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So back in my Schuetzen thread (I've found it's actually a stutzer/marksmanship rifle) I mentioned a K31 air rifle oddity. Well it's finally rolled in and I'm here to tell you about it. So here we have a box:  But what's in this box? Oh it's a... thing. This happens to be the original box which is pretty cool. These were supposedly made prior to WW2 but I haven't found much more detail or evidence. I haven't dug much into the manual and it doesn't help that it's all in German.  Here's the original manual, the label from the original tin of lead balls that came with it, and a 'new' sealed tin of lead balls proudly made in West Germany.  So, back to the thing itself. It's a Hammerli Trainer Mod. K 31. It's a self-contained air rifle that replaces the bolt of a K31 so that people could use their issued K31s to shoot inside their houses for training or entertainment or whatever Swiss people did before TV. Here's a couple detail shots of the action itself. You can see the spring that's the heart of the mechanism in one shot.    Here's an overview of what it looks like next to its soon-to-be host. The trainer barrel is a very decent length and fits really tightly into the K31 barrel. Bonus W+F diopter in the pic   Here's how it matches up to a K31 bolt.  So let's finally put this thing together. You pull the original bolt, then slide in the trainer just like you would a normal bolt since it uses the K31 bolt catch.  Once it's all the way in and the K31 bolt catch engages, it's time to clamp it in. The clamp on the top hooks into the ejection port and snaps down firmly, locking the entire thing really tightly in place. It's important since the lever arm takes some force to charge the air rifle.     So now we're ready to shoot. At the front of the ejection port you can see a little brass port. That's where the 4.4mm lead balls go and you can load 6 at a time. When it's loaded you spin a little cover that closes the port. It's more obvious in the detail shots and the K31 bolt comparison pictures. Next you cock the arm all the way back then forward to the starting position and proceed to punch holes in soft things.    I've only shot it once so far with a steel BB since I can't find my lead balls and I didn't want to open the included pellets, but it was perfectly accurate as far as I could tell from a 30 foot shot. More importantly it's cool as hell and greatly improves my collection of Swiss stuff. These things are really hard to find since from what little I can find there were probably less than 3000 made and supposedly most were destroyed in a fire so some estimates say less than 500 survive today. I lucked into mine when I went to pick up my stutzer and started to chat about milsurp stuff with the seller. He mentioned he had a pair of these and would sell me one of his for a great price. Other than that, I've only seen them mentioned once before, never seen one for sale, and never seen one in person. Anyways I'm stoked to have found one, especially with a bunch of the original packaging and manual. Jymmybob fucked around with this message at Mar 20, 2013 around 15:56 |
| # ? Mar 20, 2013 14:06 |
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| # ? May 18, 2013 09:00 |
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This is beyond amazing. I need this and a K31 now.
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| # ? Mar 20, 2013 14:12 |
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Oh, well that's just cool as poo poo.  Great find, man. Have fun plinking the poo poo out of stuff with it. Beautiful K31, too!
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| # ? Mar 20, 2013 14:13 |
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I spent the longest time looking for one of those, then moved on when Ifigured out how much it would end up costing me even if I got one in Switzerland. Awesome find.
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| # ? Mar 20, 2013 14:52 |
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~Nosmoking's boner now visible on Google Earth~ That is rad. Do you know if normal 4.5mm/.177" pellets are safe to use?
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| # ? Mar 20, 2013 15:11 |
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Well that's just the coolest thing. I had no idea it existed.
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| # ? Mar 20, 2013 15:26 |
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Uncle Caveman posted:~Nosmoking's boner now visible on Google Earth~ It takes 4.4mm lead balls so steel BBs would work in a pinch but it's not meant for traditional pellets. I keep calling them pellets because I wanted to differentiate them from BBs without calling them lead balls every time. I'm going to go edit it to clear that up a bit.
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| # ? Mar 20, 2013 15:54 |
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Congratulations, my ambivalence towards K31s is at an end. Now I want one. And this. Give it to me.
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| # ? Mar 20, 2013 16:08 |
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That is a pretty amazing find! I'd never heard of one either but this definitely makes K31s seem more appealing to me too. Was anything like this developed for any other bolt action rifle of the time?
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| # ? Mar 20, 2013 16:19 |
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You better make sure your gunsafe is where Nosmoking won't find it. Actually he'd probably just tear the house down and sift through the rubble.
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| # ? Mar 20, 2013 17:09 |
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Jymmybob posted:It takes 4.4mm lead balls so steel BBs would work in a pinch but it's not meant for traditional pellets. I keep calling them pellets because I wanted to differentiate them from BBs without calling them lead balls every time. They are classified as pellets and still made: http://www.pyramydair.com/s/p/H_N_R..._Ball_500ct/851 I hardly shoot my K31 since getting my K11. I would slap one of these things in the K31 in a heartbeat and proceed to shoot it to the exclusion of everything else in the gun safe. Edit: Ffffffuck, Hammerli also made a single-shot K31 trainer in 22lr. http://www.gunscollecting.com/engli...-k-31-cal-22lr/ Butch Cassidy fucked around with this message at Mar 20, 2013 around 17:27 |
| # ? Mar 20, 2013 17:16 |
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Sixgun Strumpet posted:Congratulations, my ambivalence towards K31s is at an end. Given your raging hard on for quality guns I'm loving amazed that you haven't gotten into Swiss firearms in general.
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| # ? Mar 20, 2013 17:46 |
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Holy crap. That is loving sweet.
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| # ? Mar 20, 2013 17:48 |
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Cyrano4747 posted:Given your raging hard on for quality guns I'm loving amazed that you haven't gotten into Swiss firearms in general. I would give my left nut for a Swiss Luger, and I will own a swiss p210 eventually here. Other then that I have no idea why the rifles do nothing for me. They should, by all rights, make me love them, but for some drat reason they don't. I've shot them. Looked them over. Handled quite a few. Found them for cheap. Yet, I just never feel the urge to actually go home with one. I think maybe, and this is going to sound crazy, but I am crazy, that the problem might be the GP11 ammunition. I don't want to remove it from the packaging. It's so beautifully packaged that I just like it that way. I have to admit that I've been more tempted to buy a case of GP11 then I have been to buy any K31. I think part of that is that I know I would then be forced to unpack GP11 to shoot it. I'm pretty broken. Edit: Plus its not like there isn't a tremendous amount of other poo poo for me to spend my money on.
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| # ? Mar 20, 2013 17:50 |
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Actually, I kind of know how you feel. GP11 is the only ammo I've ever looked at and kind of wanted to own a case, one of those wrapped bricks that there are 2 of in the case, and a single box, all unopened, just to display how well the swiss know how to package their poo poo. It's like if Apple made ammo (say what you will about the products - that's some drat fine packaging too).
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| # ? Mar 20, 2013 17:53 |
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Sixgun Strumpet posted:I'm pretty broken. Nah, you seem fine to me. I die a lil' inside if I smudge the wax seal on any GP11 cartridges when loading them into clips or magazines 
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| # ? Mar 20, 2013 17:58 |
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Sixgun Strumpet posted:I would give my left nut for a Swiss Luger, and I will own a swiss p210 eventually here. I have 4 cases of GP11 and I feel the same way. I didn't even check to see if that stutzer properly chambered/extracted 7.5 Swiss until I got in a box of Prvi so I wouldn't have to break a case. I also keep neglecting to take any of my Swisses out since I finished my previous case.  Get a K31 though. They're weirdly too nice for me to think of them as traditional milsurp, although they're also kind of boring because there's no history or million variations like every other milsurp out there. Other than walnut to beech they're pretty much identical from the first to the last produced rifle. Also I'm working on another Swiss thing. 
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| # ? Mar 20, 2013 18:00 |
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Butch Cassidy posted:They are classified as pellets and still made: http://www.pyramydair.com/s/p/H_N_R..._Ball_500ct/851 I'm going to measure a couple from the tin of West German ones to see how close they actually are to 4.4mm and see if I think I can get away with using 4.5mm/.177 or even 4.45mm balls.
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| # ? Mar 20, 2013 18:11 |
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Holy shiiiiit this owns.
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| # ? Mar 20, 2013 18:36 |
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| # ? Mar 20, 2013 18:52 |
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This is super loving cool.
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| # ? Mar 20, 2013 19:07 |
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Jealous beyond words
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| # ? Mar 20, 2013 19:12 |
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Uncle Caveman posted:~Nosmoking's boner now visible on Google Earth~ It's always visible from google earth  Now, even more so. NosmoKing fucked around with this message at Mar 20, 2013 around 20:58 |
| # ? Mar 20, 2013 19:27 |
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ZenMastaT posted:Was anything like this developed for any other bolt action rifle of the time? Czechoslovakia had a trainer air rifle designed to duplicate the handling of the Vz 24 rifle, right down to the bolt movements of the real thing.
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| # ? Mar 20, 2013 20:25 |
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Capn Beeb posted:Holy shiiiiit this owns.
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| # ? Mar 20, 2013 21:13 |
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Sperglord Actual posted:Czechoslovakia had a trainer air rifle designed to duplicate the handling of the Vz 24 rifle, right down to the bolt movements of the real thing. Please tell me there are more than 500 available of this particular unit.
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| # ? Mar 20, 2013 21:51 |
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Well that just plain owns. Do you need help translating the manual from German into something that English speakers can understand?
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| # ? Mar 20, 2013 22:04 |
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Can you get video of it in action? 
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| # ? Mar 20, 2013 22:16 |
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SadWhaleFamily posted:Please tell me there are more than 500 available of this particular unit. No idea, sorry. The original version was called the Vz 35, and even had a functioning bayonet lug. There was also a simplified version, the Vz 47, which was imported in some numbers. The last Vz 35 I saw for sale went for $surprise sex because it had a Nazi property stamp on the stock.
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| # ? Mar 20, 2013 22:44 |
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Sperglord Actual posted:The last Vz 35 I saw for sale went for $surprise sex because it had a Nazi property stamp on the stock. Hah, I don't know much about the Vz35 in particular, but from what I've seen of other .22LR trainers chances are about better than even that the property stamp was completely loving fake. Do you remember what the stamp looked like?
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| # ? Mar 20, 2013 22:49 |
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I vaguely remember it was a large roundel, with text around the inside of the ring and some kind of emblem in the middle maybe? It was burned into the wood, not just stamped.
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| # ? Mar 20, 2013 22:58 |
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Capn Beeb posted:Can you get video of it in action? This, a thousand times this.
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| # ? Mar 20, 2013 23:01 |
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Capn Beeb posted:Can you get video of it in action? Sure, I'll try to do it tonight or tomorrow.
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| # ? Mar 20, 2013 23:03 |
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Is the barrel rifled? If it is I would be hesitant on shooting too many steel bbs out of it, in fear of prematurely wearing the rifling out.
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| # ? Mar 21, 2013 01:31 |
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Cyrano4747 posted:Actually, I kind of know how you feel. GP11 is the only ammo I've ever looked at and kind of wanted to own a case, one of those wrapped bricks that there are 2 of in the case, and a single box, all unopened, just to display how well the swiss know how to package their poo poo. I love the GP11 ammo packaging, but you can also get Prvi for the same cost and roughly same performance as GP11. At least, you could before gun poo poo got crazy, Prvi might have changed production. So you don't have to open GP11 packages, and I totally plan on keeping GP11 sealed too.
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| # ? Mar 21, 2013 01:43 |
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Sperglord Actual posted:I vaguely remember it was a large roundel, with text around the inside of the ring and some kind of emblem in the middle maybe? It was burned into the wood, not just stamped. Whatever it is it wasn't a German military acceptance or property stamp then. Maybe some non-military government entity. I know both the post office and the train service had armed guards and used both Mauser rifles and Mauser .22LR trainers. It's not too huge a stretch to imagine they'd pick up a few of those Czech things if the opportunity presented itself. There aren't really any proper "Nazi Party" property or acceptance stamps to speak of. Maybe - MAYBE some affiliate group, but then you get into non standard markings that are their own headache.
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| # ? Mar 21, 2013 04:48 |
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Mr.Bob posted:Is the barrel rifled? If it is I would be hesitant on shooting too many steel bbs out of it, in fear of prematurely wearing the rifling out. It's not rifled but I'm only using lead or plated lead balls anyways since that's what the manual calls for. I got around to measuring the included 4.45 nominal copper-plated lead balls that came with it and they averaged 4.41mm so I think I'm just going to grab more 4.45mm balls. There was a mention that a K98 model of the trainer was being tested or made but the same source implied they were also lost in the fire that took most of the K31 trainers. I have literally no idea if that's true but the rarity of the K31 version seems to verify that most were lost somehow. I did run into the "Haenel Sport Modell 33" which is a WW2 era K98-style air rifle that also shoots 4.4mm lead ball but they're pretty expensive and don't have the coolness of being directly related to the original rifles.
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| # ? Mar 21, 2013 12:16 |
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This is completely awesome, I had no idea these were a thing.
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| # ? Mar 21, 2013 12:47 |
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Just too cool. On one hand I'm terribly sad that there are only about 5000 of these out there, since that means I'll never get one for my K31. On the other hand, I'm glad that you got your hands on one. It seems like there is a lack of info out there regarding this particular piece of Swiss arms history, so I'm glad someone who cares and is savvy enough to document it and their experiences with it got their hands on one. A video and "range" report would be awesome. For historical purposes.
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| # ? Mar 21, 2013 13:14 |
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| # ? May 18, 2013 09:00 |
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Lee Enfield .22 trainers are fairly common, at least as far as seeing them at the range or at gunshows in Australia. I've seen them used in competitions at my local military rifle club, I think they're single shot. SAF Lithgow also makes .22LR Austeyr training rifles.
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| # ? Mar 22, 2013 03:14 |
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