Genghis khan and ALEXANDER THE GREAT used the Khyber pass to conquer the known world in their time. today the Khyber pass is something of legend among gun-enthusiasts purely for the things they create and how they create them. Everything from Reproduction Martini-henry rifles, Tokarev pistol clones, Armsel Protecta's and Franchi Spas-12's the Khyber pass gunsmiths are dedicated to their work, often producing several hundred guns a day, the quality varying from Grenades-disguised-as-Rifles to some very impressively made firearms. the exactness varies from shop to shop, some being very strict with quality control and others not even batting an eye at a mistake.
Now, I've been to the Khyber pass twice now and thanks to my sweet government contacts I've been able to just-barely bring a few items back but not much that hasn't been seen already. ill mostly be talking about some examples that can be seen on the internet after a quick search, more on that soon.
Now the way most of the shops operate is they have lots of handtools and some heavy machinery most of which is about 100 years old and hasn't seen proper maintenance since 1908. They have what is commonly referred to as "master rifles" or "master guns" often a True production firearm or a well made Khyber pass knockoff on which they base their builds on. often a shop will have a handful of early Russian produced or Chinese AKM rifles and they will build AK's based on that rifles construction sometimes with extreme or light variation, micro ak's in 8mm kurz or pistol calibers designed for child soldiers, MASSIVE Ak battle rifles in 8mm mauser or 308 or very rarely .303 british, they build magazines loosely based on the ak design and make them work with just about any cartridge, or in a much neater example they very carefully machine the parts to a Armsel protecta/Street sweeper shotgun using metal from old cars construction equipment or destroyed guns! the quality of the build depends on the quality of the scrap used or if the gun built is used on a damaged or parted out gun, example being a majority of the AK's built are built using spare parts from soviet and sino-soviet ak's the most popularly built firarms are tokarev pistols ak's Martini-henry rifles and Variants of the SMLE (short magazine Lee-Enfield) for your long range needs of course. while most of these rifles construction is horrid, there are a handful of gunsmiths who produce impressive arms, one paki I met who was blind in one eye, deaf, could lip read Russian and Pakistani, and was only in his mid 40's built a absolutely amazing Mauser K98 rifle while I stayed in Khyber pass for a handful of days I became popular a little to quickly but more on that later, this rifle was effective in my hands out to 400 yards hitting a old car door consistently with 8mm mauser ammo made by children in the alleyway next to his shop, those cretins demanded too much for their shoddy construction, but atleast they had good primers, and this impressively built k98 easily handled the stout loads of some of the slight overcharges it was fed, and I took a handful of measurments for future refrence, his K98 clone stamped with fake Nazi marks is about 1.8mm's thicker in the receiver than the k98 mauser in my collection which is a bonafied ww2 bringback (unmolested with correct markings, no importer markings) and the barrel he constructed is 1mm thicker in the chamber than my k98 which is good because without it I may have had a rifle balloon in my face after a few of those hot 8mm mauser cartridges were fired. one surprising thing is the amount of love for the shotgun the people of the Khyber pass have, everything is clones as mentioned earlier the Spas-12 shows up commonly, along with the armsel protecta, but other more prestigious arms show up too such as clones of the Benelli M series shotguns and the Mossberg 500 shotguns show up commonly cloned with some surprising detail. there is also a large amount of disdain for Al-Qaeda forces in the Khyber pass but there is also a large amount of support on the other side of town, only certain arms actually show up in the hands of forces that fight US/Nato troops in middle eastern countries come from the Khyber pass, most of them being enfields, mausers, and AK variants.
One of the slightly rarer things you seen in Khyber is the revolver market. Amazing reproductions of british webley revolvers and shoddy Khyber-smiths have a cult-classic like appeal to some locals, while I was there they would occasionally get together just outside of town and in the back of the truck they would have junk to shoot at and hundreds of revolvers to testfire before they put them on the shelves of their shops to sell. while my moon speak isn't very good luckily I was with company that spoke it fluently and understood English too for the most part. the guys who meet outside of town take a lot of pride in their work, and when they have a gun that doesn't function to their liking it can be kind of sad when they let out a sigh and put it in the box that gets sent back into the work room. some of the revolvers I had a chance to fire had some amazing lock-up and smooth indexing with rare errors in operation.
now one of the easiest ways to spot a Khyber pass firearm besides shoddy construction is its markings: backwards letters, incorrect dating, (Some British SMLE rifle clones have been spotted as being maked as early as 1881 or having the incorrect stampings for its year) poor English (one common example on the tokarev pistols I saw was "make in china" almost as if there was some sort of in-joke amongst the smith's about it) and poor marking at that. they use often hand made or nearly ancient metal stamps they hammer into the metal with nothing more than the stamp and a good 4 or 5 pound hammer, the stampings not being even, one of the most common errors on Lee-Enfield rifles is the N in Enfield being a Cyrillic letter (essentially a backwards N) or the E's being 3's stamped upside down (L33t speak is apparently alive and well in the Khyber pass)
Heres our first example, looks like a kind of rough 1880's possibly 1890's Martini-Henry right? Wrong. This is one of the many Khyber pass clones that were made based off british leftovers, they cloned all the markings and measurements to the best of their abilities.
Now this is a much more intresting example (and nicer) of Gunsmithing in the khyber pass, i didint take this picture, but there were several just like it in the markets and i even bothered to bring one back with me, this is a 8mm Mauser (7.92x57mm) AK, the magazines are of course custom and its a very intresting and well built rifle, built by one of the best smiths in the pass, who's name is so middle easternly generic you can probably guess it (protip, it starts with mohammed) but he's a really nice guy who takes pride in his work, his rifles and pistols sell amazingly well, and this 8mm mauser rifle is a joy to shoot, its got alot of muzzle climb which is probably its biggest short coming, along with the heavy kick in the small platform. the rifle i brought back has a side folding triangle stock as opposed to this underfolder pictured, the grip and front M-16 style sight are the same, and the rear sight is their own design, similar in vein to the Russians Krinkov sight. The example i brought back has pretty surprising accuracy (about 2-3 MOA at 100 yards, not the best but for a Khyber pass gun..)
The old guy was nice enough to give me a Leather sling to go along with it and i asked some of the smiths to give it their own mark (some of them marked it with their own crests and logos, others their names, some of them attached things to it like beads and one of them built a tiny knife with a sheath for it). the ammo i initially tested was their own cast cases from scrap brass that had been ruined, and loaded with god only knows what concoction of gun powder and some really hard primers (had a few light primer strikes and firing pin is like a weapon in its own right on this gun) the ammo was dirty, and function was spotty at best, but when i got home i ran some PPU 8mm through it no problem, the weapon functions quite nicely, the AK platform really likes the 8mm round and the magazines they make by hand are surprisingly good, this was probably one of the best firearms i shot the whole time i was there that was a clone or original design of firearm.
Now the bad.
one of the most terrifying examples were these knockoff martini-henry pistols. quality ranged on these so much i was afraid to shoot it, the metal of the one i did shoot used to be a bumper off a UAZ truck. the one i shot was actually chambered for 7.62x54mmR and it was some hot ammo, I only fired two rounds and didn't hit anything at 10 yards, upon inspection the second projectile had lodged itself in the end of the barrel.
Now this is something a bit different, this looks like a strange AK doesn't it? now this particular example was actually found in Chechnya, but this design was seen in the pass. the receiver is unlike any other ak out there, its big robust and blocky, its cut to accept SVD/PSL type magazines and this example has two magazines put together for more capacity, the barrels are either surplus, custom built, or mosin barrels modified for a gas piston system there is nothing in place to help with recoil, and the bolts are very light for the large cartridge (on full auto they can clock about 750-800 RPM compared to the standard ak which is much closer to the 600 range) and the 7.62x54r cartridge is very hard to control in this state, sadly i did not bring one of these back as i only found one of them for sale but it was a shoddy one the fit was horrible, you could pass your thumbnail through the dust cover and receiver almost everywhere, and it was the wobbliest ak i'd ever seen.
Now for an honorable mention in the home made firearms world
If you ever go around gun websites you may have seen this horrifying thing and you might ask yourself: What the hell is it? where is it from? the answer is VIETNAM! this was made by a Viet cong gunsmith (if you can call them that) for a officer loosely based off the 1911. and i mean loosely, there is no rear sight, the trigger guard is tiny, the proportions are all wrong, the grips are poorly made, the frame is hap hazard,it doesn't even really work right, the hammer has to be held back and then released, the magazine wiggles around and doesn't really feed the cartridges and worst of all, it'll probably explode in your hand!
Thats all for this shoddy installment of home made firearms and the khyber pass, i plan on doing a writeup in the future on other homemade firearms and gunsmiths that started out in garages (or worse, JAIL!)
Until next time Warriors.
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