Sunday, January 11, 2009

Esoterica.

On the difference between a "Schmidt" and a "K.31", over at the other blog. (a.k.a. "How I spent my afternoon.")

I had pulled the bolts from both rifles before I drove down to Tennessee, and there they sat on the bookshelf, waiting for me to get off my duff with the camera. I'm telling you, my muse has just flown south for the winter or something...

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Whatever you post is worth waiting to read. The swiss rifles are an excellent subject. I have a friend who has a PERFECT vetterli, and I even fired one of a small handful of cartridges in it. Way cool.

Tam said...

The real bummer?

There was a guy with a box of old Winchester .41 Swiss rimfire at the show. It had eight rounds left in it, and he was asking $95. If it hadn't been for the $%#^&*(@!%^ Democrats making me waste my money on AR-15 mags and such, I'd have been on those old rounds like a duck on a junebug.

Anonymous said...

Aw, damn. My friend woulda love to have them too.

I always thought, man, I sure wouldn't want to walk around with a pocketful of those rounds. Imagine sitting on a hard surface and having a pocketknife or something pinch one of those rims.

Anonymous said...

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v709/Vaarok/swisgew.jpg

The really neat thing is how the bolt of the 96/11 is visibly derived from the Vetterli bolt, just cammed with that helical track instead of being a lift-the-handle conventional bolt.

Anonymous said...

Fiocchi in Italy runs off a batch of 10.4mm/.41 Swiss every 10 or 14 years, non-corrosive priming and everything. I wish it was more often.
What a neat old cartridge. The handyness and good feeding of a bottleneck case, the cheapness of a swaged bullet and rimfire case, near 45-70 ballistics, and a flatter trajectory than the old trapdoor.
I'd really like to work up a short, handy Ruger .44 type carbine for the cartridge. At typical 30-30 ranges, with a soft bullet and copper plating on the pro-jo, it would be the nads.

Anonymous said...

I really would have liked a few of those .41s. Great grandpa left me a perfect condition 1869 but had only one cartridge for it. Maybe someday I will get to shoot it.

Tam, I would have been on that deal like a duck on a june bug. You can always buy AR mags, at least until dear leader gets time to ban'em.