Re Springer
A. Springer 10,75x52R is a Springer propriatory cartridge. Story/hear-say goes that Austrian crown-
prince Franz-Ferdinand - murdered 1914 in Sarajevo- returned very annoyed from an Egypt trip
where he could not bag the crocs he shot at because the cartridge he used was too soft/without
stopping power. He approached Springer's on that and 10,75Rx52R was Springer's answer to this
problem.
B. The beautiful Springer double bore rifle mentioned is probably the one which emerged in
the 1980's in Prague, in absolute new condition despite its age of 70/80 years, for simple reason,
there were no cartridges available at least not since WWII. A late Viennese reloader made the case
from a Romanian (??) case, used Norma powder and a batch of original Springer hollow-point
bullets received from the late father of the present owner-manager of Springers.After 3 trial-shots
the rifle grouped very well both shots.Specification of the reload werde given to the buyer of the
rifle and I understand it finally went to Germany.
C. Springer single-shot rifle - on market now
Old Springer catalogues show this rifle as "own production", an old Ferlach catalogue of no
longer existing "Anton Sodia" shows the same rifle. The Liege museum has a rifle of this shape from
the Prague firm of "J. Nowotny". So this was rather a common/generic weapon at this time.
Springer's own production numbers ceased with 10662 in 1957, the rifle number shown is 16xxx,
so this was one of the bought-in-the-white rifle to varying preproduction status and finished/
retailed by Springer.
D. The American Double-gun-journal has published my articles on Central-European gunmakers
(Nowotny/Prague,Springer/Vienna,Kalezky/Vienna,Weipert gunmakers,Austrian court-suppliers,
Faukner/Prague). You can find backup-copies of that journal in Internet.
You may get some useful and compact information from these articles.
Kind regards
Felix Neuberger