Ohio Ordnance Works Colt M1918 BAR Self-Loading Rifle

The Browning Automatic Rifle is one of those silhouettes you recognize from across a room, and this one carries something most semi-auto BAR clones never will. Look at the left side of the receiver and you'll find the genuine Colt Hartford rollmark, reading Colt's Pt. F.A. Mfg. Co., Self Loading Rifle, Model 1918, Cal. .30-06. This is a Colt-licensed Model 1918 SLR built by Ohio Ordnance Works, not a generic tribute gun. That marking is the whole story.

Ohio Ordnance produced these as semi-automatic, magazine-fed rifles faithful to the original WWI and WWII service guns John Browning designed. The receiver wears a brushed satin finish that catches light along its machined contours, with the trigger group, selector, charging handle, and barrel finished in deep black. The selector is marked F and S rather than the original fire-control range, the one concession to its semi-auto configuration. Walnut furniture rounds out the package, with a properly profiled buttstock and a checkered forearm cut in a sharp diamond pattern that gives the hand something to hold onto.

Up front sits the original-style gas system, front sight block, flash hider, and that unmistakable tube under the barrel. The rear sight is a folding aperture marked out to distance, adjustable for windage and elevation just like the issue gun. The bore is bright with strong rifling.

Worth noting: the whole thing arrives cased in a tan leather Negrini hard case bearing the Colt logo, fitted in blue velvet. Inside you get two 20-round magazines, a sealed leather sling, a cleaning kit, the Colt medallion case, and the Model 1918 SLR manual.

For a collector who wants the look, weight, and presence of a BAR without the Title II paperwork, a Colt-marked example in its factory case is the version to chase. This is firepower history you can actually own and display.