[ Schulhof Model 1887 ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at RIA
taking a look at an 1887 pattern
Schulhof manually operated pistol.
This is from this period in the 1880s and early 1890s
when there was kind of an explosion of designs
in Austria of manually operated pistols.
These just barely pre-date the first (sort of) viable semi-auto pistols,
which would start in about 1890/1891 with the Salvator-Dormus,
and then the Borchardt in 1893 being more or less commercially viable.
And the C96 Mauser in 1896 really being successful, eventually.
But move back 5 to 10 years to the mid-1880s,
and we don't have smokeless powder yet, we don't have semi-automatic pistols.
And we have this group of Austrian designers, really pioneered by Josef Schulhof,
who are designing manually operated guns.
Now, the only real comparison to these is the American Volcanics,
which pre-date them by a couple of decades.
However, what's interesting here is that
the Austrian pattern of pistols can actually be fired one-handed like pistols.
The Volcanics are really kind of difficult to actually shoot one-handed
because of the way that their levers operate.
So, let's get back to Schulhof.
His full name was Josef Schulhof, he was born in 1824 in North Bohemia,
basically in the Sudetenland, so he was an Austrian citizen.
We don't know much about his early life. We know in 1870 he moved to Vienna,
and became a fairly accomplished and well-known
... engineer and inventor in a wide variety of fields.
He developed a well pump that was actually used by the French military
in North Africa pretty successfully.
He was involved in agriculture, he was involved in chemistry.
Apparently he actually did some of his own experimentation
trying to design and patent a smokeless powder, which he wasn't successful at.
And he was a pretty darn successful, avid, amateur marksman.
And that later in his life, by the 1880s,
got him interested in designing firearms stuff.
So his first gun patent was in 1882 for a rifle.
In 1883 he came out with a magazine conversion patent
that was applicable to basically any of the single-shot bolt-action rifles of the period.
He specifically called out Mauser, Gras and Berdan.
And then 1884 he patents his first pistol.
And I actually have videos on a couple of his earlier 1884 pattern pistols.
... Spoiler alert here, none of these were commercially really successful.
So there's very small scale production of all of Schulhof's patents,
and really all of the manually operated pistols that came out of Austria in general.
And so there are a lot of different variations
because he was constantly tweaking and experimenting with things.
So, I have some previous videos on his 1884 guns.
What is distinctive about them is that they use a knee-joint style of toggle lock to lock.
He changed that in 1886, and went to a single piece, like a pivoting block to lock.
And then in 1887 he changed once again to the system we have here,
which is actually a rotating bolt.
A design that would be adapted and actually show up again
in some of the early self-loading pistols designed by Frommer and Schwarzlose,
So, with all of that introduction, what we have here is an 1887 Type 1.
And this type comes from the
indispensable book by Mötz and‎ Schuy in German about Austrian pistol designs
that is the only effective source of information on these, it's a fantastic book.
If you're interested in more about these, definitely check it out.
But we have a rotary magazine,
of a type that would go on to be really perfected by Schönauer in rifle form,
and a funky, interesting pistol. Let's take a closer look at it.
So the basic premise here is that you have a 6 round rotary magazine,
that's the follower, and it is spring-loaded.
So Schulhof actually designed basically a loading clip for these,
that you would set in here and you could strip 6 cartridges down into the magazine.
It's not known if they were ever produced, there are no surviving examples known.
But there are drawings and a patent for them, so that's cool.
Then the way that you would actually use this is you have a ring trigger here.
And ... you can see that there is checkering on the front of the trigger,
so you can use it to close the bolt and chamber a cartridge like that.
The bolt is spring loaded, with basically catches at the opening and closing sections.
So if I just kind of tap the ring trigger, it will under spring tension pop open.
Which will eject either a live round, if I haven't fired it, or the empty case.
Kick it out and leave the gun open ready to fire the next shot.
Similarly there's spring tension here as I am closing the bolt.
But once it's closed, it actually locks in position.
And if you look at the extractor there,
you can see that at the very end of travel the bolt actually rotates to lock.
So the bolt is currently locked, based on ... basically two lugs at the back end of the bolt.
And then pulling the trigger forward
forces it to rotate to unlock, and then the spring pops it open.
Now this is the actual trigger that fires it.
That's our striker back here.
And the way this was intended to be actually used is it would be carried open like this.
And when you want to fire it you pull the ring trigger back,
and your finger is going to automatically hit the actual firing trigger and fire it.
So you can see the striker dropped like that, bang.
Kind of like a double action revolver, sort of.
Now it is possible to also cock it, basically chamber a cartridge.
And then there is a safety lever here that, when I flip it forward, locks the trigger.
So it can actually be carried chambered, closed, and locked.
And then you can unlock it like that, and fire by pressing just the inside trigger.
So, that's how this was supposed to operate.
This, by the way, is basically your cartridge stop,
so that the top cartridge in the magazine doesn't fly out of the gun, it's held in place by that.
And then if you want to unload without having to chamber every round,
you can just pull on this, pull that tab back a little bit,
and the rounds will fountain out of magazine.
So that's ... basically a spring that's screwed onto the bottom of the magazine assembly.
... That's cool and all, but we are going to take the grips off
so that you can see what's actually going on inside.
Alright, so there we go. Take off that grip, and the other.
Now you can actually get a really good view into this.
So what we have here is sort of a stirrup that has two pins on it.
Those pins travel in a groove in the bolt.
See if we can get a view in there where you can see it.
So right here you can see that groove in the bolt, that controls the rotation of the bolt.
So when it gets to the very end, the bolt is going to rotate.
And we have a lug in the ... frame here
that locks into that L-shaped sort of extension in the rotation groove.
And that's what locks the bolt in place.
This stirrup locks into the bolt, and is used to pull it forward and back
as you pull the ring trigger forward and back.
We have a V spring here that provides the impetus to open and close the thing.
And we have a trigger down here, which is really on the other side.
The trigger mechanism is this lever acts on this joint, which pulls this lever down.
And I can actually take the end cap off here.
Take that off, and that is our firing pin.
And you can see the flat surface there, which is what this sear is holding
until I pull the trigger, and then it can go forward.
Or it could, if the bolt were closed.
You can also see down here how the safety works.
Which is really simple, it just physically blocks that trigger lever from moving.
You can see the edge of the second locking lug right there, above my fingertip.
There's another parallel track in the bolt.
So when I go to rotate the bolt, that lug is then going to be able to travel in this track
so that the bolt can move forward and back.
I should also point out the markings here, we have Schulhof's Patent, Wien (Vienna)
... on the top of the frame there.
And we have a serial number on the back, this is number 18.
There were only a few dozen, at most, of any of Schulhof's individual models made.
Over the course of his work Schulhof would use a variety
of different cartridges in his guns, some large, some small.
These did include cartridges like the .44 Smith & Wesson Russian,
and also the 10.6mm German Ordnance cartridge.
The majority of the ones I've seen have been rather smaller,
using cartridges that are basically equivalent to .320 Short Revolver.
This particular one is chambered for an 8 by, I think, 17.5mm cartridge.
What's most interesting about it is that it is a thoroughly modern-looking rimless cartridge.
Allegedly I think, actually the first rimless pistol cartridge put into use.
So, ... he did some of his own proprietary cartridges,
but he was also very much interested in having the guns get onto the market and get used.
And the best way to do that was often to use cartridges that people already had access to.
We have actually reasonably decent sights on there.
See that sight picture, not too bad.
It makes sense they are fairly precise sights, Schulhof himself was an avid marksman.
The 1887 pattern Schulhof, like this one, was actually tested by the French military in 1890,
although obviously they opted not to adopt it.
I think probably the fundamental problem with a lot of Schulhof's designs,
and many of the other similar manually operated pistols,
is that they required a lot of complicated machining in order to make them work.
They didn't offer that much of a practical advantage over a revolver,
but they were definitely more expensive,
more fragile, and more prone to malfunction and breakage.
Ultimately Schulhof would pass away in 1890.
His work was continued by his widow, we don't know the full extent of her involvement.
She may have been substantially involved in the design and engineering, perhaps.
She may also have simply taken his patents after he died and continued to market them.
We just don't have any records on her involvement.
But Schulhof died in 1890.
His widow actually took out one last patent of this style in her own name,
which was probably based on work that he had already done, but again we don't know for sure.
By 1894 she stopped marketing the pistols,
because by that point I think it was clear that other forms of technology were going to take over.
The first effective self-loading pistols were coming on the market,
smokeless powder was on the market,
and it was probably obvious that the manually operated system
wasn't going to be developed all that much farther.
And as it currently stood in the early 1890s,
it didn't really give you any significant advantages over a simple revolver, so.
That said, I find ... all these manually repeating pistols to be really cool.
We have a number of them here that I'm going to be doing videos on,
and so there will be a series of these. We're going to go through them chronologically
(mostly chronologically) over the next week or two.
So, hopefully you guys enjoyed this, stick around for the successive ones by other designers.
Thanks for watching.