Waffen Museum Suhl

[C. Roger Bleile]

In march 2011 I visited the Waffen Museum in Suhl with fellow American Engraver Scott Pilkington and German engraver Hendrik Frühauf. We were also accompanied by Scott's friend Frau Nettie von Weech.

If you travel to Germany, the Waffen Museum is well worth the visit even if you have to go out of your way to get there. Suhl is due North of Nürnberg where the annual IWA hunting show is held.

I have attached a few pics from the museum to give you an idea of what they have there.

C. Roger Bleile

[C. Roger Bleile]

A few more pics from the Waffen Museum.

[C. Roger Bleile]

And yet a few more from the Waffen Museum. Everyone likes pictures don't they?

[sharps4590]

I certainly liked THOSE pictures!!

[Sanjojim]

Imman Meffert side by side history?

I like them as well. Very beautiful engraving and stock , carving. I am looking for more information on a imman meffert rifle I have. What I have found out so far is that it is a 16 gauge shot gun and an 11, 15 x 60 R Mauser m/71 calibre rifle. No proof markings on barrel, only the initial HS which I'm thinking is Hubertus Suhl, sn# 11859 and the initial engraved in gold just before breach A S or S A. Would like to know more about it's history if possible. Any help greatly appreciated. Attaching a few pictures if possible.IMG_0109.jpgIMG_0110.jpgIMG_0111.jpgIMG_0112.jpgIMG_0113.jpg

[ellenbr]

Could you post some images of the underside of the tubeset where the initials HS are as well as the area around the forend hanger? I assume the breeching lever is forward of the action under the forearm? From the images the tubes look to be a fluid steel of sorts and not pattern welded. If so if it possible that they were sourced from the British. There are several options for the mechanics having the initials HS(like Schilling & Schlegelmilch) and I'm pretty confident that Hubertus Suhl isn't one of them.

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse

[Büchsemann]

Sanjojim,

Please post more pictures of your buchsflinte, it's a beauty!

Mark

[Axel E]

From the images the tubes look to be a fluid steel of sorts and not pattern welded. If so if it possible that they were sourced from the British.

´

Possible, but very unlikely. Sir Joseph Whitworth patented his "fluid compressed steel" in 1865, nine years after the German steelwork Gusstahlwerk Carl Berger & Co in Witten on Ruhr had pioneered the making of barrel steel and steel barrels. The later Wittener Steelworks provided most of the world market with barrel steel from 1860 to 1895. Among their American customers were Colt and Winchester. Importing British steel barrels would have been much more expensive than using the proven domestic product.
You often see combination guns of the blackpowder times with a steel rifle barrel and a Damascus shot one. Damascus was still the preferred materiel for shotguns, but unuseable for rifles: The variable hardness of the alternating steel-iron layers made it near impossible to cut-rifle Damascus properly. Sometimes you encounter Damascus pattern riflebarrels. These usually consist of a liner of simple iron with a layer of the decorative Damascus hammer-welded around.
Meffert after 1903 often used barrels made from seamless steel tubes by Heinrich Ehrhardt's Rheinmetall company.

[ellenbr]

Oh, Axel, ye of little faith right in the middle of the yuletide cheer, Let me change the parameters a bit where the probability will me much greater. First, let us hold with scattergun tubes and also with the upper rung offerings by firearms merchants/waffenhändlers. Thumb thru the last pages of GGCA issue Nr. 40 and I'm sure there is another article or 2 that contains the London mark. I own at least one set and all seem to be an attempt to have the latest and the greatest that the Britis have as well as in a light weight version. These London marked tubes only occupy a short span with is followed by tubes with the Birmingham mark. Some of H. Scherpings wares, and a few others might come to mind, that were on-hand, when the German proof rules went into effect, wear these marks. Now if you like we can speculate that they tubes were sourced from Germany and forwarded to either London or Birmingham, but the probability is very, very low & approaches zero.

I'm not sure on your pattern welded tube statement as I think Scherping may have offered a DR or cape with a rifled pattern welded tube that was not line. More research has to be performed.

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse

[m-4]

I did a check in the gunroom this morning to validate Raimey's above statements which are all correct, I also did a visual inspection of several H Scherping back action double rifles chambered 24 ga, .500, .500/.450#2 Musket, .450 3 1/4. All with Damascus bbl's and none exhibit any evidence of being lined. Have also seen several early H Scherping guns that bore Sir Joseph Whitworth stamps on the tubes. Hope being able to validate the info is of help in the understanding of the sourceing of the times.

Best Regards
m-4

[Axel E]

Here is a misunderstanding, maybe my fault: Damascus shotgun barrels were forged by hammer welding a strip or riband around a mandrel and an sheet-metal iron tobe in a spiral or helical form. Without that iron "shirt" inside the mandrel would have been welded in place and been impossible to remove. The iron "shirt" ("Hemd" in German)was then removed by the rough boring of the barrel. I did not write that a liner was inserted into pattern welded rifle barrels. Instead of the "shirt" that was later removed, rifle barrels started with a solid, forged and rough bored iron or steel barrel. Thin decorative damascus ribands were hammer welded around and on this homogenous barrel, so a seam is invisible. The true nature of these barrels only becomes apparent when after heavy rusting such damascus rifle barrels are ground down. The thin damascus layer then may be worn through and on rebrowning patternless spots appear. Years ago this happened to me when I rebrowned a Sauer & Sohn combination gun barrel.
There is a difference between the three "gunmakers" mentioned so far in this thread: Immanuel Meffert was a real Suhl gunmaker who provided many country gunmakers with his products. It is unlikely that he got steel barrels, other than damascus, from outside of the Suhl guntrade. Other, both Bartels and Scherping: Both were upgrade country gunmakers who had to rely on bought-in parts anyhow. So they both bought in parts like barrels, action forgings and locks from the international market, the best they thought suitable and/or were demanded by their customers. Remember, Bartels in Wiesbaden catered to a high-class, both money and nobility, international clientele. Scherping was in Hannover, where the links to Britain were still very strong, even after 1866. At an increasing rate they depended on the Suhl and Zella-Mehlis guntrade for guns made to their design, until they became merely retailers.
An example is that Bartels gun shown in "Der Waffenschmied" #40: Here the DAMASCUS barrels indeed show the London preliminary proofmark, but no other proofmarks. The whole gun does not look very "German" to me. Such partly bar-in-wood actions are very uncommon in German-made guns, though fashionable in Britain. The broad Westley-Richards style toplever is unusual too and the Germanic horn pistolgrip adapter looks like having been added as an afterthought to a straight, english trigger guard. The shape of the hammers looks more like Liege and the engraving was definitely not done in Suhl or Z-M. So imho the gun was sourced by Bartels from the international trade, at best the stock got it's finalshape to the requirements of a continental customer.

[ellenbr]

On the surface, I'd say for a moment you raise an interesting question as to was there a different technique for the manufacture of pattern welded tubes destined to be rifled vs. those destined to be smooth bores. But I cannot find a reference that notes any sizable deviation. I suppose that it is possible that for a very narrow window in time when a quality cast steel internal was available that a narrow band of pattern welded was added on the exterior but here we border on the inferior product of the Sham-Dam tube, which was purely a deception. At some point the practice was outlawed in Belgium and possibly other gun making centres. But your Sauer example leads one to believe that even the makers were susceptible to the purchase of a similar tube in the Sham-Dam scheme. U.S. Of A. patentee/inventor Franklin B. Warner in 1916 filed for protection under 1167233 for just such a pairing. Can't say that it went very far. Probably an attempt to capitalize on a market that desired pattern welded tubes but whose manufacture was cost prohibitive. Most are very aware of the chemise that was removed by either tapping or boring to get to the integrated iron & steel interior. And many of us here are roll-overs from the Doublegunshop website where a wealth of information exists on pattern welded tubes as substantial research efforts have been mounted and many, many, many examples have been uncovered. So we are in the loop of an unmatched information/database. I will say that the majority of the thrust is centered around the Belgian makers but they were the ones who addressed mechanization early on and were able to produce an variety of pattern welded tubes from price point to as elaborate as one could desire. I tend to take it a bit farther and have a fetish with the Austrian & Bohemian craftsmen from the period. Me thinks that the mechanics made considerable contributions that are for the most part overlooked and maybe it was their lack of embracing mechanization that saw them fade into obscurity. It is a possible that said craftsmen were one of the conduits for the transfer of pattern welded technology from the East to our beloved gunmaking centres. But getting back to the topic at hand, I just don't see an large variation in the manufacture of tubes for solid projectiles and shot. Without compressing time too terribly much by looking into the past, remember the diameter of the 2 types of bores were somewhat similar in size with the smaller diameter solid projectile evolution being hand in hand with barrel development. Smaller calibres were derived as barrel technology improved. In my opinion I think your Sauer example is one of the Sham Dam scenarios where Sauer and the subsequents purchasers with one being you, were deceived by the practice. There may have been a short timespan when this was commonplace. But there is one dim glimmer of hope and as always I like a Quantum solution. You could lop off a handful of suspect tubes and run them under an electron microscope in an attempt to build or substantiate a case. Other than the aide of a SEM, you look to be left to your own devices.



Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse

[mike ford]

Far be it from me to wade in on an argument between two friends that have better research than I, but here goes anyway.As one that has done a little work on gun barrels,but very little research on patents, it makes a lot of sense that damascus would not cut satisfactorialy to make a decent rifle barrel.It makes sense that an iron or steel liner would be adequately welded to the patterned ribbons. Special care would have to be taken to prevent a mandrel from being welded to the tube. I know from working with living German gunsmiths, that many things are/were done that differ from what was assumed to be done or recorded as having been done. Also, they didn't do every thing the same way as others did.
Mike

[C. Roger Bleile]

I find this discussion about pattern welded tubes to be very interesting. For some reason, Sanjojim took this thread completely off track from the Waffen Museum but I'm glad he posted pictures of his beautiful gun. Unfortunately, he hasn't returned to this forum since he posted the question and pictures to read all of the comments our experts have taken the time to post. Hit and run posters are the scourge of Internet forums but at least others sometimes benefit from the answers to their questions.

I'm one of those mentioned above who visit the Double Gun forum as well as this one. I have decided that if I have something to start a thread about German guns I will post it here because I can easily attach pictures here without first downloading them to a remote site. Also as a GGCA member I like to built traffic here.

[ellenbr]

I can make a stab at moving the content to a new thread if all approve. But Liege was rolling their own by 1700 and Suhl was rolling their variants by 1811. I don't think Suhl continued the process much later that, or possibly not as late, as the London trade. Suhl may have had some unique pairing that has yet to surface but I'd like to see the verbiage as well as some samples or cross-sections. At this time the beast just does not exist.

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse