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Afghanistan: Tommys, Greasers & Commie


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Locally manufactured? No, those are factory made vintage weapons.

While there are some sophisticated local armories making a variety of firearms, as seen in videos, there are also videos of very clearly fake shops and fake firearms implied as being made in the shops.
Handmade examples of twentieth century firearms made in shed armories look handmade as do all handmade firearms regardless of where and when they were made. Even armories with extensive machinery like the Chinese Shansei of the late 19th and early 20th century produced firearms that still looked "handmade". It is still amazing what can be done with basic machinery and lots of manpower.
In the US we are accustomed to being able to inexpensively buy industrially produced firearms components, especially certain receivers such as AR15s and assemble our own guns. We can buy almost complete AK receivers, "flats" of die cut H&K receivers, various tubes cut and spec'd for a number of vintage SMGs, partially complete sideplates for rifle caliber MGs, etc, etc.

Great credit is due to those small capable shops that can actually produce functional firearms, but there are limits to what they can do without modern machinery. FWIW

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One of our teams that I supported captured an M1 Thompson while I was in Afghanistan back in 2010-11. One of the guys had some mags sent over and we were able to fire it. It ran like a champ!

 

I apologize for the angle, I was by myself and didn't have anyone to hold the camera haha. This was at a range on Bagram Airfield:

 

 

 

Actually, I did find the pics I posted all those years ago:

 

http://www.machinegunboards.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=12729&hl=afghanistan

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Mauser Matt, where were you? I was at Camp Phoenix in downtown Kabul 11-12. I also spent a lot of time at Bagram.

 

BRMCII - the craftsman at Kyber pass made some pretty amazing stuff without modern machines. They could literally pound horshoes and pig iron into aks and fight us with them the next day. We had a Bazar at our fob and I had to go with my guys to make sure the souvenir muskets and rifles they were buying were the real thing. There were a lot of P53 enfields, Snyders and martini henrys and for every real one, 5 fakes. They were very very close.

 

Gregg

Edited by gregg877
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Gregg: yes, I have handled a dozen or so small shop firearms of Vietnam manufacture, Chinese, Pakistani and others over many years and it is amazing what they can do. I am not taking anything away from these skilled craftsmen. However, there currently are videos on the internet of shops displaying five or six workers doing nothing but filing alleged gun parts and then pics of obviously modern factory made firearms that are meant to suggest that these filers made these guns. These bogus displays are just taking advantage of the current popularity of such videos.

The best videos of shops where decent handmade firearms are actually the older ones of real shops making hand made small arms.

I have been gunsmithing on vintage and modern MGs for many many years, since the early 1970s and often hand make my own parts so I don't offer my opinion without very substantial experience and awareness of what I am seeing in videos. FWIW

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Mauser Matt, where were you? I was at Camp Phoenix in downtown Kabul 11-12. I also spent a lot of time at Bagram.

 

Gregg

 

I was based out of Bagram, but did convoys throughout the whole eastern half of the country. Not too far from Phoenix was a COP Morehead that I spent plenty of time in, but never made it to Phoenix.

 

Then went back as a contractor from 2018-2020. Saw the rest of the country and more of Bagram then. What a difference it was too. Glad I got out of it when I did...

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