[ System Kuhn Breechloader ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com,
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at Morphy's
taking a look at a System Kuhn
single-shot breech-loading rifle.
And that's pretty much all I know about it.
From time to time I run across guns that I just can't find any information on at all.
But this one's kind of neat mechanically,
and so I figured it'd be a fun one to bring to you guys.
And perhaps someone out there in the audience knows a bit more about
the background of the manufacturer or the system, and can inform the rest of us.
So, let's go ahead and take a closer look at how this system works, and, well, take it apart.
So what do we have here? We have a single-shot breech-loading rifle.
Hammer fired, there's our hammer.
There are two triggers on this, that of course fires the gun,
and this trigger allows you to open the action.
So, unlock it like that, and then you can open the breech.
And if we open it up here, you can see that opens the action up very nicely,
it gives you plenty of space to slide in a new cartridge.
And then when you close the action it automatically cocks the hammer,
which is kind of cool.
So from this position you would pull the trigger, drop the hammer, dry fire it. Well, fire it.
And then, when you pull the lever open, we do have an ejector in there.
The ejector is right here on this side.
When I pop the lever open that's going to, right there, kick the empty case out.
And then drop in your new cartridge.
And I really like the fact that it automatically re-cocks the hammer when you close it.
So it would be a relatively quick and easy system to fire repeatedly.
Fire the gun, it's going to automatically eject,
and it's going to automatically re-cock, pretty cool.
I've said this before, and I will say it again, if you want to make sure that
people will know who made your gun, put your name on it.
So we ... know this one's name, because it is marked here: "Systeme Kuhn".
And we know where it came from, because the other side is marked "Kuhn à Besançon".
Besançon being a town in eastern France, a relatively small city actually I'd say,
fairly close to the Swiss border, which perhaps explains a little bit of the styling.
I don't know if Swiss would be my first guess for this, but if I didn't know anything about it,
and someone asked me to guess a national origin, Swiss would be in the top couple of options.
Just some of the aesthetic elements here, the rear sight.
Some of this kind of speaks Switzerland to me.
And this is set up as a private target rifle,
which is something that was definitely a popular activity in Switzerland.
Now this is clearly a well-made sporting target rifle, we've got a nice front sight there.
And just judging by the calibre, which is 11mm,
plus the sort of ... range of elevation possible on this rear sight
(which by the way, isn't marked for anything except a base of 200 right there),
but judging by how far it can elevate and the bore, this is clearly a black-powder rifle.
The styling in general to me would suggest 1870s, 1880s, time frame.
I should also point out, ... there's one more marking, 296, which tells me nothing.
There is an inset chunk of wood here,
something used to be there in the stock, but I don't know what.
Now what really piqued my curiosity about this particular rifle
was how does the lever actually work inside? Because there are a lot of different systems.
This one appears to have a single pivot right there,
so we're going to go ahead and pull that out.
By the way, if this is a system, a rifle, that I've never disassembled before, like this one,
when I'm doing something like this I'm paying very close attention to how this pin feels.
Because if this pin is under spring tension,
I need to think twice about whether I really want to pull this out.
And make sure that I do so in such a way that nothing goes flying across the room.
In this case there's no resistance on this pin, even if I move the lever around.
And so I can tell that this isn't going to go flying.
So when I pull this pin out, the whole breech assembly is going to pop out of the gun.
That is really cool, normally a bunch of this stuff is maintained up inside the receiver.
But instead here we have our breech block, we have our hammer.
This is held in place by a pair of ... links, connectors, so we can take those off.
And then this one is on its own permanently fixed to a pin.
Which is nice, because it means that I can't put this back in in the wrong configuration.
And it means that I can always double check this link,
match it up to that link, so that they are both oriented correctly.
Then we have our main spring in there, which is this honkin' big main spring.
Now the trigger is contained in here as well.
We've got the trigger ... return spring, and we've got basically the sear catch there.
And we have the locking lever.
However, what's interesting here as well is that this is only half of the trigger mechanism.
The other half is actually the last element that's left inside the receiver.
So if we take a closer look at the receiver, we have the ejector, right here.
Which is ...
easier to see from the top.
So there's the ejector, and this pin is what it's actually rotating on.
And then we have the other half of the trigger mechanism, which is this.
So when ... the hammer comes back,
you can see that the hammer engagement surface is right there.
That is going to lock onto this piece,
which you can see is under a little bit of spring pressure.
And then when the trigger is all the way up inside the gun,
it gets pushed down, and it actually hooks onto the bottom of that piece right down there.
So this ... does a couple of things.
Primarily it serves as a safety.
Until this lever is fully locked in place, the trigger isn't actually connected to the sear,
and so you can't fire the thing when it's out of battery, which is pretty neat.
I suspect it also allows for careful control of the interface
between the trigger and the hammer.
Where if you had it in this, the actual sear connection, right there,
it would be more difficult to get a good trigger press.
And be sure that ... that you won't have a little bit of play in this
that leads to potentially the gun firing when you don't mean it to.
There you go, the Systeme Kuhn à Besançon.
There really are a surprising variety of single-shot breech-loading systems
out there, considering how simple the concept is.
And this is one that's rather a bit different than any of the others that I've seen before.
So, hopefully you guys enjoyed getting a chance to take a look at it.
If this is something you're familiar with, or if the maker is someone that you're familiar with,
please do let us know down in the comments. It'd be fun to learn more about them.
Thanks for watching.