Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today we have a chance to look at a really
interesting and mechanically unusual semi-auto shotgun.
This is a Walther Patent toggle locked, repeating shotgun.
This was patented just after World War One.
There were actually a series of patents that
the Walther company took out on this gun from 1918 until 1921.
The inventor was almost certainly Fritz Walther,
although the patents named him as well as two of his brothers,
but Fritz was really the gun designer of the company.
And ... they're fairly rare shotguns.
They made about 5,000 of them total.
Starting in probably late 1922, with production running until probably 1931.
The exact dates are kind of hard to nail down, and basically you can just look at
when they showed up in in sales catalogues and when they disappeared.
Interestingly, while these were marked Walther's Patent (and they were in fact patented by Walther),
they don't appear to have been manufactured by Walther.
The early guns, the first at least couple hundred, are actually marked Deutsche-Werke, Erfurt.
DW, or Deutsche-Werke, was kind of a consortium of arms makers
that was put together by the German government after World War One.
And they're best known for producing the Ortgies pistols, like 400,000 Ortgies pistols, in the early 1920s.
This was a way to bring currency into the country and have some jobs for machinists.
A way to try and recover from the post-war depression that set in after World War One.
Well, they also made Walther's Patent semi-auto shotguns.
Now, after the first small number of these had been manufactured
the Deutsche-Werke name and logo disappeared from the sides, and they were replaced by a legend on the guns like this one.
Although it seems like, while no-one's really clear about it, it seems like DW probably continued doing the actual manufacture.
In 1927 ... some of the advertising points out that Walther made a number of improvements to the gun.
They didn't change the appearance at all, but they were improvements to the, presumably,
the metallurgy and the quality control and some of the fine production details
that made the guns a little more durable and a little more reliable.
Now mechanically it is a short recoil, toggle locked gun, both of which are rather unusual in shotguns.
Of course, we have the Browning Auto-5, which is a long recoil shotgun. We have some inertial type shotguns.
The short recoil is more common in machine guns but shows up here in this shotgun.
And then the toggle locking system is quite unusual.
This is pretty much the only toggle locked shotgun out there, so.
Let's take a closer look and once we understand how it works
I think we're going to take it out to the range and see how it shoots.
So here on the left side of the gun is the Walther marking, right there, "Walther's Patent".
On the early guns you would have a stylised letter D logo and a legend that said, "Deutsche-Werke, Erfurt, Walther's Patent".
So this is actually one of the very last of these guns that was made.
You can see the serial number here - 5,505 - just in front of the trigger guard.
The highest recorded one is 5,700 and change. They probably made these to about serial number 6,000.
There are a couple other markings. We have this little Germany marking on the back of the trigger guard.
That probably indicates that this particular gun was earmarked for export when it was manufactured.
That was how Deutsche-Werke made a lot of its money was making guns for export
that the Versailles Treaty didn't allow to be sold in Germany.
And then we also have a number of proof marks. So this is a Crown N and the word "Nitro".
So ... well we saw it's a late serial number, this is a fairly late production gun.
And there's one marking just above the handguard.
And if I open up the handguard we can see the one other marking there a little more clearly,
that reads Cal 12-65mm, 2.5 inch. So I should point out these are made for 65mm shells.
Standard 12 gauge shells today are 70mm, so
may or may not really work. You may have some trouble with modern shells running in these guns.
And then "Special steel".
We have some Crown U proof marks on the receiver.
And then a whole slew of additional proof marks there on the barrel, including what appears to be 11.27,
which would suggest that this barrel was proofed in November of 1927.
Now you may have noticed that I did some weird thing to show the marking on the barrel here,
and that is one of the other cool features of the Walther shotgun.
We have a catch right here, and when you pull it backwards the handguard pops down like so.
And this is actually the magazine tube right there. So you pop that down, load it up, you can hold four shells in there.
And once it's loaded you then snap that back up into position.
You have a bolt release right here.
So the way the bolt actually works is we have a metal shield here,
(this is one of the improvements made to the guns just to keep dirt and debris out of the action),
and the bolt has a tail down here with a toggle link in it, kind of like a Luger pistol.
And so the idea is as long as the breech, the whole assembly, is forward in this position
the toggle lock is a straight solid bar and can't move.
When you fire, this whole upper assembly is going to cycle backwards.
You can see where it's going to come back right here, and you can see some wear to the finish where it's been moving.
You can also see a line of finish wear right up here on the barrel,
and that actually shows you exactly how far the barrel cycles back when you fire
because the claws here that keep the barrel in place have been rubbing on it right there.
At any rate, it's a very tight action spring in there, so I can't really cycle it by hand to show you.
But what that cycling does is push the toggle lock back against a cam,
that breaks the toggle. And once it's broken like that, then inertia cycles the bolt backwards.
And you can do that manually through the use of this charging handle.
So to manually lock the gun open you pull this all the way down, and then snap it back into position.
And then you can use this button to close the action.
So you can open it, drop a shell in, close the action; and then pop open the magazine tube and load the rest of the magazine.
The only other control on there that you really need to know about is the safety. It's a push through button right here
on the front of the trigger guard.
Now these didn't turn out to be all that successful.
They ... made them for about 10 years, which is not a bad production timeframe.
But the overall quantity, they made about 5,000 of these in 10 years. It's like 500 per year.
That's pretty slim pickings for a serious gun company.
So, perhaps the shooting will show us some hint of why they weren't more successful.
So I've had a chance to shoot one of these before. And the last time I was out shooting we couldn't get the gun to cycle.
And I think the problem is that these are made for 65mm shotshells where the standard today, especially in the US, is 70mm.
However, I am not currently in the US and I have a pile of 67mm shells which should work just fine in this 65mm chamber. So. ...
One,
one on the ground, that's for good luck,
two, we'll just go with three to start with.
This will hold four total in the tube. So.
There we go, that's closed.
If you do decide to open the bolt and drop a shell in, the button right here on the bottom closes the bolt. Now,
charge it and we should be good to go.
Wow! That really has a remarkably stout recoil to it.
Which seems odd given that it is a 12 gauge shotgun. It's a bit light, but
I suspect that what's happening is this is a short recoil gun,
and it's probably recoiling quite quickly, coming to an abrupt halt at the end of travel,
and transmitting all of that force into the shooter's shoulder.
So, once again, you do not want to have your thumb
near this recoiling upper receiver section, because it will whack you on the thumb.
Not that I'd know.
So let's try a couple more rounds.
Wow, that is really remarkably stout recoil.
Well, that was pretty cool to get a chance to try one of these out that actually works.
I think the recoil probably explains why these weren't a bit more successful.
The toggle action design is pretty cool, the short recoil system is pretty cool mechanically.
But yeah, you know what, if I had the option to go out and buy any sort of sporting shotgun at this time period,
probably wouldn't buy one of these if I'd had the chance to shoot one before.
So makes a lot of sense now.
So the other loading method is charge it open, and then
drop a shell in, and then hit the button right here.
That will close the ... bolt on the chamber.
... Then I can open up the tube,
one,
two,
and three into the tube.
And then with a judicious amount of force, snap it shut.
Whoo.
Well, I hope you guys enjoyed watching the video.
It was very interesting to get a chance to shoot this, I would not have anticipated the recoil issues.
I actually had a chance to shoot one of these a while back and the recoil was much softer,
but the gun didn't fully cycle. It was short stroking every time.
So these seem to kind of require full power ammunition, which kind of makes sense for a toggle locking action.
They don't have a lot of leeway in terms of the power of the cartridge that you're using to cycle them.
So I know a lot of people who have these have some trouble getting them to cycle right.
My suggestion would be make sure the gun is in good working order, and then go for full power ammunition.