The Remington Model 8
It is no overstatement; John Browning formed much if not most of the world’s understanding of small arms and what they are capable of. From the Colt 1911 to the Auto-5 shotgun to the BAR, when we consider almost any genre of firearm design (and philosophy of use) all paths inevitably seem to lead back to one man, John Moses Browning. And one of his lesser known but no less remarkable achievements was the Remington Model 8—a semi-automatic sporting rifle.
Eminent firearms guru John Moses Browning took the same basic long-stroke recoil operating system as his new Auto-5 shotgun and designed a rifle around it. It had a 22” steel barrel, integral box magazine that could be filled by means of five-round stripper clips (always a useful feature) and came in a number of mild-shooting chamberings such as .25-30 Remington Auto and .35 Remington for light recoil. The beefier .35 Rem version would only hold four rounds in the magazine, whereas the other three loadings would hold five. Overall, the semi-auto rifle was groundbreakingly simple without the use of impingement gas systems. Basic models weighed in at 8.5 pounds and were 41-inches overall.
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MTG’s Remington Model 8….this was about a sexy as it got in the 1920s….