Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on forgotten weapons. com. I'm Ian. I'm here today
at the James Julia auction house, taking a look at some of the cool guns they're going to be selling in their upcoming
October of 2016 Firearms auction. And
I have this thing here today. This is a Luger inside a folding "Transformers" contraption. Now,
we've looked at shoulder stock pistols on, well, quite a lot and
typically what that is is some sort of wooden stock that snaps on to the gun.
Sometimes people get clever
and they turn the stock into a holster,
so you can actually holster the gun in the stock when you're not using it, hang it from your belt
and then
pull it off the belt and take the gun out and snap it on as a stock, and shoot it from the shoulder.
And that's a nice way to kind of make the gun a little more portable.
Normally the problem with a stocked pistol
is that if you're not actually shooting it, you've basically got a rifle that you have to deal with. It's got a short barrel,
but you've got this stock hanging off the back, that gets in the way.
Well, this was an attempt to get a shoulder stock pistol that gave you that extra bit of control that you get from being able
To use your shoulder with a pistol;
but at the same time, keeps the gun nice and compact. And this is a Benke Thieman
I'm going to pronounce that wrong T-H-I-E-M-A-N-N
stock. It was developed by a pair of guys,
Josef Von Benke or Benka, by Josef von Benka, who was a Hungarian, and a guy named Georg
Timon, who was a German. And they kind of had some some patents in common and
Benke, originally Banka.
Benke originally patented this and
interestingly, being Hungarian, he originally actually patented it for use with a Frommer Stop pistol.
And it was only later that it was also adapted and made
for the Luger. Now both versions exist, both versions are very rare, only a few hundred of these were made
because it turns out to be kind of clumsy and weird no matter how you cut it.
So what this is, is two layers of stock material, and right now they're folded up. So you can actually use this gun
one-handed like this. It's a little bit awkward; but what it's really made to do is fold open like
this, and then it snaps into position there, and now you have a shoulder stock
like that.
Yeah, pretty slick, huh? Let's take a closer look. The markings on here are "Patent Benke/Thiemann"
D-R-P-U-A-P. That stands for
"Deutsches Reich Patent" and some other stuff in German; it translates into
"German patent and other patents". This was
patented in several other countries including the UK and France and Switzerland as well as Germany. It is a
D.W.M. 1920's
interwar meal between the wars commercial Luger here that this has been mounted on. On
the opposite side, we have in smaller text a serial number. These never get above three digits;
this particular one is only two digits.
This is serial number 16
and they're all preceded by several zeros, as if they anticipated making a hundred thousand or more of these. Which is
commendable optimism, but not reality. They only made a couple hundred.
Now the one control on this stock is this spring catch right here.
And it's kind of slick in that that locks the stock both in the open and the closed position.
So let's take a closer look at how that works.
I'm going to pull this latch back which allows this to open up, and
it's going to open all the way up like a pair of wings here. And then I can grab this center Pillar pull it back
extend these and then
that latch snaps right into place back here, so it's holding the same piece together.
But basically what we've done is we've taken this - these two inner plates and
unfolded them, so now the stock's twice as long and sticking off the gun backwards instead of forwards.
If we take a closer look at the pistol, we can see that this stock actually replaces the grips; so in in their entirety
they're still held on by the grip screws. But if you are going to use one of these stocks,
you don't get wood grips anymore, you get this metal plate.
Now this is
- it's a little bit uncomfortable. It's kind of like holding a Luger without grip plates, frankly.
But it certainly works well enough and you can still get a normal grip normal firing grip, and then
this rear bar is what you support your shoulder on.
That looks pretty awkward, but for a little nine millimeter pistol,
It's no problem at all. You wouldn't want that on a rifle, but it's not an issue here.
So the idea being, you then have that much better stability when shooting the gun from the shoulder - better than holding it.
Well, what would have been the style at the time as shooting one-handed?
So I have found an interesting anecdote, that these were actually exhibited at a German sporting
expo, basically in the 1920's. I should mention this was patented originally in 1920. There were a couple follow-up patents up until
1926 - improving things like improving the hinge mechanism.
Anyway, in the 1920's this was demonstrated at a sporting expo and really got a pretty negative reception, because
people looked at it and kind of assumed that what it was doing, was making the gun more compact and thus appealing for poachers.
Unusual...I guess people weren't really the sporting folks -
I guess some things never change. The folks who are really invested in sporting purpose, you know hunting guns,
didn't see the purpose in something that was 1920's tacticool, like this metal folding,
permanently attached stock.
Now to replace it to put it back into its regular pistol configuration, I'm going to pull this this latch,
which is right there - spring loaded - and then we'll fold it back up like
so, snap it into place; and in this configuration, you can still use it.
It's a little bit awkward,
largely because of this hinge pin in the back, but you can use the gun.
Interestingly they did actually make holsters for these as well. The holsters are even rarer than the stocks, because of course they were leather,
and they degrade a lot more than this solid metal stock. The holster is kind of an over-sized thing. It holds this entire
folded package in the holster.
Standard magazine, of course. Which you can still operate. You can still operate the mag catch with the stock folded or unfolded right there.
Really, really cool accessory!
All right, I've got a magazine full of 7.65 Luger ammunition. So let's try a little bit of shooting.
We'll start with the stock all folded up in pistol mode.
Pretty much shoots like a Luger pistol.
The grips are a little weird and uncomfortable, but they don't actually create any real problems.
It's not like, while there are sharp edges in this, none of them really impact you under recoil or anything like this.
You can certainly shoot it this way. Now let's put on the safety and
let's go ahead and unfold this
into carbine format.
Snap that closed, let's go ahead and try this.
Pretty nice! The stock, while it looks super goofy,
it's actually the right length to give you you get a decent little cheek rest here, and you have a good enough sight picture to
actually shoot well. It's actually pretty nice. I'm going to put a few more rounds in... let's try some more.
All right, we'll finish with a little malfunction there, but
that's a really nice gun to shoot. It's a little awkward to carry, but this is one of those shoulder stocks
that's actually a lot better than you'd really expect. Thing's pretty slick.
It's got that the lack of sales for this have to have been either the price was way too high or just
people trying to shoot the pistol with the stock folded, because that's really not it's strong suit.
Strong suit is definitely -
I've got one more round - strong suit is definitely shooting this like a carbine.
Thanks for watching guys. I hope you enjoyed the video.
Like I said, this is a pretty unusual stock today. They're prying out more than a handful of them still in existence.
What's kind of interesting is there are a lot of different stocks of not like this one,
but a lot of different shoulder stock options that were made for the Luger.
It's kind of an unusual pistol in that way.
So hopefully we'll get a chance to look at some others in the future.
For the time being, if you would like to own this particular stock and the 1920's commercial D.W.M. Luger that it comes with,
take a look at the description text below.
You'll find a link there to James Julia Company's catalogue page on the gun and stock you can see their pictures and their description
Place a bid on it over the phone or come up here to participate in the auction life. Thanks for watching.