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Kapu
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J. Goehler .500PBE
      #107398 - 14/06/08 05:25 PM

J. Goehler from Berlin in .500 3" BPE, done somewhere on 1890's to a German duchess, which is resulting in to the weight of around 6 1/2 lbs. My camera just don't have good focus on to the closely taken pictures, as there would be so many additional details I'd like to share with you, maybe later on. All I can say, the british from the same era really needs to make their best effort to compete on the finishing quality with this Lady and still I need to say, they barely do. The duchess would not have had to carry a mirror on the hunt with her, the metalwork can be used for that.





Edited by CptCurl (14/07/10 08:21 PM)


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peter
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Re: J. Goehler .500PBE [Re: Kapu]
      #107405 - 14/06/08 07:42 PM

WOW...

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CptCurlAdministrator
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Re: J. Goehler .500PBE [Re: peter]
      #107406 - 14/06/08 08:46 PM

Kapu,

Very interesting rifle. Thanks for posting.

I would like to see more photos of it.

Curl

--------------------
RoscoeStephenson.com

YOUR DOUBLE RIFLE IS YOUR BEST FRIEND.



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lancaster
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Re: J. Goehler .500PBE [Re: CptCurl]
      #107407 - 14/06/08 09:45 PM

I would say its made from F.von Dreyse, have had once a 16 ga gun with such a break open action.
very late model, maybe around 1895 when F.von Dreyse sold to Rheinmetall

--------------------
Norwegian hunter misses moose, shoots man on toilet
.
bringing civilisation to the barbarians


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DarylS
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Re: J. Goehler .500PBE [Re: CptCurl]
      #107408 - 14/06/08 09:45 PM

I can't imagine shooting a 6 1/2 pound .500 BPE. Granted teh bullets are light for calibre, but even my 10 pound Sharps kicked pretty hard. It was bad enough I got rid of all my 3 1/4" cased Sharps. Too hard to work up good BP loads in and too much recoil for shooting a lot.
; That's a very special rifle, though.

--------------------
Daryl


"a gun without hammers is like a Spaniel without ears" King George V


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tinker
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Re: J. Goehler .500PBE [Re: DarylS]
      #107413 - 15/06/08 01:26 AM

I'd like to see the proof marks.
Could this be a converted needle fire sporting rifle?

It is indeed a beauty!


--Tinker

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--Self-Appointed Colonel, DRSS--



"It IS a dangerous game, and so named for a reason, and you can't play from the keyboard. " --Some Old Texan...


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bigmaxx
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Re: J. Goehler .500PBE [Re: tinker]
      #107455 - 15/06/08 10:41 PM

What a fine collectible. Lucky you!

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One day at a time...


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Bramble
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Re: J. Goehler .500PBE [Re: bigmaxx]
      #107458 - 15/06/08 10:48 PM

That is a stunning piece. I would not however want my hands to be anywhere near the underlever in recoil.

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Kapu
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Re: J. Goehler .500PBE [Re: Bramble]
      #164070 - 14/07/10 03:53 PM

closer looks to the duchess DR





















Would be interesting to know, who really has been behind the ER monogram


















































and finally the view that boars do enjoy with the current duchess handling the Goehler


Edited by CptCurl (14/07/10 08:28 PM)


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Watson577
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Re: J. Goehler .500PBE [Re: Kapu]
      #164115 - 14/07/10 06:58 PM

Kapu,

What an unusual and interesting rifle you have there. I'll bet there aren't many like that around. Nice rifle!

Regards,

Jim


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CptCurlAdministrator
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Re: J. Goehler .500PBE [Re: Watson577]
      #164125 - 14/07/10 08:29 PM

That is a most incredible rifle. A museum piece! Have you ever fired it?

Thanks for posting.

Curl

--------------------
RoscoeStephenson.com

YOUR DOUBLE RIFLE IS YOUR BEST FRIEND.



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kamilaroi
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Re: J. Goehler .500PBE [Re: CptCurl]
      #164132 - 14/07/10 09:29 PM

In hot rod parlance it might be described as "more show than go".

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ellenbr
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Re: J. Goehler .500PBE [Re: kamilaroi]
      #164229 - 15/07/10 10:57 PM

I guess it is the quality of the pics, but the condition and effort applied to this example is just top shelf. I know that it is a task, but could you post a pic of the underside of the tubes ahead of the lockup? I'd guess it is a Berger design based on Dreyse and built by Teschner-Collath passing thru the Frankfurt an der Oder proofhouse or sourced by Teschner-Collath from the Suhl or Zella-Mehlis area. Lovely, just lovely. I'd have to agree with you that in having this example during the period, I wouldn't have left the Continent in search of something superior.

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse


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kuduae
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Re: J. Goehler .500PBE [Re: ellenbr]
      #164248 - 16/07/10 03:05 AM

Raimey is right, this is a Berger design lockwork gun on a Teschner breech action. Collath was the successor of Teschner in Frankfurt on Oder. The eagle over the crown/U proofmark visible in one photo looks slightly dissimilar to the stamps used in Suhl or Zella-M. so it may well have been proofed in Frankfurt after April 1, 1893.
while it looks outwardly similar to the Dreyse action, the Teschner is a slde-and tilt action with the barrel breeches moving upand down after sliding forward, Dreyse's was a side-swinging design with the breech ends moving sideways only.
Berger's locks are easy to recognise from the Dreyse: most obvious are the slimmer lockwork tubes, tapered down in the fence area. Unique with Berger's design are the screws in the sides of the lock tubes, that guide and stop the spring tubes. While Dreyse connected bot spring tubes with a bar, so both had to be moved at the same time, Berger's tubes are independent from each other. Berger first offered this design in the 1860s as a needle-fire, but soon it was adapted to use centerfire cartridges. As a centerfire, it was also known as a "Fuerst Pless Gewehr" = prince of Pless gun. Prince Hans-Heinrich XI of Pless was not only one of the greatest landowners in then Germany, but also an avid and well known hunter. He held the court office of master of all hunting first to the royal Prussian, after 1871 to the imperial German court. Today he is best remembered as the inventor of the German hunter's horn or bugle, called "Fuerst Pless Horn" to this day, and as composer of most of the traditional signals blown with this.
Before trying .500 3" BPE cartridges in this light rifle, please check the chambers first with a cast! Though all were called "500 Express", this caliber was once available in Germany with case lengths of 40mm, 52mm = 2", 60mm = 2-3/8", 65mm = 2-1/2", 76mm = 3" and 86mm = 3-1/4". I suspect this rifle being chambered for one of the shorter and lighter recoiling numbers.


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ellenbr
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Re: J. Goehler .500PBE [Re: kuduae]
      #164356 - 17/07/10 05:04 AM

Nice insight Axel. I'd also guess that the cartridge is one of Teschner-Collath's proprietary ones. Didn't Teschner-Collath have their on needlefire cartridges and they converted some of their centralfire guns to shoot both their needlefire cartridges as well as center-fire ones? Also, why so many Krupp steel stamp types? Did each tube maker have their own steel type(Krupp, Wittner, etc.) stamp?

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse


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kuduae
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Re: J. Goehler .500PBE [Re: ellenbr]
      #165147 - 29/07/10 07:57 AM

Hi Raimey, a short question stirred up a wasp's nest of research and answers! Your thinking is a little bit too simplicistic, but I will try to answer. First, I got a lot of information from an article by D.ZIESING in the DWJ and from contemporary books by ZIMMER (1869), KOCH (1891) and CORNELI (1884).
C.L. Berger (1794-1871) pioneered the making of cast small arms barrel steel, Krupp in Essen at that time concentrating on big guns, artillery. In 1854 Berger founded his Gusstahlwerk in Witten on Ruhr, soon aided by his sons Louis and Carl junior. Berger's Wittener steel in short order became standard on the Prussian army Dreyse needle fire rifles, but he did not only supply his steel to Dreyse's factory, but also to the German state arsenals. During the 1860s to 70s he exported vast amounts of his barrel steel to America, among this special order bar stock of 44mm diameter. His customer in the USA: Colt in Hartford, Conn.! So the barrel and cylinder of your "All American" Colt Peacemaker is made of Wittener Stahl! But "Carl Berger & Comp., Gusstahlwerk und Waffenfabrik" also established it's own gunmaking department. Two years after the death of the founder, in 1873, the company went out of control of the family. In 1882 the gunmaking branch was closed and the Wittener steelworks concentrated on supplying raw material to the guntrade, soon under competition from Krupp, who only then got interested in the small arms market.
According to Corneli the Bergers invented not only their improved coil spring striker lockwork, but also the familiar "Teschner-Collath" slide-and-tilt breech action! Teschner merely improved it by substituting conventional "Blitz" trigger plate locks, as many people then mistrusted coil-spring powered strikers on hunting guns. But Berger's striker locks can not have been entirely unpopular, as they were later used by other makers on centerfires like this double rifle, called Prince Pless guns. I have seen them combined not only with the original slide-and-tilt action, but also with the common Lefaucheux double bite break open and the original underlever Roux, known as the "Schneider-Daw" in Britain by Crudgington-Baker.
Both Berger and Teschner used combustible paper needle fire cartridges without an obturating base wad, but unlike N.v.Dreyse, who mounted the primer on the rear of the wad, placed it on a cardboard holder at the base of the cartridge, so shortening the fragile needle considerably. But at that time the ballistic virtues of "fore" or "aft" priming were much discussed. It was accepted then that firing the powder charge from the front end led to more complete combustion and increased velocity. Reminds me of Elmer Keith, who took great pains to keep the virtues of his "duplex loads", lighted from the front of the charge, secret from the Germans. Only after the first metal based cardboard true centerfire cartidges appeared, Collath as the successor of Teschner introduced his own design of needlefire cartridges. These had the obturating base wad and rimmed metal base of the centerfire, but the tube was still thought to be combustible and was made of rather thin paper. Collath's firing needle now was part of the cartridge, sort of short nail driven into the primer by the striker. Though these cartridges look much like ordinary centerfires, they are not interchangeable, as the hulls are much thinner, but the guns may be rechambered to use shotgun cartridges as we know them today. At those times, before the advent of the drawn brass centerfire case, Germans used "bore" rifles of 24 to 16 gauge with shortened shotgun cases for their hunting. Zimmer dismissed the use of those new-fangled military small-bore cartridges of about 11mm or.450 as completely unsporting!
The later Teschner-Collath or TESCO rifle cartridges are conventional brass cased centerfires, some of them only proprietary loadings of familiar numbers.

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German foresters: We like sustainability! For merely 300 years by 2013.


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ellenbr
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Re: J. Goehler .500PBE [Re: kuduae]
      #165155 - 29/07/10 11:35 AM

Axel:
I didn’t mean to press you into work. But I dropped the ball and didn’t connect the Bergers. I do know of Constans Louis Berger and Carl Ludwig Berger as well as the special entrance to the factory that held most interesting Wallon steel, if I remember correctly, as well gun barrels of Excelsior, their composition as well as data on pressure & stress test. Other steel articles accompanied the above in their glass cabinets. There was one word Bleiladung that I couldn’t place.

So if you have a Berger longarm it would be say pre-1873?

My hat's off to you for the effort.

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse


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kuduae
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Re: J. Goehler .500PBE [Re: ellenbr]
      #165410 - 02/08/10 04:19 AM

Here is a pic from Corneli's book of the Collath needle fire cartridges with their integral, nail-shaped needles.

If a whole gun is signed "C.Berger & Comp.", it probably is pre-1873, but the Witten steelworks may have used the well established Berger name even longer. As Berger and later Witten supplied the trade not only with barrel blanks, but according to Ziesing also with action forgings such as revolver frames, I now believe they supplied Teschner, Collath and others with the rough parts for the slide-and-tilt actions and not the other way around. This would explain some Collath-looking guns from northern Germany, with completely different lockwork inside, fi a gun in a friend's collection with coil-spring-striker locks. Kief of Peine even held a safety patent for Collath-type guns. He blocked the big V-mainsprings of the trigger-plate locks.

--------------------
German foresters: We like sustainability! For merely 300 years by 2013.

Edited by CptCurl (02/08/10 08:15 PM)


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450_366
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Re: J. Goehler .500PBE [Re: kuduae]
      #165412 - 02/08/10 04:41 AM

Thats some small hands or a mean cartridge

--------------------
Andreas

"Yeas it kicks like a mule he said, but always remember that its much worse standing on the other end"


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500grains
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Re: J. Goehler .500PBE [Re: 450_366]
      #165420 - 02/08/10 05:44 AM

Once it is more than 100 years old, some of that corny German styling begins to look very attractive.

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Mcleish
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Re: J. Goehler .500PBE [Re: kuduae]
      #165479 - 02/08/10 10:02 AM

Is there a different requirement in firing pin to engauge these needle fire cartridges?

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ellenbr
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Re: J. Goehler .500PBE [Re: Mcleish]
      #166975 - 29/08/10 10:50 AM

Mcleish:
I dropped the ball in not seeing your post until now. The following image is from Adolf Zimmer's 1877 text 2nd edition, provided by Axel, and may answer your quesiton.



Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse

Edited by CptCurl (30/08/10 08:39 AM)


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kuduae
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Re: J. Goehler .500PBE [Re: ellenbr]
      #167003 - 30/08/10 08:19 AM

Now things get mixed up somewhat!Zimmer's Taf.XXVIII shows the Dreyse coupled needlefire locks and Franz von Dreyse's obturating needlefire cartridge,note the base wad, while Taf.XXIX shows Berger's lock and original non-obturating needlefire cartridge. Note, Berger's locks are not connected by a steel bar, but they have a side slot for the guiding/stop screw clearly visible on the Goehler rifle. Both the Berger and the F.v.Dreyse cartridges needed a true firing needle as shown in both cuts. Collath's cartridge which had the "needle" inside as a part of the cartridge used flat-faced conventional-looking strikers, a bit longer than normal for real centerfires, to hit the "nail" inside the case. Of course, both needles or Collath strikers were easily replaced by firing pins when the guns were redesigned to use centerfire cartridges, as done with the Berger locks to the "Fuerst-Pless-Gewehr". Dreyse's design never made the conversion to centefire: As both mainspring had to be compressed by hand at the same time, the possible strength of the single mainpring was insufficient to dent a metal-capped primer reliably.

--------------------
German foresters: We like sustainability! For merely 300 years by 2013.


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ellenbr
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Re: J. Goehler .500PBE [Re: kuduae]
      #167005 - 30/08/10 08:33 AM

Axel:
I always enjoy your insight. Please continue to let the information flow.

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse


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