masood357
16-03-2011, 02:54 AM
Zimmerstutzens are neither fish nor fowl. To firearms collectors, they are considered to be either air- or even non-guns -- things that defy description. To some airgun collectors, they are simply firearms, and no argument about it! Occasionally, you will see a reference to them in a book about something else, but there has never been a book devoted entirely to them. Sometimes, the only information is embedded within the captions of photos and old catalog reproductions. And yet, strangely, many people have both heard of them and know what they are.
The Zimmerstutzen or parlor target rifle is a product of the society of the 19th century, when shooting was at its zenith the world over, and shooting champions were the superstars of the day. It was developed in parallel with the centerfire Schutzen rifle, but unlike those early black powder cartridge rifles, which evolved from earlier target muzzleloaders, the Zimmerstutzen was not an outgrowth of anything. It came into being suddenly, in the period immediately following the invention of the rimfire cartridge.
Perhaps it is not incorrect to suggest that the popular rimfire Flobert parlor guns had an influence on the Zimmerstutzen; but where the Floberts tended toward the amusement trade, Zimmers remained rigidly within the sport of precision offhand target shooting. Flobert guns have much more in common with .22 rimfires, although to confuse the situation there are some low-grade Zimmerstutzens based on Flobert actions. But the mainstream Zimmerstutzen rifles laid the groundwork for the precision 10-meter target airguns we enjoy today.
The usual explanation for the creation of these super-accurate rifles is that they were developed as off-season trainers for big-bore Schutzen shooters. That makes so much sense that we will accept it here. If there was another reason for their existence, it may never come to light. But once the shooters beheld all they could do with these fine sub-caliber pieces, a brand new facet of shooting began to take shape -- indoor target competition
Because they are specifically designed for shooting indoors, the caliber range is very small -- nominally 4mm. Don't confuse this with other German 4mm rimfire and centerfire sub-caliber insert devices that have no relation to Zimmerstutzens, other than the coincidental caliber size. This article will not address those guns.
Zimmer bore sizes actually range from 4mm to 5.45mm, in increments of five-hundredths of a millimeter. There may be other sizes as well, but I have confirmed these through catalog references.
Zimmerstutzens were built to fire either a fixed round that looks like a tiny BB cap or separate ammunition components consisting of caps and balls. The fixed round -- where both case and ball are one piece -- is considered ammunition by BATF; and the guns that use it are, therefore, considered to be firearms in the US.
The separate caps for Zimmerstutzens are not ordinary black powder rifle percussion caps. Although there must certainly have been some guns that used them, those guns are not in the mainstream of what we are examining here.
There is a special Zimmerstutzen cartridge that has no flanged rim. It looks like an elongated percussion cap, and in the German language it is called a cap. Some references even label it a percussion cap, so perhaps this is where the confusion originates.
The traditional Zimmerstutzen separate cartridge looks like an empty miniature .22 rimfire case. There is both a short and a long version of this cartridge, to fit two different standard chamber lengths. Priming compound is distributed around the inside base of the case and is covered by a paper vapor barrier. It is not crimped at the end, in the manner of some .22 rimfire blanks, nor does it resemble a cartridge for a nail gun. To the uninitiated, it looks like an empty rimfire case.
A further dimension to the cartridge is the fact that it used to be produced in low-, medium- and high-power levels to allow the shooter to adjust to the specific range conditions. A match at 10 meters might require less power than one shot at 15 meters -- or at least that's the thinking.
Zimmer ammunition IS NOT the same as the popular German 6mm BB and CB caps made and sold by RWS for Flobert guns. Those cartridges are much more powerful, to say nothing of their relatively large projectile size.
There is an unfortunate laxness in the categorization of ammo types, so both Zimmer rounds and the boxes of separate components often do carry the Flobert name. In fact, even some .22 rimfire ammo makes reference to either Flobert or Zimmerstutzens, so the field is quite ill-defined and ambiguous. Undoubtedly, there has been some crossover through the years to cloud the issue, but I believe this is due more to sloppy cataloging and advertising than to any real confusion on the parts of manufacturers or shooters
The guns themselves have varying sized bores, so one not only has to match cartridge length and power level, but ball size as well. With fixed ammunition, both case length and ball size must be correct, or accuracy will surely suffer. The same holds true with separate ammo, but you have a greater degree of flexibility when buying the components separately. I have even been able to use long cartridges in a short chamber without affecting the accuracy.
With separate ammunition, the tiny precision round lead ball is inserted in the front of a movable breechblock, where the camming action of the rifle's loading mechanism forces it lightly into the rifling at the rear of the barrel -- what we would refer to as the breech. This is supposed to be a more accurate method of loading than shooting a fixed round, where the crimping of the ball in the case mouth introduces distortion. I haven't had enough experience to comment on that theory either way.
Guns that use separate ammunition are invariably front-loading, but that doesn't mean what most people think. A black powder enthusiast would think of a gun that's loaded from the muzzle. But, while there may be a few Zimmerstutzens that are true muzzleloaders, the term "front-loading," as used here, implies something much different.
The rifle is loaded at the rear of a short rifled insert barrel, through a cutout in, what looks like, the barrel of the rifle. This loading port cutout is located seven or eight inches behind the muzzle, on the underside of the barrel. The firing pin is a long rod extending the full length of the barrel, from the action to the rear of the loading port. In the guns I have examined, this rod smacks the rear of the cartridge directly with enough force to ignite the priming compound. In the rifle I own, you can actually see the back end of this rod, where it connects to the exposed hammer by means of a screw. Other front-loading guns have enclosed actions, but the long firing pin rod is there just the same. When the cartridge goes off, the weight of the rod is the only support for the rear of the case -- the entire rim is exposed at all times
Still other styles of Zimmers load from the true breech of the gun, just like any other firearm. Because of this true breechloading design, these are the guns that use fixed ammunition These rifles have the same short insert rifled barrel as the front loaders, only it's screwed directly into the action in the conventional manner. At the muzzle end of the insert is a long freebore space running out to the apparent "muzzle" of the long false barrel. At what appears to be the rifle's muzzle is a large open hole that can fool people into thinking the gun is something it is not.
In both instances, keeping the barrel insert short reduces friction on the ball, which is, after all, only powered by a tiny charge of priming compound. Although Zimmer ammo is much less powerful than even .22 rimfire CB caps, velocities tend to be much higher than those found in a modern target air rifle.
Ammunition design differences require this difference in velocity. Remember that Zimmers shoot round balls, where air rifles use diabolo pellets. Although the two projectiles weigh approximately the same (7.4 grains for the 4.3mm ball versus about 8 grains for the 4.5mm pellet), their ballistic characteristics are very different. Zimmer balls rely on uniformity and a rifling-induced spin for their accuracy; air rifle pellets use uniformity, spin AND the high air drag created by the open diabolo skirt. Zimmer balls leave the barrel at between 800 and 1,000 f.p.s.; target air rifle pellets are traveling 550-650 f.p.s.
The short barrel insert of the Zimmerstutzen also means the ball leaves the rifle's influence quickly, a trait that many target shooters believe offers a significant advantage in accuracy potential. The top 10-meter air rifles made today all employ similar short rifled barrel sections, although none as short as the Zimmer, because they require certain minimum lengths to allow their powerplant to build velocity.
Front-loaded rifles built prior to about 1909 often use a non-cammed "spoon" to load the separate ball and cartridge. These spoons are actually the handles attached to the same movable breech piece and function in the same way as the later, more complex, mechanisms; but the simpler spoons require more manipulation on the part of the shooter when loading the gun.
An article written by Tom Anderson for American Airgunner magazine in 1991 tells of locating an older (pre-1900) Zimmer at a local gun show. The gun was missing its breech spoon, so the author had to fabricate one from scratch, judging sizes and tolerances from the parts on either end of the missing items. He made his new breech to accept modern pistol primers, which sounds like a very reasonable idea.
The only difficulty he encountered in the whole project was obtaining lead balls of the correct size for his 4.3mm bore. In the end, he resorted to using round ball airgun ammunition of 4.5mm. Although his bore measured 0.172", he shot a ball of 0.177" diameter through it -- with a resultant accuracy of only 2-1/2" at 33 feet. Anyone who shoots round balls in muzzleloaders might predict such poor accuracy from the amount of lead that had to be shaved as each ball was driven down the bore.
Any Zimmerstutzen in good order using the correct ball should be able to group 10 shots at a distance of 15 meters, or nearly 50 feet, in a single hole not much larger than the hole made by one .177 wadcutter pellet! Such groups are often shot from rested rifles, and sometimes even turn up in a match -- fired from the offhand position!
The rifling in these guns is quite fine, with 12 lands and grooves being common. The bores were honed before the cutter made its first pass, in the manner of the great barrelmakers of the previous century. Even Zimmers made at the end of the era, in 1935, are as carefully built as if Harry Pope personally supervised each one. Although this level of work is not impossible to replicate today, it would be remarkable if anyone did!
My own interest in these rifles began in the early 1960s, when I read about them in an article in Guns & Ammo. From that moment on, there's been a special place in my heart for the guns, although it took me another 30-plus years to acquire one.
They are somewhat scarce here in the US; so when the Army sent me to Germany in the 1970s, I was very hopeful of finally locating one. Surely the country of origin would be rich with Zimmers just waiting for an eager collector, like me.
Wrong! Germany, in the early 1970s, wanted nothing at all to do with her past. Everyone was on a modernization kick. They were tossing out all their antiques and rapidly acquiring furniture and possessions that looked like they belonged in a British mod movie or a dentist's office. Lucite coffee tables with chrome legs and pastel leather furniture displaced the solid wooden furniture of the early part of the century (and earlier!). Although I pestered the local gun shops, there wasn't a Zimmer to be found. Alas, I returned to the States without my rifle.
The tour wasn't a complete failure, though. In the historic town of Rothenberg on the Tauber, I stumbled onto modern adult airguns by accident while searching for my Zimmer. Fortunately, Germany was (and still is) quite active as a center of precision airguns, so there has never been a dry spell for me with airguns from that day on.
The Zimmerstutzens I seek are the period pieces from about 1910 to 1935. Those were the glory days. They lasted right up to the point when the German legislature put an end to the civilian federal shooting program, in preparation for war. Rifles made during this period represent the top level of both design and accuracy. They fully rival the finest Schutzens for craftsmanship and decoration.
So, after seeing a fine Zimmer at the big Baltimore gun show in March of 1997, I resolved to take action. It took a few more months to acquire a rifle, but all that time I also vowed to do more than just own and shoot my own rifle. I would help spread the word about these poorly documented guns, so others might enjoy them as well.
The gun I finally bought was as different as any Zimmer ever could be, yet it fits exactly into the mainstream of the type. It was made by none other than C. Stiegele of Munich. And, it has a swamped barrel -- the only one I have ever heard of!
There is a definite swelling at the muzzle, which is one sign of a better barrelmaker. It's not easy to taper eight octagon flats by one-tenth-inch diameter over five or six linear inches of iron, while the rest of the run is parallel. Most makers never bother to do it, but the few who did marked their guns with a hallmark of quality that can never be erased by the ravages of time or neglect.
But the rest of the rifle wasn't at all what I had expected. The whole thing was too short -- almost a carbine. At 41 inches, this is the shortest Zimmerstutzen I have ever seen or even heard about. It looks more like a Jaeger stalking rifle than a target gun. I was momentarily crestfallen at the thought of yet another gun failing to assuage my lust for the true Zimmer.
Then I hoisted it to my shoulder and felt the balance. All my angst dissolved, when the fine balance of the rifle played itself out in my hands. This is actually a perfectly balanced offhand target rifle. The extra metal of the swamped barrel lends just enough mass at the muzzle for the rifle to stabilize in my off hand -- which finds the exact balance point of the stock quite readily. Apparently, this rifle was made for a person proportioned much like me.
Initially, I had no idea what size balls were needed for this gun, nor was I aware of any source for them in the US. But I've been a muzzleloader and a bullet-caster long enough to know how to begin.
I removed the short barrel insert to slug the bore. Being an airgunner paid off here, because I have many thousand round lead balls in nearly the correct caliber. A Gamo .176-inch diameter pure lead ball was used. Tapping it into the breech shaved off a ring of lead that was uniform, which means the slug was centered as it entered the bore.
The ball passed through the bore without any loose spots, indicating a uniform barrel diameter all the way through. With some of the button-rifled barrels today, that's uncommon. There are almost always loose spots and constrictions, where the metal springs back after the pass of the button, but this barrel had been cut-rifled in the traditional way -- one groove at a time.
The ball emerged showing 12 lands and grooves, with a bore diameter of 0.1687 inches. Knowing how hard it is to accurately mike such a small object -- especially one made of soft lead, I allowed for some inaccuracy in the reading.
The rifle is marked with the number five on the barrel jacket, just in front of the forearm. That's a common place for the ball size to be marked. Since this is a Stiegele, the size should be theirs, but as noted in the table pm page 36, Stiegele sizes correspond to the new size designations for balls between 4mm and 5mm. Size five is 4.20mm, which converts to 0.168". So I figured the bore size I got from slugging was in the right ballpark.
However, the marked ball size is nearly one full thousandth UNDER the true bore size, according to my measurements, and that didn't sound too good. I expected it to be at least equal to the bore size or even a thousandth over -- not under. So, with the wisdom that all tinkerers possess, I figured I knew more about the gun than its maker and went with ball size seven -- which is 4.30mm. That comes out to 0.16985".
My next job was to locate ammunition. A call to Col. Brett Boyd at the Single Shot Exchange netted me both a subscription to his fine monthly publication and the phone number for John Gary Staup. Gary is a Zimmerstutzen collector and noted authority, along with his duties as Secretary of the Single-Shot Association. He informed me that The Old Western Scrounger in California carries RWS Zimmerstutzen ammunition, so I went on the Internet to check them out.
Sure enough, they do carry some sizes of lead balls; but, as I didn't yet have the ball sizes table to work from, I placed an order on the phone -- telling them that I needed 4.30mm balls. Let them figure out which number that converts to.
Gary also thought that my Zimmer might use the long caps because it was possible to completely chamber the fixed ammunition that came with the rifle into the rear of the movable breech. So, I placed an order for several hundred balls and long caps. You can contact The Old Western Scrounger at 800-877-2666 for orders, or 916-459-5445 for customer service/catalogs.
After some initial shooting, and after I didn't get the accuracy I'd been hoping for, I went back and discovered my mistake with the ball sizes. I should have gone with the Stiegele number five ball from the start. In a second call to The Old Western Scrounger, I was informed that they only carry separate balls in sizes seven and larger, so there wasn't any way I could get size five from them.
I had also discovered during shooting that the long cases were both hard to fully seat and to eject from the movable breech. A look at a fired case with a 10X jeweler's loupe told me why. The cases were being swaged down at the mouth about 1-2 millimeters back. They were too long! My rifle was actually chambered for the shorts. Fortunately, The Old Western Scrounger had shorts in stock, so I ordered several boxes to continue my testing. The longs will still work; but they're hard to seat, and sometimes they don't go off on the first try if they haven't been seated all the way.
I next faxed Frankonia-Jagdt in Germany, to see if they had the separate number five balls I required. Apparently, either my German wasn't that specific or they did not have what I needed, for they faxed back a price for the loaded ammunition only. I do believe that the German firm of Haendler & Naterman (H&N) still makes the smaller balls, but there isn't enough of a demand to warrant their importation into this country.
I am having a special barrel made for my rifle to enable the use of .177 lead balls, which are readily available from both H&N and Gamo in the US. The original barrel will remain intact for posterity, but the new .177 barrel should prove to be far more accurate.
CONT. POST # 2
The Zimmerstutzen or parlor target rifle is a product of the society of the 19th century, when shooting was at its zenith the world over, and shooting champions were the superstars of the day. It was developed in parallel with the centerfire Schutzen rifle, but unlike those early black powder cartridge rifles, which evolved from earlier target muzzleloaders, the Zimmerstutzen was not an outgrowth of anything. It came into being suddenly, in the period immediately following the invention of the rimfire cartridge.
Perhaps it is not incorrect to suggest that the popular rimfire Flobert parlor guns had an influence on the Zimmerstutzen; but where the Floberts tended toward the amusement trade, Zimmers remained rigidly within the sport of precision offhand target shooting. Flobert guns have much more in common with .22 rimfires, although to confuse the situation there are some low-grade Zimmerstutzens based on Flobert actions. But the mainstream Zimmerstutzen rifles laid the groundwork for the precision 10-meter target airguns we enjoy today.
The usual explanation for the creation of these super-accurate rifles is that they were developed as off-season trainers for big-bore Schutzen shooters. That makes so much sense that we will accept it here. If there was another reason for their existence, it may never come to light. But once the shooters beheld all they could do with these fine sub-caliber pieces, a brand new facet of shooting began to take shape -- indoor target competition
Because they are specifically designed for shooting indoors, the caliber range is very small -- nominally 4mm. Don't confuse this with other German 4mm rimfire and centerfire sub-caliber insert devices that have no relation to Zimmerstutzens, other than the coincidental caliber size. This article will not address those guns.
Zimmer bore sizes actually range from 4mm to 5.45mm, in increments of five-hundredths of a millimeter. There may be other sizes as well, but I have confirmed these through catalog references.
Zimmerstutzens were built to fire either a fixed round that looks like a tiny BB cap or separate ammunition components consisting of caps and balls. The fixed round -- where both case and ball are one piece -- is considered ammunition by BATF; and the guns that use it are, therefore, considered to be firearms in the US.
The separate caps for Zimmerstutzens are not ordinary black powder rifle percussion caps. Although there must certainly have been some guns that used them, those guns are not in the mainstream of what we are examining here.
There is a special Zimmerstutzen cartridge that has no flanged rim. It looks like an elongated percussion cap, and in the German language it is called a cap. Some references even label it a percussion cap, so perhaps this is where the confusion originates.
The traditional Zimmerstutzen separate cartridge looks like an empty miniature .22 rimfire case. There is both a short and a long version of this cartridge, to fit two different standard chamber lengths. Priming compound is distributed around the inside base of the case and is covered by a paper vapor barrier. It is not crimped at the end, in the manner of some .22 rimfire blanks, nor does it resemble a cartridge for a nail gun. To the uninitiated, it looks like an empty rimfire case.
A further dimension to the cartridge is the fact that it used to be produced in low-, medium- and high-power levels to allow the shooter to adjust to the specific range conditions. A match at 10 meters might require less power than one shot at 15 meters -- or at least that's the thinking.
Zimmer ammunition IS NOT the same as the popular German 6mm BB and CB caps made and sold by RWS for Flobert guns. Those cartridges are much more powerful, to say nothing of their relatively large projectile size.
There is an unfortunate laxness in the categorization of ammo types, so both Zimmer rounds and the boxes of separate components often do carry the Flobert name. In fact, even some .22 rimfire ammo makes reference to either Flobert or Zimmerstutzens, so the field is quite ill-defined and ambiguous. Undoubtedly, there has been some crossover through the years to cloud the issue, but I believe this is due more to sloppy cataloging and advertising than to any real confusion on the parts of manufacturers or shooters
The guns themselves have varying sized bores, so one not only has to match cartridge length and power level, but ball size as well. With fixed ammunition, both case length and ball size must be correct, or accuracy will surely suffer. The same holds true with separate ammo, but you have a greater degree of flexibility when buying the components separately. I have even been able to use long cartridges in a short chamber without affecting the accuracy.
With separate ammunition, the tiny precision round lead ball is inserted in the front of a movable breechblock, where the camming action of the rifle's loading mechanism forces it lightly into the rifling at the rear of the barrel -- what we would refer to as the breech. This is supposed to be a more accurate method of loading than shooting a fixed round, where the crimping of the ball in the case mouth introduces distortion. I haven't had enough experience to comment on that theory either way.
Guns that use separate ammunition are invariably front-loading, but that doesn't mean what most people think. A black powder enthusiast would think of a gun that's loaded from the muzzle. But, while there may be a few Zimmerstutzens that are true muzzleloaders, the term "front-loading," as used here, implies something much different.
The rifle is loaded at the rear of a short rifled insert barrel, through a cutout in, what looks like, the barrel of the rifle. This loading port cutout is located seven or eight inches behind the muzzle, on the underside of the barrel. The firing pin is a long rod extending the full length of the barrel, from the action to the rear of the loading port. In the guns I have examined, this rod smacks the rear of the cartridge directly with enough force to ignite the priming compound. In the rifle I own, you can actually see the back end of this rod, where it connects to the exposed hammer by means of a screw. Other front-loading guns have enclosed actions, but the long firing pin rod is there just the same. When the cartridge goes off, the weight of the rod is the only support for the rear of the case -- the entire rim is exposed at all times
Still other styles of Zimmers load from the true breech of the gun, just like any other firearm. Because of this true breechloading design, these are the guns that use fixed ammunition These rifles have the same short insert rifled barrel as the front loaders, only it's screwed directly into the action in the conventional manner. At the muzzle end of the insert is a long freebore space running out to the apparent "muzzle" of the long false barrel. At what appears to be the rifle's muzzle is a large open hole that can fool people into thinking the gun is something it is not.
In both instances, keeping the barrel insert short reduces friction on the ball, which is, after all, only powered by a tiny charge of priming compound. Although Zimmer ammo is much less powerful than even .22 rimfire CB caps, velocities tend to be much higher than those found in a modern target air rifle.
Ammunition design differences require this difference in velocity. Remember that Zimmers shoot round balls, where air rifles use diabolo pellets. Although the two projectiles weigh approximately the same (7.4 grains for the 4.3mm ball versus about 8 grains for the 4.5mm pellet), their ballistic characteristics are very different. Zimmer balls rely on uniformity and a rifling-induced spin for their accuracy; air rifle pellets use uniformity, spin AND the high air drag created by the open diabolo skirt. Zimmer balls leave the barrel at between 800 and 1,000 f.p.s.; target air rifle pellets are traveling 550-650 f.p.s.
The short barrel insert of the Zimmerstutzen also means the ball leaves the rifle's influence quickly, a trait that many target shooters believe offers a significant advantage in accuracy potential. The top 10-meter air rifles made today all employ similar short rifled barrel sections, although none as short as the Zimmer, because they require certain minimum lengths to allow their powerplant to build velocity.
Front-loaded rifles built prior to about 1909 often use a non-cammed "spoon" to load the separate ball and cartridge. These spoons are actually the handles attached to the same movable breech piece and function in the same way as the later, more complex, mechanisms; but the simpler spoons require more manipulation on the part of the shooter when loading the gun.
An article written by Tom Anderson for American Airgunner magazine in 1991 tells of locating an older (pre-1900) Zimmer at a local gun show. The gun was missing its breech spoon, so the author had to fabricate one from scratch, judging sizes and tolerances from the parts on either end of the missing items. He made his new breech to accept modern pistol primers, which sounds like a very reasonable idea.
The only difficulty he encountered in the whole project was obtaining lead balls of the correct size for his 4.3mm bore. In the end, he resorted to using round ball airgun ammunition of 4.5mm. Although his bore measured 0.172", he shot a ball of 0.177" diameter through it -- with a resultant accuracy of only 2-1/2" at 33 feet. Anyone who shoots round balls in muzzleloaders might predict such poor accuracy from the amount of lead that had to be shaved as each ball was driven down the bore.
Any Zimmerstutzen in good order using the correct ball should be able to group 10 shots at a distance of 15 meters, or nearly 50 feet, in a single hole not much larger than the hole made by one .177 wadcutter pellet! Such groups are often shot from rested rifles, and sometimes even turn up in a match -- fired from the offhand position!
The rifling in these guns is quite fine, with 12 lands and grooves being common. The bores were honed before the cutter made its first pass, in the manner of the great barrelmakers of the previous century. Even Zimmers made at the end of the era, in 1935, are as carefully built as if Harry Pope personally supervised each one. Although this level of work is not impossible to replicate today, it would be remarkable if anyone did!
My own interest in these rifles began in the early 1960s, when I read about them in an article in Guns & Ammo. From that moment on, there's been a special place in my heart for the guns, although it took me another 30-plus years to acquire one.
They are somewhat scarce here in the US; so when the Army sent me to Germany in the 1970s, I was very hopeful of finally locating one. Surely the country of origin would be rich with Zimmers just waiting for an eager collector, like me.
Wrong! Germany, in the early 1970s, wanted nothing at all to do with her past. Everyone was on a modernization kick. They were tossing out all their antiques and rapidly acquiring furniture and possessions that looked like they belonged in a British mod movie or a dentist's office. Lucite coffee tables with chrome legs and pastel leather furniture displaced the solid wooden furniture of the early part of the century (and earlier!). Although I pestered the local gun shops, there wasn't a Zimmer to be found. Alas, I returned to the States without my rifle.
The tour wasn't a complete failure, though. In the historic town of Rothenberg on the Tauber, I stumbled onto modern adult airguns by accident while searching for my Zimmer. Fortunately, Germany was (and still is) quite active as a center of precision airguns, so there has never been a dry spell for me with airguns from that day on.
The Zimmerstutzens I seek are the period pieces from about 1910 to 1935. Those were the glory days. They lasted right up to the point when the German legislature put an end to the civilian federal shooting program, in preparation for war. Rifles made during this period represent the top level of both design and accuracy. They fully rival the finest Schutzens for craftsmanship and decoration.
So, after seeing a fine Zimmer at the big Baltimore gun show in March of 1997, I resolved to take action. It took a few more months to acquire a rifle, but all that time I also vowed to do more than just own and shoot my own rifle. I would help spread the word about these poorly documented guns, so others might enjoy them as well.
The gun I finally bought was as different as any Zimmer ever could be, yet it fits exactly into the mainstream of the type. It was made by none other than C. Stiegele of Munich. And, it has a swamped barrel -- the only one I have ever heard of!
There is a definite swelling at the muzzle, which is one sign of a better barrelmaker. It's not easy to taper eight octagon flats by one-tenth-inch diameter over five or six linear inches of iron, while the rest of the run is parallel. Most makers never bother to do it, but the few who did marked their guns with a hallmark of quality that can never be erased by the ravages of time or neglect.
But the rest of the rifle wasn't at all what I had expected. The whole thing was too short -- almost a carbine. At 41 inches, this is the shortest Zimmerstutzen I have ever seen or even heard about. It looks more like a Jaeger stalking rifle than a target gun. I was momentarily crestfallen at the thought of yet another gun failing to assuage my lust for the true Zimmer.
Then I hoisted it to my shoulder and felt the balance. All my angst dissolved, when the fine balance of the rifle played itself out in my hands. This is actually a perfectly balanced offhand target rifle. The extra metal of the swamped barrel lends just enough mass at the muzzle for the rifle to stabilize in my off hand -- which finds the exact balance point of the stock quite readily. Apparently, this rifle was made for a person proportioned much like me.
Initially, I had no idea what size balls were needed for this gun, nor was I aware of any source for them in the US. But I've been a muzzleloader and a bullet-caster long enough to know how to begin.
I removed the short barrel insert to slug the bore. Being an airgunner paid off here, because I have many thousand round lead balls in nearly the correct caliber. A Gamo .176-inch diameter pure lead ball was used. Tapping it into the breech shaved off a ring of lead that was uniform, which means the slug was centered as it entered the bore.
The ball passed through the bore without any loose spots, indicating a uniform barrel diameter all the way through. With some of the button-rifled barrels today, that's uncommon. There are almost always loose spots and constrictions, where the metal springs back after the pass of the button, but this barrel had been cut-rifled in the traditional way -- one groove at a time.
The ball emerged showing 12 lands and grooves, with a bore diameter of 0.1687 inches. Knowing how hard it is to accurately mike such a small object -- especially one made of soft lead, I allowed for some inaccuracy in the reading.
The rifle is marked with the number five on the barrel jacket, just in front of the forearm. That's a common place for the ball size to be marked. Since this is a Stiegele, the size should be theirs, but as noted in the table pm page 36, Stiegele sizes correspond to the new size designations for balls between 4mm and 5mm. Size five is 4.20mm, which converts to 0.168". So I figured the bore size I got from slugging was in the right ballpark.
However, the marked ball size is nearly one full thousandth UNDER the true bore size, according to my measurements, and that didn't sound too good. I expected it to be at least equal to the bore size or even a thousandth over -- not under. So, with the wisdom that all tinkerers possess, I figured I knew more about the gun than its maker and went with ball size seven -- which is 4.30mm. That comes out to 0.16985".
My next job was to locate ammunition. A call to Col. Brett Boyd at the Single Shot Exchange netted me both a subscription to his fine monthly publication and the phone number for John Gary Staup. Gary is a Zimmerstutzen collector and noted authority, along with his duties as Secretary of the Single-Shot Association. He informed me that The Old Western Scrounger in California carries RWS Zimmerstutzen ammunition, so I went on the Internet to check them out.
Sure enough, they do carry some sizes of lead balls; but, as I didn't yet have the ball sizes table to work from, I placed an order on the phone -- telling them that I needed 4.30mm balls. Let them figure out which number that converts to.
Gary also thought that my Zimmer might use the long caps because it was possible to completely chamber the fixed ammunition that came with the rifle into the rear of the movable breech. So, I placed an order for several hundred balls and long caps. You can contact The Old Western Scrounger at 800-877-2666 for orders, or 916-459-5445 for customer service/catalogs.
After some initial shooting, and after I didn't get the accuracy I'd been hoping for, I went back and discovered my mistake with the ball sizes. I should have gone with the Stiegele number five ball from the start. In a second call to The Old Western Scrounger, I was informed that they only carry separate balls in sizes seven and larger, so there wasn't any way I could get size five from them.
I had also discovered during shooting that the long cases were both hard to fully seat and to eject from the movable breech. A look at a fired case with a 10X jeweler's loupe told me why. The cases were being swaged down at the mouth about 1-2 millimeters back. They were too long! My rifle was actually chambered for the shorts. Fortunately, The Old Western Scrounger had shorts in stock, so I ordered several boxes to continue my testing. The longs will still work; but they're hard to seat, and sometimes they don't go off on the first try if they haven't been seated all the way.
I next faxed Frankonia-Jagdt in Germany, to see if they had the separate number five balls I required. Apparently, either my German wasn't that specific or they did not have what I needed, for they faxed back a price for the loaded ammunition only. I do believe that the German firm of Haendler & Naterman (H&N) still makes the smaller balls, but there isn't enough of a demand to warrant their importation into this country.
I am having a special barrel made for my rifle to enable the use of .177 lead balls, which are readily available from both H&N and Gamo in the US. The original barrel will remain intact for posterity, but the new .177 barrel should prove to be far more accurate.
CONT. POST # 2