Why do we know so little about this gun? With firearms and weaponry expert, Jonathan Ferguson 

Edit - correction, this is NOT a "Monte Carlo" stock, it just has a cheekpiece. The Monte Carlo comb sits proud of the butt itself, so has a step down near the buttplate. My friend Danny at the Cody Firearms Museum has pointed out something I missed, which is that the bolt arrangement is eerily similar to the George W. Morse patent 15995 of 1856. A possible inspiration, in which case the story COULD go Morse-This Thing-Jovanovich.

It's weird, overly complex, chambered for a very short lived cartridge... Makes my German heart spark with joy.

Feels like an episode of Forgotten Weapons. That's a compliment.

The barrel seems to be the key to identifying the provenance of this mystery rifle. It looks like an unfinished production part mated to an engineering shop prototype receiver and action. My wild guess is that it was a prototype made in the H&H factory using that particular barrel and cartridge because they were available as surplus parts. It may have been an "off the books" project by some H&H employee who knew of the Pedersen-based designs of self-loading rifles and wondered if he could make a self-loading rifle using the firm's facilities and no-one would notice if a spare barrel for their unpopular 0.375 Nitro Express rifle went missing. If you can track down any existing 0.375" Nitro Express rifles in collections or period literature and cross-compare the barrel shape and sight block layout that might give you another line of enquiry.

I love these oddball dead end designs. Thanks for sharing this one. With regards to not disassembling the guns to frequently, had the armory considered getting a good 3D scanner so that when one is taken apart accurate scans can be taken along with photos? It would be great from a research accessibility standpoint but also to allow recreation of various parts or entire guns.

It's worth noting that the performance of the cartridge was deliberately made significantly lower than what was theoretically possible because it was a British cartridge for big game in Africa loaded using cordite powder which was exceptionally sensitive to heat. Generally a maximum pressure of 47k psi was allowed with cordite to give enough safety factor, but with newer flake or ball powders which don't see such drastic increases in burn speed (and thus pressure) the maximum would be up around 62k. So it wasn't exactly a slouch, despite being over a hundred years old it was right up at the limits of what would be allowed even today when using a brass case (which is 65k after safety factor).

I've heard that a common concern among big game hunters was the risk of being charged by an animal they'd wounded. Hence why some big game rifles have two barrels, and also the original development of 'howdah pistols'. This might have been intended as a way to allow hunters to take quick follow-up shots at charging animals.

In parts of the British Empire that restricted what caliber weapons could be used to hunt certain game, .375" was the minimum specified for shooting elephants. Also, I was seeing 'Express' style folding leaf sights still being fitted to brand new rifles into the mid-1970's from companies like Steyr (Mannlicher) and FN Browning

You know, based on the cartridge, this might have been a first attempt at a semiautomatic big game stopping rifle. The .375" diameter projectile been a popular choice for african big game hunting, and maybe the inventor was looking to break into that market. It's definitely a curious piece!

A quite fearsome recoil with all those large lumps of metal hammering around - also a great finger dicer if you let go of the wrong bit at the wrong time.

A general comment here. Have you thought of using x-ray florescence as a NDT method of cataloging firearm metallurgy? I was using this method last summer at work and found it very revealing. Especially as it regards to "purity" of composition of metals. For instance using the Star-Trek like pistol and shooting a piece of "pewter" showed expected lead, antimony, and zinc. But it also revealed uranium, mercury, silver and gold content. With enough data one would be able to determine what furnace made what, if a particular manufacturer had a material specification, etc. Perhaps the rifle here may have steel(s) from an Italian, Czech or German plant. Just a thought.

I only discovered this channel about a month ago. I've got to say that the content is excellent and this video is a great reminder of just how many unusual designs there must have been to get us to the tried and true mechanisms we know and rely on today. Simply brilliant.

Very cool! This may be Jonathan's best video yet - he's so very clearly really into the mystery of this thing. Entertaining and educational, an excellent use of my time. Thank you all!

The very roomy trigger-guard could be for use with heavy gloves similar to the FAMAS

It always amazes me just how nicely machined and complete many prototype guns are and how nicely finished the metal and wood is in an almost production like way even way back then

I was going to say it reminds me of the luger rifle or the Mauser self loader both of which had toggle or flap lock mechanisms, funny that at the turn of the century a lot of people thought that those types of actions were going to be the future

"You see, when a spring loaded mouse trap and a self loading rifle get really, _really_ drunk one night in a motel..."

You and Ian should have done a collab on this one. The knowledge you both have would surely be amazing to hear.

Brilliant. The ingenuity of gun designers and builders is second to none. It starts with an idea 100% of the time based on something else. Guns shaped society, both good and bad. It needs to be understood not feared.

I have seen a virtually identical one in Australia. It was own by a professional SriLanken Tiger and leopard hunter. Unfortunately when semi auto rifles were banned his surviving wife handed in in and it was destroyed.

Jonathan Ferguson and Ian McCollum are the best source of firearm related facts and interesting concepts

Thanks for sharing Jonathan 👍

Absolutely wild design, thank you so much for sharing it.

Thanks Jonathan and team - really interesting. Thanks for showing the patent drawings but I'm not 100% convinced that they exactly fit this action, as you noted in the video. But patents are a great resource. In retrospect, we are really lucky that the point and purpose of item XIX.852 is covered by a US Patent that is now accessible online. It gives some clue as to what its mad inventors and their sponsors were up to at the time.

Jon... Ian would LOVE this thing...

Okay...as a "hobby loveing gun nerd" this is really cool. Thank you for sharing this with us.

love the humor you bring Jonathan

Interesting artifact, Jonathan!! I wonder if Holland & Holland *THEMSELVES* may have had a hand in this? Thanks for the video!

10:45 this is a really interesting argument on what type of firing system this technically is. A striker is a single piece with the firing pin, where a linear hammer is separate from the firing pin. However, as far as I am aware, no other toggle lock firearm had the cocking/firing mechanism inside the toggle arm like this one. You could say conventionally it is more similar to a linear hammer, or you could argue it has it's own category. Regardless, it's just semantics about what to call the parts of the gun that make it go pew pew pew.

Fantastic work as ever Jonathan 👏

LOVED this video, JF! Obviously you can’t always have mysteries but this one was fascinating 🥰

Thanks Jonathan. I know virtually nothing about the working of firearms , more into the historical context. But find this video fascinating

FASCINATING piece!

The locking flap reminds me of the Browning gas operated pistol of 1897. Recoil actuated instead of gas, of course, by the large over the top flap with the internal toggle.

Hands down that was the best intro to a video I have ever seen. You win the internet

Hello Jon! Hope your doing good! Learned so much about old weapons from you!

Man you have the best job ever. I would probably be fired because I'd be looking at all the weapons and forget to actually work.

Awww 🤗 looks like a BAR and a mauser c96 had a big fat baby

Sir, that is a very interesting rifle. When I first started, watching it reminded me of a few different obscure rifles. The Peterson rifle was one of the first to come to mind, and a J. M. B. from early 1900s. Thanks for sharing this with everyone. I know my comments added nothing of relevance to this, but to fuel U-tube tracking.

It is interesting the Standard Arms also is known for battering issues if the buffer is ignored.

One thing i noticed: It has grub and hex screws. From this point, i would date it roughly around 1920ish If i follow this thought... Automotive Industry? They had the material, machines and these typical screws. Follow that path further... Allan Safety Screws were highly promoted in Canada. My wild guess: Some engineer of a automotive plant who had fought in WWI had some free time and constructed this one to hunt Bears and moose.

Looks as if it would make an excellent military rifle. Reliable action, minimal open spots for dirt and debris, and a large trigger guard for operating with gloves in cold weather.

I love this - thank you Jonathan for all your work. What a cool thing, big toggle action essentially, I can see why this never caught on. What a beautiful mystery though! Unknown - Unknown hah! Next time I'm in the UK I am definitely going to the Royal Armouries, can't believe I hadn't yet.

Furrer wouldn't be happy someone's stepping on his toggle lock toes.

“what is this weapon? no seriously, i’m actually asking you…”

Brilliant intro, Jonathan- you had my roaring with laughter within 20 seconds of the video starting 🤣

First thing that came to my mind was a Selbstlader. But a whole lot of differences when you get to the details. What a cool find though, really interesting.

Wow! Extremely interesting!!

That looks like an iteration of the C98 Mauser, one of Germany's first forays into self-loading rifles back in 1898. The elongated trigger guard and square magazine are nearly identical. The C98 was also a flap-lock design. Wonder if a Brit decided to do a little patent infringement...

As an inventor myself I can say I’ve done a few iterations of a design before paying the money for a patent. It’s kinda expensive and time consuming to file for a patent. You want to make sure that your idea works before you go through the process. And of course your going to play with it and show your friends. So it’s going to be beat up a bit.

While rather terrifying given that giant metal block flapping up and down while firing, one thing this "toggle" locked rifle seems to have as an advantage is a simplified geometry vs the jointed toggle of the Maxim or Luger. It seems it would be cheaper and easier to manufacture given the absence of the precisely matched toggle surfaces.

great looking action, would cut recoil well, we could make the frame in aluminum now to get most of the weight out of it. 😊

You think 13 years is "many, many"? I had two careers that were longer than that and I _still_ retired early. I would come out of retirement and come to England to apprentice under you though Jonathan.

Hey Jonathan, ever since you did the Isonzo react video on the Gamespot channel where you reviewed the Beretta M1915, I've been wondering if it's the earliest form of bolt hold open system, or there was another existing example before it. Internet searches haven't been helpful to me, so I've been wanting to know what could be the earliest known form of bolt hold open system on a self loading firearm, because I feel it's a feature that a lot of us nowadays take for granted. Thanks Jonathan!

Given that real weapons parts/designs were used, I can absolutely see this design being converted into a Star Wars universe rifle. Large chunky parts with hard angles and small curves and also the exposed return spring all add to the "star wars esthetic". Really interesting design nonetheless.

I wish that we would see more toggle lock firearms today. This is very cool.

So this is a semi auto 400 nitro rifle? Thats insane. I'm not sure what this would be used for, its completely overkill for hunting pretty much every kind of animal. Even an elephant will typically go down on the first shot from a 400 or 500 nitro. If I had to hazard a guess I'd say this was just a side project, something someone made for the fun of it. Gunsmiths in Africa are kind of famous for this sort of thing, tons of wacky one off guns made for the fun of it. I wouldn't be surprised if some bored gunsmith at H&H found a box of those rounds lying around and figured he'd make something cool to shoot them with.

Maybe do some kind of chemical/radiological analysis on the steel and the wood buttstock. They might be able to determine when the steel was smelted, where the tree for the buttstock wood grew etc and narrow down where it was made.

Ask C&Rsenal those guys are VERRY good at turn of century guns , firing mechanism etc. They have a whole series on WWI firearms and the history behind them, it would be and excellent place to start in my opinion.

Three minutes into the video, and I can already tell that Jonathan is in good humours today. The "Thanks for watching" joke is more or less done to death, but you still made it work. Then a very subtle Monty Python reference... I'm almost afraid to keep watching.

Love this episode 😂

Great content, I'm surprised none of the major fiarearms companies haven't contacted you after this video to say that they have prototypes like this on file to help trace its lineage.

That toggle is an appropriate chance to describe it as "a big wacking piece of metal". A real hat lifter.

This is most weird toggle lock mechanism on that gun that i ever seen.

thank you for video

I wasn't ready for the introduction but it would have still been a great video as they always are

It's reminds me of a stretched Mauser broom handle with the try to cancel the back sliding bolt in to a up flipping bolt group maybe the inspiration of this prototype.

Jonathan, I am a Brit living in Wyoming. We used to have a firearms law but nobody used it. Been here 20 years and it has been great to pursue my hobby. I reload my 7.62x51. I am a convert to 1911 and 45ACP for my pistols. I am an amateur gunsmith in that I had mechanical engineering training in my teens. Love this program and Forgotten Weapons. Are these broadcast in the UK? The country is very anti-gun mainly driven by ignorance. I have visited the Leeds museum many times in the past.

Reminds me of those guns used to knock down ice ledges around glaciers and ski slopes.

That kind of front sight base is still common on high end hunting rifles. Often Mauser based rifles made by Rigby, h&h, and loads of custom makers.

that was nice 15 second episode

Maybe someone was trying to build a self-loading safari rifle?

an interesting bit of investigation into a semi-finished prototype. I imagine the amount of machine work would narrow down where something like that could have been made during the period. I wonder if the metal composition could give more insight into what region might have made the components.

It looks like it would have had one hell of a kick to it. Thank you.

That cartridge was Holland & Holland's initial foray into .375 rimless rounds if I'm remembering correctly, and after Ze Germans introduced the 9.3x62mm and spanked H&H in the market, the latter developed the now-classic .375 H&H Magnum to compete with that. I'm not sure how long the .400/.375 stuck around after that, but given how unpopular it proved compared to its later brother, I can't imagine it was rolling around all that long. Then again, perhaps it was a limitation of the mechanical system of the rifle and it couldn't be made to work with the more potent .375 Magnum, but otherwise I'd guess it helps to date the rifle to the first couple decades of the 20th century rather than into the late 30s.

I like the idea this was just a one off idea by some random gunmaker that just ended up in Johnathan's hands a century after the fact. Like they never really intended it to be anything more than a fun project they worked on in their spare time.

Interesting mechanics on this one. I wonder how it would perform when fired.

I think it looks really good, and the trigger guard would be great for gloves. It's too bad it's heavy

So, the consensus seems to be that it is a rifle for hunting something big (large calibre) and dangerous (fast reload) that moves in packs (many shots). Velociraptors?

My first thought was, where did you get an actual Combat Rifle from Fallout 4.

I love a mystery. They say go with your first guess. That is Finland oddly enough. The finger holes big enough for gloves caught my eye first. That's something they tended to do. The action seems a bit like a luger from neighboring Germany, a likely place they would they get ideas? I'd love to see a metalugical study as one comment suggested to solve this, followed by a prize to the closest commenter.

The covered toggle action elongates the lever and thus the mechanical advantage to open the gun breach by having a much longer lever. As a result, it might have been a way to solve the problem of the gun being overly hard to operate with a toggle action that does not have this lever. It appeared that you managed to somewhat easily operate the gun from the intended lever end, but it would be much harder to operate at half-length, where the toggle link is located.

His mention in this video reminds me that I doubt there will ever be a better gun designer name than "Søren Bang".

I suspect the stock is lignum vitae. It was a very common industrial material at the turn of the century.

It may have already been stated, but the trigger guard looks as if it’s catered for shooting with winter gloves. Thank you for an interesting look at this strange firearm.

I think that the elongated trigger guard is actually a significant feature. The elongated trigger would allow the soldiers to shoot the rifle in cold climates while wearing gloves

A flapper lock in a toggle action? How intriguing!

I enjoyed reading the comments more then the video.

This thing reminds me so hard of a scaled up Luger pistol. It almost looks like someone saw a Luger and then thought, maybe we could make a rifle with a similar action.

looks cool

...so the Monte Carlo exotic rifle in destiny 2 doesn't actually have a monte Carlo stock? Missed opportunity there

I used to own a 12 ga Winchester model 1911. The only other firearm I am familiar with that moved the barrel like that. (This was how you charged / cocked it btw). They called it the "widow maker" because users would charge it with the buttstock on the ground which caused obvious safety issues. Very interesting. Great Vid.

Thank you for making this video. Very thorough presentation. One thing that immediately caught my attention was "that's not a Monte Carlo", but when I looked at the comments I saw that you had already pinned Jonathan's comment at the top. Good job! This is definitely a prototype rifle. The size, weight, unfinished metal and stock, unfinished express sights, lack of a buttplate all scream "prototype". The cartridge is going to narrow things down to the 1905 to 1910 area. Since the 400/375 was H&H's short-lived attempt to compete with Germany's 9.5x57, my inclination is that it is an H&H prototype, but that's not a firm thought - could have been an H&H employee. The battering of the metal doesn't surprise me. As a prototype, proof of concept would have occurred before going to the trouble of heat treating wear points and lightening the action where possible. The walls of the mag well show that this rifle was a very early working prototype because even the walls of the mag well are overly thick and heavy. All in all, a very interesting rifle. Thank you for presenting it.

I wonder when Jonathan will cover Darne machine gun because I can't find any information about it. Hope to see it soon.

It's like an elongated Thompson in appearance of the receiver to me.

Just as a note, in RU-vid Studio, you can add things under "Tags" when editing how a video will be uploaded. That way, you can tag the videos as "#WhatIsThisWeapon?"

Interesting video thanks. I wonder If it was developed for wild boar hunting in the day, being prevalent in Europe at that period of time, and boar being particularly hard headed. I'm sure like all good engineered equipment the machined marking will help date and locate the age and geography of the gun.

My in laws got me tickets to come on the 11th as a birthday present I can’t bloody wait!

2:04 I would also ask about the colour - why on Earth is it almost pitch-black? 3:43 It could be that this space would be used by the magazine catch, like on the BAR. 5:28 Another proof that this wasn't seriously intended for military use: I don't think that there were more than 6 grooves on any military rifle of the day, and even that would turn out to be a bit much for mass production. 5:45 That toggle would make A. Furrer red with envy! 😁 8:05 I believe that the Maxim gun you've mentioned earlier eluded your attention as an obvious counter-example. 10:54 I've always wondered how one should distinguish linear hammers and strikers.

Next time Ian McCollum visits get him to lay his hands upon it he might be able to use his holy energies to work out what it is!