SOUTH AFRICA is a country with a very rich firearms heritage and local collectors never cease to be amazed at the fascinating and obscure firearms that surface here from time to time. This is a story of one such rare firearm, the Colt-Browning model 1895 machinegun, also known by a variety of more colourful names like the “Gas-Hammer Gun” or the “Browning Peacemaker”, or commonly as the “Potato Digger”, and among collectors who are very familiar with these guns simply as “Diggers”. How it came to be known by these names will become clear later.
Designed by the famous John Moses Browning and produced by Colt in the USA, the model 1895 machine-gun was a ground-breaking milestone. It was Browning’s first fully automatic gun and it was the world’s first practical gas-operated machine-gun.
From around 1889, Browning had been making experimental gas-operated rifles, initially modifying a model 1873 Winchester lever-action rifle by adding a ‘flapper’ to the muzzle to harness the escaping muzzle gases, thereby operating the action and tripping the hammer by means of
