Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian, I am here today at the Rock Island Auction House
taking a look at some of the guns that they're going to be selling
in their upcoming February of 2017 Regional Auction.
Today, we're taking a look at an 1867 pattern Werndl breech-loading rifle.
This is the first purpose-built breech-loading rifle adopted by the Austro-Hungarian military.
And it's right in this time period where everybody was starting to adopt
self-contained metallic cartridge breech loaders to replace their old muzzleloading rifles.
Now in a few countries they would go with needlefire paper cartridge guns first, like France and Germany.
Other countries, like Austria-Hungary and the United States, would go straight from muzzleloaders
to centrefire metallic [cartridge] breech loaders.
Now the Austro-Hungarians did some really extensive
trial and testing and evaluation of different rifles that were available at this period.
And they came very close actually to adopting an early version of the Remington Rolling Block.
Now the Remington would go on to be an extremely successful design worldwide
primarily for countries that weren't quite big enough to have their own domestic arms production,
and they needed to buy from somebody.
Well, the Rolling Block was a cost effective, simple and very popular rifle.
So much so that even in Austria-Hungary, where they did have the ability to make
their own guns domestically just as a matter of national pride,
well, they almost adopted the Rolling Block anyway.
Ultimately though they didn't. It appears there was kind of a little bit of political intrigue in the trials and
when Remington was getting close to winning, someone brought up some rumours that maybe it wasn't safe, and
well, you know, who knows about those Americans? We don't know what they're going to try and pull.
And the Werndl, actually designed by two guys: Josef Werndl and Karel Holub,
had a chance to kind of worm its way into the competition and ended up winning. It's not a bad rifle.
It has this interesting kind of unique drum breech system which we'll take a look at in just a moment.
Now, as it was originally adopted in 1867 this rifle fired an 11x42mm rimmed cartridge,
black powder, lead bullet. It fired a 308 grain bullet at about 1,430 feet per second,
that's 20 grams at like 436 metres per second.
Again, pretty reasonable black powder, full power, military cartridge.
What's interesting (among many things really)
is the carbine version of this which was adopted, actually used its own separate cartridge.
Now in the United States for example, the carbine version of the Trapdoor Springfield did technically use a different cartridge,
but it was the exact same case. It just used a lighter powder charge [and lighter bullet].
Well, the Austro-Hungarian Empire had an actual shorter case cartridge.
The carbine version of the original 1867 Werndl used an 11x36mm case.
Which as a secondary interesting sidenote was also used in the Montenegrin pattern ginormous Gasser Revolvers.
They used the Werndl carbine cartridge, kind of a neat side note.
At any rate, we're running astray. Let's take a closer look ... at the details of this drum breech system.
So these rifles were updated later, and I want to point that out now because the original 1867 pattern
has a side mounted hammer like this. Where the later 1878 pattern guns have a hammer that's mounted inside the lock.
So with that in mind, knowing now that we can recognise the 1867,
we're going to snap this back to half-cock. And then to open the breech just take this big nice finger tab,
rotate it over,
and we now have a cutaway in the centre of our drum. That allows you to slide a cartridge into the chamber here.
There's an extractor right there on the left side, and the drum breech is spring-loaded. It's actually
this ... sort of triangular extension is part of the drum.
And what looks like a tang here is actually a flat spring that's putting pressure on it.
So it holds it kind of in this open position.
And if I pull it farther over you can see that I am activating the extractor.
So when you open the breech you open it forcefully all the way, and it should kick the cartridge
nicely out of the breech. You then release it under its spring pressure,
you can slide a new cartridge in there. It'll sit on top of the extractor.
And then you just close that over. Once it's rotated over it is now effectively and ... securely locked.
Bring the hammer all the way back, and then you can go ahead and pull the trigger and fire.
Like a lot of these sorts of rifles, the firing pin goes all the way through the breech,
and you can see it exposed right back here.
When you do fire that's what the hammer is going to hit, right there,
poke it all the way through into the primer and fire the cartridge.
Notice that the hammer also goes into the back of the breech.
It's going to prevent the breech from opening as a safety measure,
so the gun can't unlock while the cartridge is in the process of exploding.
You can see the spring in action from the back when I open it, see how it's being pushed down there.
Now in 1878 when ... the locks were modified and modernised and updated to correct some
reliability issues with the gun, they did also actually change the cartridge.
So they went from an 11x42 up to an 11x58mm cartridge.
They actually left the muzzle velocity exactly the same, it stayed at about
436, or I suppose 438 metres per second, like 1,430 feet per second.
But they increased the bullet weight from 308 to 370 grains, just to make the weapon a little bit more powerful.
The existing stocks of 1867 guns had their chambers reamed out for the new cartridge, and the sights replaced.
The original guns had a sight that went up to 1,400 paces.
It's a pretty basic ladder sight. You've got the battle sight there.
And then to go out a couple hundred yards there are steps built in right here,
and you can slide this slider up to do that.
And then for seriously long range, lift the whole thing up and use the notch in the slider.
The front sight is a very simple basic post.
And we do have a bayonet lug here on the side of the barrel. These were equipped with a sabre style of bayonet,
fairly typical of that time period.
This particular rifle is marked 868, so 1868 for its manufacture.
And then Werndl and St70, indicating that it was actually formally adopted by the military in 1870.
One more cool feature here, and this you'll find on most of the Werndl rifles that are out there,
the butt plate is actually unit marked. So
that would have been probably from when this rifle was issued out to the reserves, like the Landwehr.
And honestly, I don't know exactly what that translates to in terms of what actual unit had this rifle.
But it's fairly common to see that marked on a butt plate, and that just gives them an interesting added historical element.
So in Austro-Hungarian service the Werndl here acted as a replacement for both the Lorenz ... muzzleloading muskets
and also the Wänzl rifles, which were ... breech-loading conversions of Lorenz muskets.
When they had a built from the ground up breech loader in the Werndl, it was
sufficiently superior to replace both of those guns that came before it.
And it would last until 1886, when it in turn was replaced by the first of the straight pull Mannlicher rifles.
Now ultimately it's really interesting that this is the rifle that would be
largely responsible for the emergence of Steyr as a main, major, successful company.
Josef Werndl's father actually was the fellow who had founded the Steyr factory in Austria.
And when this rifle was adopted by the Austro- Hungarian military they ordered 600,000 of them,
which allowed Josef Werndl junior to capitalise and build up a large factory infrastructure to ... manufacture these rifles.
And Steyr would never look back from there. And they are still a large mainstream firearms company today.
Another interesting, just a story about this particular example of a Werndl.
(And by the way, one should never buy the story when one's buying a gun, buy the gun.
And if there's physical evidence of the story, great. If not, always view it with a grain of salt.
But in this case I think the story itself is just interesting to hear.)
Reportedly, this rifle is one that ... came from what was called the Verdigre National Guard,
out of the town of Verdigre, Nebraska.
Apparently in late 1917, and by the way ... I think today the town has something like 500 inhabitants,
it was a small farming town, actually a lot of Czech ... immigrant settlers,
and it didn't have a whole lot of industry or economy, not exactly a boom town.
But in 1917 they did have a couple of grain ... elevators and a mill
and apparently the Federal government bought the wheat that was stored in the grain mills from that years harvest,
and decided that it would buy the services of the local mill to grind that wheat into flour.
... This seems like this was a major development for the town,
this was going to be a big economic boost for a lot of the people in the town.
And so they got together and they organised the Verdigre Home Guard
to make sure that nothing happened to those grain elevators or that mill while this sale was in progress.
Presumably under the notion of German spies or other ne'er do wells, communists perhaps, might sabotage the works.
So they found 60 guys who were willing to participate in this,
they organised them into twelve man squads and would guard these facilities every night.
And what did they use for weapons? Well ... they got together and they all ordered the same guns.
They went to the Francis Bannerman Company, which you've probably heard of
if you've been watching a lot of these videos, or researched old surplus firearms much.
Bannerman was an early military surplus dealer, and a massive one, operating out of upstate New York.
Bannerman had enough inventory that they could literally, and I think in one or two cases did,
provide entire armaments for small South American countries.
Everything a military needed: uniforms, accoutrements, rifles, ammunition, the works.
Bannerman could sell you everything.
Well these 60 guys got together and they actually ordered 40 Werndl rifles and 2,000 rounds of ammunition
from Bannerman in 1917.
So at some point the Austro-Hungarians had surplused some of these, sold them.
By World War One of course these were really, really, rear line weapons.
They'd been replaced by the 1886 Mannlichers,
and then the later patterns of Mannlichers,
and then the 1895 straight pull Mannlichers.
So these were pretty well obsolete.
They did end up getting called back into some use in World War One for reserves.
But clearly at some point before the war they had surplused some of them, because Bannerman had some.
Bannerman happily sold these rifles to the Verdigre Home Guard, who used them to
march around patrolling the grain elevators and the mill.
And clearly they did a good job of it, because there was in fact no German or communist sabotage of the works in Verdigre.
Anyway, if you'd like to be the next owner of this rifle, take a look at the description text below.
You'll find a link there to Rock Island's catalogue page.
This rifle is one in a batch of several that are all being sold together as a lot.
So you can take a look at the pictures of it and the other rifles, and see Rock Island's description
and price estimate. And if you'd like to place a bid on the lot, you can do that right through the website as well.
Thanks for watching.
One last thing that I want to mention before we go is if you're interested in this
period of firearm in general, the early black powder rifles, the late muzzleloading revolvers,
or even early percussion muzzle loading revolvers.
And in fact if you want to see a Werndl in particular being fired, I would recommend checking out the channel capandball
run by a very cool Hungarian fellow who does a bunch of shooting and has some great history.
And just a really interesting channel largely dedicated to rifles like this one.
[ cc by sk cn2 ]