1894 French Contract Carbines|Winchester Rifles|Forum|Winchester Collector

Maverick said
It is interesting to me to see them shooting it. I don’t know if its a French thing or just the fact that it is a younger person shooting. But I’ve never understood guys that have to dismount from their shoulder in order to chamber and fire the next round when shooting any Winchester.

  

Certainly not either a French or young person thing; hand a ’94 to anyone inexperienced with lever actions & observe how they shoot it.  

But that’s not what’s most interesting in this video, which is the collection of Model 1915 “Adrian” helmets, the first steel helmet used in WWI, & eventually accepted & copied by every nation in the war, except Britain, the US, & of course Germany.  After the war it was adopted by countries from China to Mexico.  Both Patton & MacArthur wore them in preference to the US “Doughboy” issue.  I wear mine while watching WWI movies.

28 gauge said
 As to the shooting style,I wonder if these firearms had nor been used for awhile and were sticky, needing some cleaning and oiling?

  

Looked very sticky, & maybe not well broken in; compared to the feel of the ’86 & ’92 designs, the ’94 is definitely balky until it’s seen a good deal of use, & even then not as smooth as the earlier actions.

The story of how Remington played a role in their acquisition is very interesting.  It was the sight markings & swivels that caused me to do more research on this rifle after I obtained this rifle in a group from an estate.  Almost paid for the entire group of rifles when I sold it….

Chuck said

clarence said

  I wear mine while watching WWI movies.

  

Thanks, Clarence.  Maybe thanks isn’t the right word.  I’ll have that image in my mind every time I watch a war movie.

  

Even though I grew up watching WWII docs in the early days of TV, when programmers were short of commercial TV progams, I’ve always been more fascinated by the much more horrific Great War.  In the last several yrs, some extraordinarily fine WWI documentaries have become available on streaming services such as NatGeo, Amazon, & my favorite, Curiosity Stream–stuff that you’d NEVER see on commercial channels.  Best of them is a 5-part series called Apocalypse WWI, in which the original B&W film stock has been colorized in such a true-to-live way that it’s really hard to believe you aren’t watching original color film; details of weapons, uniforms, etc., are much sharper than in B&W.  Most commercially-produced war moves are 3.2 beer compared to this actual on the battleground film footage, & NO fakey CGI special effects! 

Maverick said
Have you seen Peter Jackson’s WWI documentary “They Shall Not Grow Old”. It is very well done. They have gone through with AI and fixed the odd timing and unstable camera movements. It looks like smooth video you would shoot today. The only thing I really noticed is that the coloring of the film is slightly off. But is far batter than any other colorization of the old footage I’ve seen to date.

  

No, but if I can find it on my Roku service, I certainly will.  I repeat, the colorization of the Apocalypse series is phenomenal, but it’s a French-made doc, & after watching scores of other French historical docs, I don’t hesitate to say that, in general, they are superior to most British docs; the narration of course is English.

Have heard much ado about the new remake of All Quiet on the Western Front.  Hard to believe it could surpass the 1930 original, & I’d be amazed if it’s not stuffed to the gills with CGI fakery, gigantic firey explosions, etc.