Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video episode on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian, and today I'm here with Joe Lozen, the man behind GardnerGuns.com.
And we're at the Institute of Military Technology
taking a look at some of the really fabulous gun displays they have.
Including this very interesting older piece, what is this Joe?
- This is a 5 barrelled Nordenfelt gun.
And this particular one takes a rimmed black powder cartridge.
Just one of the main competitors in the early days of the manually operated machine gun.
And this is actually probably the most successful of the designs.
Although in America we used the Gatling primarily,
the Nordenfelt was the main competitor over in Europe.
- And these were often used in naval applications as well, which we don't see much on Gatlings.
- No, because this was actually light enough to be put on smaller mounts, this is not a naval mount.
It could also be moved to the top ... sails of the ship, and fired down onto the decks.
Compared to the Gatling and other Gardeners, etc. it was actually a fairly light piece,
and so you could actually take a small landing party of a few men
and carry this gun ashore with a carriage, etc.
So, small and more portable than the others.
- Probably the most obvious visible difference is that this doesn't have a crank handle
or a ... rotating crank, this has just a forward and backward [lever].
- That's right. The action for this gun, as opposed to the Gatling
which most people know made the barrels rotate,
these barrels are in a horizontal plane.
And there's a large action block, the large action block is this,
and it's about a 15 pound chunk of steel with a few bolts that are screwed into the front end.
And what you would do when you're firing this gun
is you literally move the handle back and forth.
And this one is moving on me a little bit. You just steady that.
You just heard how it cocks and fires when it goes into battery.
A really interesting part of the Nordenfelt is
in the heat of battle if you did not bring this handle all the way back,
you could bring it most of the way back.
The action block would actually move back but it wouldn't cock the triggers.
So you could actually cycle this weapon, extract the cartridges,
drop them through, and partially load and still not fire.
And ... basically you just wouldn't fire the gun.
- So this is the magazine, and it's got five slots in here, one for each barrel.
And it's hollow inside, if you take a look down in here it's just empty slots.
- Yep, and basically if you see from the front end of the magazine there are hollows,
and these are basically cells for the cartridges to feed down.
Now the interesting thing about this particular magazine is that it's a straight side.
There were two different ones, one is straight all the way down, and one has a stepped toe.
And what that did is it dropped the cartridges differently.
In this one they would all sit in, and feed in one at a time.
The interesting thing with the other magazine is, because it was skinnier,
the cartridges would sit up, and then as they got to the final position
they would rotate down and drop in. So it was just one of the different concepts.
And that particular magazine, the second style with the stepped toe,
they also had a selector on the side which would cut off the feed of the magazine.
So that you could actually cut off the feed and remove the magazine
and ... recharge it, but leave it loaded.
- That's right, if you tried to pull this off while there was still ammo,
it would just bleagh, fall out all over the place. - Yes.
- Let's take a look, take off this magazine. - OK.
- And ... go ahead and open that up, let's see what it looks like inside.
- And what we have inside here is (move this handle out of the way),
you can see the steel action block, you can see the bolts that are screwed into the face,
you can see the feed tray.
And when this comes back, you can also watch that the speed valve will slide over
OK, so what you're hearing there is you've cocked the trigger comb, and you've moved over.
Interesting, this particular gun, even though it's set up for rimmed cartridges,
which is what these fat bolts were, it has the steel secondary plate on the bottom.
That is typically only found on the rimless cartridges.
So not sure what was going on exactly with this, but it has a steel plate, and it has this right here.
These steel fingers would actually hold the cartridge in place as it drops in.
So that when you went into battery, there you go, when you went into battery,
it would still be supporting that.
Wow, that's actually a lot stiffer than ...
Alright, so and right there you'll notice
the gun is fully home and in battery, but hasn't fired at all yet.
And it's this last bit of motion where the bolts have locked into the sides.
The action is fully home, and you have two wings that go in and lock into the steel,
they literally cam into the steel frame and retain the pressure as it's firing.
- OK. - You can actually see that
over here in a second Nordenfelt.
And basically these two fingers, when this handle goes into battery,
these cams move this forward.
And these two ears project into the sides and lock the gun closed.
And that's how that works. - OK.
- Basically as the gun goes into battery you've cocked the trigger comb at the rear of the gun.
And there are small hammers, literally hammers on springs,
and they are being held back at the moment.
Now as you go forward - this one's really stiff.
As you go forward, and this is much stiffer than most that I've ever touched.
You get to the point where the whole system is closed and locked, and then the gun fires.
And you'll notice as we do this slowly they do not fire at one time,
but they fire sequentially. And go ahead and listen to this.
So there you go. In the very last bit of the stroke it fires the 5 rounds.
And it fires them, from what I have seen, it fires from the centre, out, out, out, out.
And just an interesting thing.
- And we should point out, there weren't a lot of these made,
not like we think of mass production today.
So a lot of the guns ... they often have individual almost personality,
and definitely individual history.
- Yeah, it happens that for the Nordenfelt, believe it or not, this was one of the main contenders.
And so they were everywhere, ... we've actually found a lot of them.
The US military, and this is a fact that most people don't know,
the US military actually adopted three Nordenfelts.
It happens that during the Spanish-American War ... we took delivery of two cruisers
that were built and were supposed to be delivered to a South American country,
but we took over the contracts.
They were delivered to the US with Nordenfelts installed,
and we didn't have enough of the 6mm Lee Navy Diggers to replace them.
So the US actually proofed and accepted the guns.
And they are out there, very interesting beautiful pieces,
but do know that ... the US actually had three ... Nordenfelts.
- Cool. So if anyone out there ... is fortunate enough to have one of these guns,
and needs to try and figure out something, or has some problems with it,
do you have information you can give to people, is that ... ?
- I do, and I'm absolutely happy to help anyone get theirs going.
I don't really do work on them, I have made parts for pretty much all of them.
But if you need help getting yours running, give me a call.
- Yeah OK, and that's GardnersGuns.com. - Yeah.
- Alright, well Joe, I'd like to thank you for coming on and talking to us.
And of course we'd like to thank the Institute of Military Technology for letting us
take a look at these two guns, among their many other cool pieces.
And thank you guys for watching.