The Nambu "Tensei" Project

The story about the Nambu project began early in my childhood, back in the days when Call of Duty: World at War released in 2008. Those that played World at War likely had fond memories of the Nambu Type 100, as it was widely regarded as one of the best submachine guns in the game. That was my first "experience" with the Nambu, and eventually I discovered it to be present in other video games, such as Bad Company 2, and Red Orchestra 2 - Rising Storm, and it was also present in many of the newer WW2 era Call of Duty titles.

As I grew older, I developed an interest in collecting and restoring vintage firearms as well as the learning the art of manual machining. In 2015, when I was around 20 years old, I began apprenticing at a machine shop where I grew up in El Segundo, California. The owner and I became fast friends, having a shared interest in classic cars, firearms, and manufacturing. My interest in firearms and manufacturing eventually led to an interest in gunsmithing and firearms design, and I began designing and making replacement parts such as barrels and firing pins for obsolete vintage and antique guns. At the time I was also heavily involved in the conversion of surplus gun parts kits into functional semi-automatic carbines. Such parts kits included guns like the British Sten, the Finnish Suomi M/31, and the Polish PPS-43. 

In 2017, with the Nambu still in mind, and the Fort DeRussy museum on my list of to-do's, we traveled to Honolulu for a summer family vacation. Within the museum was one of the few rare examples of a late war Nambu Type 100/44. I was lucky enough to be granted access into the museum's archives, where I collected a wealth of reference material that became invaluable later in the reverse engineering process.

Between 2017 and early 2024, not much happened with the Nambu project with the exception of a few notable instances where owners of miscellaneous Nambu parts made contact with me, and we exchanged measurements for the parts we had. By now I was confident I had most of the dimensions accurate on a 2D scale, but I still did not have much to reference to on a 3D scale with the exception of the photographs I took in Hawaii. 

In February of 2024, a friend that worked at an auction company in California reached out and informed me that they had come across what they believed to be the barreled action of a Nambu submachine gun. I gathered my measuring tools and immediately took off, and spent the next several hours taking every measurement I could think of, not knowing if I could come close to a cash offer that they would consider. After some deliberating, we came up with a number that both of us were happy with, and I walked away with something I never thought I would lay hands on - a demilled barreled action of a early serial number, late war Nambu Type 100/44. I spent the next week, 14 hours a day modeling the entire barreled action in a CAD environment, and capturing the original via 3D scan to preserve for future modeling. I received another message not long after that the matching stock for the Nambu barreled action had been found. At this point, I had everything I needed to begin drawing the scale model to cross reference with my 2D drawings. Unfortunately, the matching internal components were never located, but we're still searching for a spare set that may still be floating around in private collections. 

Thus, the real work began. The thought from the beginning was always, "It really would be cool to be able to own a Nambu someday", and that's exactly what we did. It may not be a 1:1 scale copy of the original, but it's about as close as you can get without introducing too many expensive, proprietary components. Starting with the rough overall shape of the original Nambu, over the course of 9 months or so, I designed a semiautomatic Pistol Caliber Carbine (PCC) that shares near-perfect similarity with the original Nambu, and it accepts commonly available surplus PPS-43 magazines, an AR-15 firing pin, and an AR-15 ejector to keep things simple. Since historically accurate metric diameter materials were unavailable, the next closest inch standard material was chosen to replace it. All in all, we got it as close as we could while still being able to locate the materials to produce it.

I drew a lot of inspiration for this design from the British Sten and Polish PPS-43 submachine guns in both form and function. I borrowed the extractor and fire control group design from the Sten, and the bolt from the PPS-43.  As the design progressed, we eliminated many of the proprietary parts we had designed in favor of commonly sourced components, such as AR-15 firing pins and ejectors. This, if anything, ensure that the firearm can continue to be repaired if they remain in circulation if and / or when our company ever meets its untimely end. 

Halfway through the design process, we uprooted our lives in California and set sail for Rosenberg, Texas, and it took a couple months of settling in before any work picked up again.

While we were hoping for a release date by or before SHOT Show 2025, unfortunately we were hit with a number of setbacks once we landed in Texas. 

SHOT Show 2025 - 

Wow, what a wild experience!

When we arrived at SHOT Show, we hoped that the Nambu would get some attention, but we didn't expect the outpouring of positive feedback and support we got from practically everyone. We drew the attention of some of the most influential people present at the show, including Mark Serbu, James Reeves (TFBTV), and "Gun Jesus" himself - Ian McCollum of Forgotten Weapons.

A lot of people asked us "Why" when it came to the Nambu project. Why are we doing this? Why are we spending so much on a gamble that could very well backfire against us? The answer is simply "Because I can, and because I want to". The Nambu has been, and always will be a passion project. I could sell a grand total of zero firearms, and still be happy with how the project turned out. And after hearing the story on why I'm dedicating so much time and effort into this little dream of mine, most of the folks that came by to ask "Why", left asking us "When?" 

We're happy to say that my little childhood dream project has over 500 people interested in preordering at the time of this writing. 

Launch Day - 11 / 7 / 2025 

Words cannot describe the feeling. The day finally came where we took our first production orders for the Tensei. We had 30 slots open, and they all sold out within an HOUR. I expected all 30 slots to sell over the weekend, and well into the next week, but in one hour we had several website crashes, several card portal crashes, and several e-commerce platform crashes as hundreds of users tried to purchase the Tensei all at once.