The draft programme for 2014 is:

January  –  AGM

February – Handling of historic firearms in a museum environment and considerations upon the new Home Office “Guidance”

March – Casting bullets. Ever wanted to know which lead alloy is best for making rifle or pistol bullets? Whether best results are obtained with hard or soft bullets? Whether bullets should be slightly over sized or a perfect match to the bore? Should they be gas checked or not? Find out during the course of this lecture…

April – The Dutch Mannlicher M95

May – Self loading firearms: a review of the mechanisms developed to allow repeating firearms to become practical.

June – June’s usual meeting will be on the subject of Springfield rifles. However, there is the possibility of an additional meeting being held on the 4th June jointly with TWI in Sheffield, further details of which may be found in the Members’ area.

July – The Browning Automatic Rifle and its contemporaries

August – tbc, ST

September – Big game rifles

October – The Suomi Mosin Nagants. Ever since their secession from Russia during the chaos of the 1917 Revolution, the Finns have kept a wary eye on their larger neighbour and made preparations to face them in battle. The Finnish army adopted the Russian M1891 Mosin Nagant rifle as its own battle rifle in order to ensure a commonality of ammunition and spares in combat against Russia, but modified those rifles in its service to ensure they were more accurate, more robust and more reliable in the Arctic winter than the original.

November – Weapons of the Franco-Prussian War

December – Bring and show. Our annual chance to partake of a mince pie or two and show off a few treasured possessions from our own collections.