Some tinkering with a repro’ Kuchenreuter pistol.

[ccdjg]

Steve (45Flint) recently gave me the heads-up that Beeman’s Kuchenreuter pistol was coming up for auction in August (https://www.rockislandauction.com/ca...lotNumber=3274).





With an estimated price of $3000-4,500 (and likely to go for a lot more) needless to say it is not something I will be bidding on, but it did make me take another look at my reproduction pistol. It occurred to me that I had never really looked at its accuracy or power, so I decided to give it a whirl.

To the best of my knowledge no one has tested, or even fired, an original example of a Kuchenreuter in recent times, or if they have, it has never been reported, so we have no idea of how good these veritable antiques were as target pistols. As my repro’ pistol was made to be a very close copy of an original Johann Kuchenreuter pistol, right down to cylinder size, piston stroke and strength of spring, my tests should give an interesting insight into how these unique air pistols might have performed in their day.


For those of you who are not familiar with the Kuchenreuter pistols, these are dart-firing spring air guns which are unique in having an external V-spring as the power source. This spring is cocked by a hammer and the whole of the lock assembly closely resembles that of a typical flintlock pistol. The pistols date to the early 1800’s and were made by the noted German Kuchenreuter family, most examples being ascribed to Johann Adam Kuchenreuter, although at least one example is known signed by his cousin Bartholomeus Kuchenreuter. My reproduction pistol was closely copied from another original pistol, which was cosmetically different, though mechanically identical, to the Beeman pistol. The reproduction pistol and original are shown in the following comparison:






You can seen the repro’ pistol in operation in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6Ac0c5U1qA


The first thing I wanted to know was the power output of the repro’, but unfortunately I could not do this with darts as my chrono does not work with these. Something to do with their length I suppose. So I had to go down the lead pellet route. The pistol has a calibre of 6.3mm, just under .25 inches, so I was able to downsize .25 waisted pellets to give a sliding, airtight fit in the smoothbore barrel. The pellets were pretty heavy, at 1.2 grams, and using these, the pistol gave an average muzzle velocity of 140 fps. This calculates as a muzzle energy of 0.83 ft lbs, which is not bad for a gun that is much easier to cock than many air pistols. The relatively low strength of the spring is compensated for by the large diameter of the cylinder, which gives it a good sized swept volume. Presumably the pellet would then be propelled in what Gerald Cardew called the ‘blowpipe’ mode, rather than the more usual ‘popgun’ mode. In other words, the relatively large volume of compressed air can keep the pellet or dart accelerating steadily for the full length of the pistol’s long barrel, even though its compression may not be very great.


I next wanted to have a look at the accuracy of the pistol. With a power level of about 0.8 ft lbs Kuchenreuter pistols would not have been suited to shooting conventional steel darts. For example, a 6.2 mm steel dart weighing typically about 2.5 grams would leave the barrel with a velocity of only about 95 fps, which is much too low for accurate target shooting. So it is obvious that originally these pistols must have used lightweight darts. As there are no known surviving examples of these darts, I had to design my own, and after a bit of experimentation I decided to make them with a hardwood carcase, rather than steel or aluminium, in order to save weight.

This was the general construction of the darts.




:
Hardwood dowelling was drilled out in the lathe to give a cavity with a wall thickness of 0.65mm. A panel pin was used as the point. The flights were made by wrapping polyester sewing thread around two pins to produce a skein of thread made up of 170 loops. One end of this was glued into the dowel cavity and when sliced across this gave a flight consisting of 340 individual threads.


Here are four of the darts, which each weigh only 0.62 grams, virtually the same as an average .177 waisted lead pellet. It was calculated that with an energy of 0.82 ft lbs, the darts should achieve a muzzle velocity of about 200 fps, which is ideal for indoor target shooting.






I tested the accuracy of the pistol indoors at a range of 10 yards, using a 12 cm diameter target:





The pistol is heavy and I was most comfortable firing it two-handed. The set trigger was adjusted to a light let-off, and the recoil was small but unusual, in that the pistol pulled slightly to the right. This was presumably because the mainspring is right of the central axis of the gun. I am not much of a shooter but I was able to compensate for the recoil and get the darts on the target almost every time.


I then tested the accuracy more scientifically using a rest, and I was pleasantly surprised at the result. Consistently tight groups could be obtained, and the following is typical for three consecutive shots. Not bad for a pistol at 10 yards





So it seems that, provided suitably lightweight, matched darts were used, the Kuchenreuter pistols would have been adequately powerful and accurate for indoor target shooting, and must have provided a lot of entertainment for the gentry, justifying their obviously considerable expense.

[micky2]

Hi John, many thanks for posting the testing results, that is quite a interesting account at how it proformed, you must have been well pleased with it overall, l know that l would have been.
ATB
Mick

[Abasmajor]

Thanks for sharing your fascinating and as usual, informative experiments with this rare and unusual pistol.

Brian

[rapidresponse1]

that looks very nice

[Garvin]

It looks like incredibly good fun! I can hardly imagine the satisfaction of being able to shoot a near-perfect replica of a 200-year old air pistol that I built myself from scratch.

[ccdjg]

It looks like incredibly good fun! I can hardly imagine the satisfaction of being able to shoot a near-perfect replica of a 200-year old air pistol that I built myself from scratch.

I must admit it is good fun, Danny, as it gives you much of the experience of shooting an old flintlock pistol, without the bang of course. You just have to remember that the mainspring is fully exposed and keep your fingers out of the way when you fire it!

[ptdunk]

Fantastic stuff, thanks John.

That's exceptionally good grouping at 10 yards, with normal steel darts my gallery rifles all start to drop below the sightline at 5 yards, even with my slightly lightweight 8mm darts for the Kuchenreuter bellows gun. I'll have to make up some similar lightweight darts for mine at some point.

I wondered if the less stiff yarn flights would be stabilizing in flight, evidentially so!

0.8ftlbs is nothing to be sneezed at either.

Thanks for sharing,

Matt

[Garvin]

0.8ftlbs is nothing to be sneezed at

0.8ftlbs is probably roughly equivalent to a sneeze in fact.

[ptdunk]

0.8ftlbs is probably roughly equivalent to a sneeze in fact.

Nice....I'm doing some narration for a pistol review video and while trying to describe the reason why I found one of them to be inaccurate I accidentally said 'I can't put my finger on it, I think it's the trigger'

[Geezer]

Fascinating, John. Thank you very much for that.

[ccdjg]

0.8ftlbs is probably roughly equivalent to a sneeze in fact.

Interesting analogy Danny. A quick Google informed me that a typical sneeze can propel at up to 100 mph! I calculate that at 0.83 ft lbs the darts are leaving the Kuchenreuter barrel at about 98 mph, so you are right!

[For reference I determined the following energies from good condition pistols in my collection:

Gat (NIB) : 1.1 ft lb
Tell 2: 0.55 ft lb
Haenel 26: 0.9 ft lb ]

[ccdjg]

It struck me that the Healthways Plainsman Western, which is the only other spring air pistol cocked by a hammer, also produced as I recollect surprisingly good power for an easy cocking stroke. This pistol is a BB repeater and also has the very unusual (unique?) feature where springs are stretched rather than compressed when cocked. I thought I would take a proper look at its power output, and with 0.5 gram lead balls it chrono’d at 175 ±5 fps, which equates to a muzzle energy of 0.55 ft lbs.







Considering that you can cock it with one thumb (just about), I find it amazing that it produces the same power as the Tell 2, which I have always considered to be a very efficient pistol for its size and which is hell of a lot harder to cock. Perhaps someone with a better knowledge of physics than I have can explain this? Could it be something to do with the short piston stoke and wide diameter cylinder, features peculiar to the Healthways Western and the Kuchenreuter?

[njaw]

What a superb post. Thanks for sharing.

[Re01312]

John

I started collecting Healthways air pistol because your book explained
how the Western produced air by stretching rather than compressing the spring.

Thanks for motivating me to act. I have a complete Healthways collection.

Again thanks for educating new collectors like me, I am grateful.

Kindest Rrgards,

Randall

[45flint]

Rock Inland Auction this pistol went for $2000, plus 20%, probably a bargain? Didn’t get a $2250 bid.