11.15x51R Kurz

Reinventing a 140-Year-Old Cartridge

- Terry Wieland

It is admittedly a compulsion but, methinks, a reasonably admirable one: When an old gun comes my way, I don’t sleep peacefully until I have it shooting again. Over the years, this has led me down some very strange paths, but nothing stranger than the one that began with a whimsical bid on an ancient German Schützen rifle at Rock Island in February.

Like most German Schützens, it looked like something from Brothers Grimm, hanging over the witch’s fireplace as she roasts Hansel on a spit. I picked it up off the rack where it was standing forlornly, absent-mindedly rotated a lever on the tang – Gee, I wonder what this does…? – and found myself holding the rifle in one hand and the entire trigger group in the other. I had to seek help to get it back together, so when it came up in the auction later and the bidding stalled, guilt compelled me to jump in.

Only when I got it home did I look at it really closely. It’s built on an early Martini action probably dating from about 1880. The bore, what I could see of it, looked to be about .44 caliber. The buttplate was loose, it was missing the adjustment screw for the double-set trigger, and from all appearances it had not been cleaned in a century. Getting the initial repairs took me to Lee Shaver’s shop in Lamar, Missouri; for information on German Schützens, he referred me to Bill Loos in New York, one of the authors of Alte Scheibenwaffen, a three-volume, 1,198-page, 14-pound tome on the entire German Schützen culture dating back 800 years.