colt 1903 seems quite intermediate between them, but hard work and talent seems to have produced a gun not much later that fixes all of the short comings of this gun... hard hitting round, nice lines, simpler action, detachable mag. Yes, I can see that Browning may have partially used this as an example and said 'Cool gun, but I can do better!!!"
cool piece ian
Thanks Ian! :D
Excellent video, Ian. Love it when you demo the really funky pistols.
One question though, why do you never place a cloth or something soft beneath any of the old pistols you demonstrate, especially when they have (or at least appear to have) an incredible stiff action that you really need to put force in to work? I was cringing every time I heard the barrel scrape against the table.
The scraping noise sounds way worse on camera than it actually was. I was using a plastic table, and there was no danger of damaging the guns, but my microphone did a great job picking up noise any time a gun touched the surface.
Forgotten Weapons
Even without the chance to damage the guns, wouldn't a gray or midrange bright/dark cloth make filming easier? I find it harder to see details when the white of the tables washes out the iris. If you get the chance to go back with the same "freedom" you do with these series of videos, I for one would appreciate a darker background to brighten up the gun. Just a thought.
Could you take a look at the "French Bayle 1879 Wallet-Style Palm Pistol" I believe it is at the rock island armory as well. It is a very interesting looking firearm.
Sorry, but I didn't have a chance to take a look at any of the palm pistols - maybe next time.
Forgotten Weapons Not a problem, maybe you'll stumble across one in the future, thanks.
Ian where exactly do you find the information on such obscure weapons? You do very well i must say, i find these videos very informative. Thanks
Darth Vader manning the camera, right?
Very cool, I realize this is an early video, however would you consider, perhaps in the future, using, say an M1911A1 along side as a comparison in size so a person could really judge on just how large such a gun would be, also, if available, a cartridge for each gun would be neat, or even a photo of such a cartridge would be cool to look at when viewing the guns, well for the rounds that are not considered "standard" now days.
I think you may be wrong about this being the first model of this. I saw one on this website this guy made about Hungarian firearms from the 1800's to the present. the first model had an extremely interesting internal five round REVOLVING magazine. I'm not sure if it was actually even built as a prototype because the only picture on the site was of a drawn diagram of the weapon. I don't know if you could find any information on that.
Great video, and thanks!!!
your videos are really cool man, the close view of the mecanisms are awesome.
but i think you could take a look at your audio EQ, because it seems to have too much lows when speaking near your microfone and some noise from background when speaking far from cam.
Another early automatic pistol that looks like you could see it being used as a Blaster in Star Wars.
The first Romanian firearms designer I have ever heard of - despite the fact his name seems Slavic
jo zka His name sounds slavic and he was Czech. Only born in Romania
Andre the Giant likes the trigger guard.
Did it sell n how much shame not here ?
You said it was an 8x21mm cartridge. Do you have a link to anywhere I could learn more about this round? The internet is failing me.
Unfortunately, I have been unable to find any more information about the cartridge, except that it appears to be different from the 8mm Roth-Steyr used in the 1907 pistol.
Forgotten Weapons Are you sure it's not chambered for 8x19 roth-steyr? According to municion.org, the 8x19 round is sometimes called the 8x19 roth-krnka.
Cameron Jenkins Hungariae.com claims it's in 8x21, and their info is usually very good - and I haven't been able to find any conflicting info. Could be wrong, though. You'd need to do a chamber cast on one to know for sure.
... and I thought the TT33 had a rather vertical grip... damn, this one looks like a right-angle. Use it to see if corners are a perfect 90 degrees lol
I expect you're about 6 feet tall, and the grip was originally made for someone 5'5". So it's way awkwardly missized for the era. I had an opportunity to pick up a Walther PPK cheap, but I recognized it would rip through my skin, but there was an Astra 900 at the same estate sale which didn't rip up my XXXL hands. It's been a fun range gun, but unconcealable.
8x21 doesn't sound too weak... 9x19 is pretty potent.
Is he on knees in techno video?
Maybe made so for a cavalry officer, they had gloves on while riding a horse!I think it why the trigger guard is so big and why the gun is made that way, remember at that time the lance and sword were still very mutch the primary weapons of the cavalry up until the first year of WW1 actually!
Is it weak compared to a modern 9x19?
Yes.
I laughed out loud - Ian, your face said it all.
Ian are you on your knees for this video?
I love these early development semiautos. I recently watched a video on the Dardick 1500, such a strange handgun, especially for the time it was developed. I would love to hear your thoughts on the design, outside their poor build quality and awful looks.
On the subject of interesting Austro-Hungarian firearms, it'd be great to see the Frommer M.1917 Maschinenpistole in action . . . video here Rare Frommer Stop Pistol Machine Gun
Very cool.
Also usefull as a square frame for carpenters.
Back before Rock Island would provide a chair for Ian.
This gun screams "Austro-Hungarian Empire."
This is very cool indeed.
If you *ever* get a chance, I'd love to see you review the Lancaster line of pistols.
Great for putting down tigers and those pesky rebels to the British Empire and the Great White Queen Victoria.
Krnka was from Bohemia (Czech Rep.) not Romania. He was born in Velký Bor near Horažďovice. Also like your videos.
His father was born in Velky Bor. His son, the designer of the gun, Karel was born in Oradea (Nagyvárad), then part of the Austrian Empire and now part of Romania.
You know many other channels will put up a known size pistol beside the behemoth type guns so the viewer can compare, perhaps a M1911A1 or oven an old Model 19 Smith, would make it much more meaningful. Also, if rounds are available (I realize many times they are not) putting them on the table side by side with say a 9mm or even a .32ACP would give a good clue for comparison. Just suggestion. I love your channel, and believe me if I weren't so damn broke I would surely be giving you a buck a month but since Workers Comp declared me retired last year, I can barely afford to pay attention.
i always love these vids but i cant hear half of them any one know why?
Beats me...
It must be on your end, because the videos are coming in, nice and crisp.
Try seeing if your headphones are plugged in all the way, I used to have a faulty speaker that didn't link with the headphones completely.
i cant see it being hardware seeing as most UA-cam vids i watch are fine but i do have the same problem with other vids thats why i asked because i know its on my end but ive tried everything
It's strange the Ad sounds play just fine but once the video turns on there is no sound. It only happens with my USB headset, once I use my speakers it works fine.
strange im on speakers
That gun makes me uncomfortable
+tman008 me neither
You mean Transylvania? Romania was never part of Austria-Hungary but parts of it have been.
I bet you have nightmares, so many interesting guns you are not allowed to disassemble. haha
Heavy breathing
Actually only a part of Romania was part of Austria-Hungary.
I uhhh... Huh. There sure aren't any vowels in that name are there?
What's with the breath on the mic
keep in mind it was 1897.
I like the unusual look to this gun. Anybody know if somebody out there makes non-firing replicas of this piece?
Probably not. There usually has to be a fair amount of interest in a gun before companies consider making reproductions.
Grip looks kinda like the frommer
Even this would look puny in hickok's hands...
Ian I don't watch all of your videos in order but I do love the history in all of you videos. I know this was years ago but you seem like you were irritated at the time of this video which is uncharacteristic for you personality. I just wonder why.
It's as pretty as it's name
WE LOVE GUN JESUS :)
ever wonder why they lost in the war
He's kinda sassy in this video lol
Sorry but its not Romania, rather Erdély or Transsylvania :)
Weird. Looks more like a pop rivet gun.
RIA company will also be auctioning off the clown car that goes with this gun. You park the car in the trigger guard…that's why it is so big.
Omg this thing looks like a foot :P
Dang! That pistol is about as ugly as a mud fence!...……….Diane's husband, Wes
Man that things ugly