doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Greetings from Schorndorf, DE

I’m here in Germany visiting my wife’s relatives here in Shorndorf near Stuttgart. The city of Ulm is about an hour or so away and Robert Paxton was gracious enough to arrange a tour of the Krieghoff factory in Ulm next week. What is going to be Very interesting also while in Ulm is visiting the Muller Schiesszentrum Ulm. This is a very high tech all encompassing indoor shooting range. I’ve arranged to reserve a half hour of shooting in their indoor skeet/clays range. I’ll let ya’ll know what it’s like. Bis bald!

Ulm is 1,5 hours away from Stuttgart; you change trains once, in Stuttgart.
In Ulm, you will visit the Ulmer Münster of course. If you are technically interested, you might try to arrange for an audience with the director of the Ulm proof office, which is only a few foot minutes away from the MSZ.
Also, I encourage you to acquire a state shooting medal for hunters there (Landesbüchsennadel, Landeskeilernadel). It is not really difficult, and will add some flair to your US hunting outfit. Can be worn on the hat or on the breast:
https://mszu.de/schiessstaende/schiessnachweis/
See the pull-down menus.

If you are a member of the German Gun Collectors Association, you must see Mr. Warkus at Frankonia Jagd in Stuttgart. He is the last scion of the Eblen family, the famous Waffen-Eblen.
For Germans, that once was one of the great firms and gun houses of national repute, like Barella, Otto Bock, Foerster, Lueneburg... For Americans, they purveyed guns to Hermann Göring.

And if you want to invite your in-laws to dine out, it's Malathounis in Kernen-Stetten. The cuisine is unique, the Michelin star merited. The wine list is among the best and most interesting in Baden-Württemberg (only the Alte Weinsteige in Stuttgart has a deeper one), and you must try a bottle of Hatzidakis (Santorini).

Regards,
Carcano

Have a great time!! 😊

Try not to come home with another Krieghoff Bill
112 a few days ago with dew point 62%; to 'only' be 105 today
Stay safe.

Now there's a funny coincidence..
My neighbour just dropped off some old live ammo to me and after pulling the bullets it turns out they were 6,5x52 Carcanos with a copy of cordite named Solenite inside which was still in good condition, the out sides were all green corrosion and the bullets had begun to rust as they were steel jackets but copper washed.

The heat over here in Bavaria is very high at the moment 37C/98F.

No, Solenite has nothing to do with Cordite, it is a pure nitrocellulose powder with nigh unlimited shelflife, one of the best military propellants ever. However, and sadly, the shelflife of Italian military primers *is* a problem.
You may have had its predecessor in mind, namely Ballistite (which was used only up to 1895 in the 6,5x52 Carcano, and from 1938-1940 in the 7,35x51 Carcano, plus in blanks for either cartridge). This one is quite comparable to Chopped Cordite.

Regards,
Carcano

This powder is the small brown tubes with holes through the center. The ammo had steel instead of tombac/gilding so sure to be WW2 production and so I believe it to be Solenite. The averaged out load was 36.3 grains over 15 cartridges. WMH.
35.8
35.4
35.9
35.3
34.9
35.5
36.1
36.4
35.4
7.2 my mistake measuring
59.3 my mistake measuring
34.6
35.1
35.6
35.1

I was at first shocked about the - seemingly - rather sizeable discrepancy in powder metering (from 34,6 to 36,4 grains). But then I began to think. ;-)

A standard military powder, like Cordite, Solenite or the German Gewehrblättchenpulver, can never be produced at large in the very same quality and with exactly the same properties, there will always be discrepancies from lot to lot. The military powder manufacturer therefore supplies each production lot with exact loading weights, lot-specific, to be observed by the loading factories.
But the cartridges of which BavarianBrit got several, either loose or on the Breda Mod. 30 MG clips, may have come from very different loading lots and different producers, hence the different powder weights.

Carcano

Greetings, Well.. having put out most of the fires from being away for over two weeks here is a brief synopsis of of the Krieghoff visit and the shooting at the MSZU in Ulm. The Krieghoff plant was of course most interesting, what struck me most right off was everything was pretty much CNC, I did not see a single Bridgeport or tool room lathe(though there may have been one or two in some corner); they did have a power hacksaw for the rough stock(which endeared them to me as I have the same). There was an old style rifle barrel boring set up and what I think was a button rifling set up, it did not look like a sine bar rifling machine. I was not there long enough to look closely. There was one young lady there engraving; many of their engravers work from home. The stock area was pretty standard the blanks are roughed out by machine and finished by hand. One of the stock makers was finishing(sanding smooth) a custom stock and putting it on the customers K80 for a shooting try out. We met the customer later at the MSZU Tontaubnhalle trying out the fit; she was very happy. There's more to say but I'll move on to the shooting range. We got there early and poked about a very well stocked sporting goods store. At 2:00 I rented a Pro Sporter K80 which was set up right handed and off the shotgun hall. If my picts come through you'll get the idea. There is a skeet range set up, an international trap set up(with the standard three traps per station) and various traps for sporting clays presentations including three bunny runs and a couple of overhead from behind that are a hoot and pretty difficult. Our guide/puller and instructor Corbinian Fritz was really good and helpful. He had Philly the 16 year old son of my wife's godson hitting bunnys and air targets after one box of shells and with the exception of my rather clumsy help at a skeet range here in the states one time he hadn't done this before. There's more but let's see if these picts will load. The pict of the metal is one that The metal is one that Carcano said I should try for; for hitting a few targets.

Greetings ! I see that you have survived your foray into True Civilization quite well. ;-)

The wearable plaque that you showed, initially made me wonder (because: "metal? when did I speak of metal?"). Only with the picture, I ultimately understood that we read here a beautiful and nowadays rare incursion into (American) English: a suevicism or swabianism. :-D
Only the very old in this forum, who still remember Texasdeutsch and Pennsylvania Dutch from the white-haired elders in the time of their youth, may understand...

Because in the Swabian dialect (with its habitual, but not always sincere understatement - be very careful not to *ever* respond to the self-disparaging or low-key remark of a Swabian about his house, his goods, or his car, in the selfsame tone, he will be mortally offended), any medal, decoration or order of chivalry is simply that: "a Blechle".
Even the "Pour le Mérite" (highest military decoration of the Great War, given e.g. to Rommel, and known colloquially as "Blue Max" in English) would be just lightly referred to as a "Blechle" by its proud Swabian holder, but did you not dare ever to ask one impudently what this mere blechle was earned for.

The Landesflintennadel as shown here is only conveyed by the State Hunting Association of Baden-Württemberg (Landesjagdverband Baden-Württemberg), while the "DJV-Jahresschießnadel Flinte" is (uniformly in all states except Bavaria) conveyed by the Federal Hunting Confederation (Deutscher Jagdverband).

For those interested in German "habits and rites" (to quote Pauline Réage), the qualification goals that are to be met are the following:

- Landesflintennadel BW: 10 targets "running hare" (a three-part metal falling target moving on the ground at 35 metres' distance, 1 shot per target), *and* 15 clay air targets (Turbulenzautomat, 2 shots per target), of which 5 *each* must be hit successfully.

- DJV-Jahresschießnadel Flinte: 15 moving targets (can be selected at the shooter's choice, namely trap, skeet,running hare, rolling clay target on the round), of which only 4 must be hit.

Carcano