kuduae
(.400 member)
03/06/18 07:45 AM
Re: German & Austrian single-shot & combination classic rifles

Quote:

It is true that pre ww2 S&S Kipplaufbüchsen are "overprized" today, they were rare than and now and build on special order for wealthy gentleman so made in a high standard.



Not all pre-WW2 Sauer & Sohn Kipplaufbüchsen were made to high standards on special order. In 1936 they introduced their no frills "Sauer – Einheitsbüchse Modell 36". Soon my grandfather bought one in 7x57R, proofed March 1937.
Quote:

I started by looking for pre-WW2 Sauer & Sohn models, however they are really hard to find and command extremely high prices when available in mint condition or have often been altered.
Louis



Yes, as many guns in Germany had a sorry fate at the end of the war. So did my grandfather's S&S M36. In 1945 he oiled it, packed it with oiled or greased rags, put it in a wood box and buried it in a fox burrow out in the woods. When he unearthed it five years later, the stock was rotten and the metal badly rusted in places, though the barrel is still ok. He had some local country "gunsmith" refurbish and restock it. That stock was the clumsiest "Schützen – type" club I have ever seen. In addition that blacksmith ruined the claw mounts so they would not hold zero any more. After I inherited the rifle 40 years ago, I removed about half of the superfluous timber, trying to give it a halfway decent shape. I replaced the then defective double set trigger with a single, non setting one. Instead of the buggered up claw mount bases I inletted a pair of early Warne bases into the rib recesses and mounted a Hensoldt/Zeiss Diasta D 4x scope. This is what it looks like now:



. It is certainly not an item collectors are looking for, but the rifle is part of my family and personal history. I don't need another Kipplaufbüchse. Maybe I will hand it to a really good gunsmith some day to have it restocked again, but that's quite low on my priority list. Maybe my son or one of my grandsons will do it some day.
BTW, that S&S M36 is known as the "Illing" in my family. A name I invented when I was about 5 years old, 65 years ago. You see, I was sort of a gun nut even then and I could count at least to three. The conversation was in German, of course. On the aftermath of a hunt I looked over the guns standing in a rack. "What a gun is this, with drei = three barrels?" – " Such agun is called a Drilling (litterally = triplet) because of the drei = three barrels." " Then this one with zwei = two holes may be a Zwilling (= twin) ?" - "Yes, such doubles are sometimes called Zwillings" "I understand! Now, that gun with ein = one barrel must be an Illing!"



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