Airgun Alchemist, Collector and Scribe
Collecting has been very slow this year, so I couldn’t believe my luck in nailing two things that have been on my wish list for a very long time, and both only arrived a couple of days ago. Don’t care what I get on Christmas Day now.
Award-winning Airgun Anorak
Wow!Originally Posted by ccdjg
Collecting has been very slow this year, so I couldn’t believe my luck in nailing two things that have been on my wish list for a very long time, and both only arrived a couple of days ago. Don’t care what I get on Christmas Day now.
Vintage Airguns Gallery
..Above link posted with permission from Gareth W-B
In British slang an anorak is a person who has a very strong interest in niche subjects.
Registered User
Very nice...
Top one especially - is the front "trigger" a barrel release for loading ?
What kind of spring - volute or conventional ?
Are you going to try and fire it ?
Always looking for any cheap, interesting, knackered "project" guns. Thanks, JB.
Registered User
Lovely!
Do you know who the top one was made by?
Matt
Registered User
Very nice! No problem in treating yourself early.
The collector formerly known as micky
What a great Christmas present to your self, and in such great condition as well. l don't think l have seen the second one in the photo before. do you know who made it and what it is called.
Registered User
Dear Santa, please can I have...
they are 2 stunning pistols , please can you explain the mechanisms, dates of manufacture, any history ? etc. kind regards Al.
Last edited by cringe; 05-12-2020 at 09:11 AM.
Registered User
May I echo that. Those are beautiful and rare pistols. How long has the search been going on? I can't imagine guns like that turning up very oftenWow!
Airgun Alchemist, Collector and Scribe
The front lever is to release the barrel. The barrel pops up under spring pressure, much like the Bugelspanner rifles, but in their case the release catch is always on the side of the gun.
I have now managed to have a look inside and the spring is a conventional coil spring, but made of hefty square cross section wire. The use of square section steel to make a coil sping seems to be a peculiar to early- to mid-nineteenth century airguns.
Although the spring is a real toughy, cocking is relatively easy thanks to the long length of the crank handle, and the gear system, which means that cocking takes about one and a half turns.
Although shooting the gun makes a very loud crack, the power is not much to write home about. The bore is slightly larger than .22 and normal pellets slide through fairly easily. Also the seal between breech and cylinder is metal-on-metal and there was quite a bit of air loss at the join. I measured 150 fps with .22 pellets on the chrono. As it stands, the gun is fine for shooting darts at short range, but as it is really a collector's item I will not be using it much.
Unfortunately the pistol has no markings, but the general design has all the hallmarks of being made by Oscar Will.
Registered User
interesting, thanks... Awesome that it still works.
Shame they didn't fit a breech seal of some form - leather would have been fine. Would it have come with it's own pellet mould as it's a somewhat specific calibre ?
Always looking for any cheap, interesting, knackered "project" guns. Thanks, JB.
Airgun Alchemist, Collector and Scribe
I could be wrong , but I think it may have been intended for darts, perhaps for gallery shooting (it is smoothbore of course). In that case the bore could have had quite a big tolerance range without it affecting the accuracy much.
Registered User
to think they put that much engineering and workmanship into a bloody dart gun
Always looking for any cheap, interesting, knackered "project" guns. Thanks, JB.
Registered User
Nice early Xmas presents indeed. Lucky you.
I'm happy with mine
they are very nice bud
Airgun Alchemist, Collector and Scribe
The smaller pistol is German, dates to the 1920’s and was made by Langenhan. It was advertised in Germany as the “Mako Novelty Patent” air pistol, and in the UK by Clyde Bell as the “Twite”. It seems to be a very rare pistol and I know of only a handful in collections. A very nice boxed example is pictured in the Gallery here: https://forum.vintageairgunsgallery....ite/#post-1504
This is from a Clyde Bell catalogue:
The cocking mechanism can be understood from the following pictures. The barrel is pushed into the cylinder until the piston engages with the sear, as in the second picture. The barrel is then pulled back out when it can be broken against a retaining spring detent and the dart or pellet is inserted, as in the third picture. The barrel is then closed and the gun is ready to fire.
The cocking principle has a lot in common with the Hubertus, except that with the Hubertus the pellet can be inserted into the breech before the barrel is returned. It raises the question, did this pistol inspire Jung when he developed his Hubertus?
The spring is quite strong and requires your full weight when cocking by pushing the barrel against floor. It has about the same power as a Gat but is more accurate to shoot.
One of the reasons I have been looking for one of these pistols is that I have owned an odd pistol for the past 20 years which Is clearly an early smaller version, and I wanted to put the two together. This earlier version, which seems to be the only known example, is shown here below the later model. It is in a rather tatty state but does work. Although no catalogue pictures of this specific version are known, one very similar is pictured in a 1907 German catalogue, and differs only in the barrel being rotated to load the pellet rather than broken. So if the design was around as early as 1907, then from a timing point of view it is quite feasible that Jung could have used it as a basis for his Hubertus design.
Last edited by ccdjg; 06-12-2020 at 02:24 PM.
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