[ Alofs Shotgun ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and we are finally, finally
doing a video on the Alofs shotgun.
I posted a teaser about this like five years ago,
and there's never any real reason
I didn't do it, I just never quite got to it.
But we are doing it today.
So what we have here is actually one of the most fantastically cool steampunk
conversion systems that I have seen in a very long time.
Normally something this Rube Goldberg doesn't possibly work,
and yet the Alofs actually does work.
So in a nutshell, this is a bolt-on contraption
that turns a single-shot break-action shotgun into a 4+1 capacity repeating shotgun.
Which is really cool.
It was patented by a guy named Herman Alofs in 1924,
his patent was actually granted also in 1924.
Went into production in 1925, he formed the Alofs Manufacturing Company.
And this would cost you $6.
At the time you could get a break-action shotgun for somewhere in the vicinity of $15 to $20.
A repeating shotgun, a pump action shotgun, which would essentially do the same thing
without all the weird mousetrap stuff on the outside, would cost you more like $35 and up.
So these were actually ... sold by the Iver Johnson Company.
There are advertisements that are just direct from the Alofs Manufacturing Company.
But Othais, over at C&Rsenal, who is also going to do a video on one of these eventually
(he's had 5 years to scoop me, he hasn't done it yet, so I'm posting this one),
he is the one who actually did some digging through Iver Johnson's catalogue
and found some of their pricing. So kudos to Othais for digging up that.
This system can be bolted to essentially any shotgun.
In fact, let's take a close look at it,
and then we're going to go shoot it because I know that's what everyone wants to see.
So here's the working side of the thing.
The opposite side of the gun is totally blank.
You've got your central main bolt here that the gun actually opens and closes on,
and that is extended through over here.
Now fundamentally the way this thing works is you've got 3 rounds in the tube here,
you've got one round in this tube, there's a spring in each one.
This spring is pushing this direction, this spring is pushing forward.
When you open the gun you have an automatic ejector
that's going to come back and hit this - whoops! - this little lever.
When that shell comes out it'll trip that, which is actually connected to ...
... a bar right here.
So this bar can go back and forth.
It rests very delicately on that little lug right there.
So the moment that this thing goes backwards - pop - it releases this,
which has a coil spring under here that's constantly trying to
push it over towards the barrel of the gun.
When it is in this position, the spring is going to push this one shell forward into the chamber.
This little flat surface is preventing these shells from coming out.
Once you have the round in the chamber you then
close the gun, which is going to push this back in line.
Once they're in line, the next shell in this tube gets pushed into this tube,
because this spring is stronger than this one.
You then manually cock the thing, fire it.
And when you open the gun again,
that next empty ... hull comes out, trips that, and repeats the whole process.
As you might expect, this thing is very dependent
on exact spacing and alignment and cartridge length.
And so they built in some adjustment into the mounting system.
You don't just bolt this onto the side (and by the way, I'm pretty sure this Phillips screw is
not exactly what they expected you to put on there),
but you can see that there is a serrated plate under here.
And so you set this to exactly the right distance so that your transfer tube here lines up properly,
it has the right spacing with the barrel.
And then these two allow you to adjust the whole thing up or down,
or, in theory, maybe tilt it a little bit,
but your tilt is pretty much controlled or prevented by this interface plate.
But you have adjustment when you mount it so that it can all be set up correctly.
This bar is your stop to make sure that the transfer tube
goes the correct distance ... over towards the barrel.
We do have a couple of markings on here by the way.
Alofs Manufacturing Company, these were made in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
So the patent is September 9th, 1924.
He would also patent this in Canada a year or two later.
I believe this is an early production one, because there are pictures of some
that also have the Canadian patent date on there, which came later.
The gun that this particular one is mounted on is really nothing special.
It's a fiberglass stock, it's actually really quite light.
The original advertising papers say that the Alofs was available
... for essentially any break-action gun in 12 gauge, 16 gauge, 20 gauge or .410 gauge.
However, I'm not aware of any existing ones that are not 12 gauge,
and the Iver Johnson advertisements specifically say 12 gauge.
So I suspect the original manufacturing list of other calibres was in hopes of getting orders.
And if enough people ordered them in a different calibre then they'd go ahead,
and tool up to make them, but I don't think that ever actually happened.
So, you might ask like what's the purpose of this thing? Why would anyone bother with this?
And the answer is it was easy to purchase a cheap break-action shotgun,
and then separately purchase your conversion magazine system.
This breaks up the cost of a repeating shotgun into two more manageable pieces,
and it was actually cheaper than buying a true repeating shotgun.
You definitely don't have the quality, you would be much better off
with a proper pump-action shotgun.
But if you don't have the money for that, or if you've just inherited something like this,
frankly, this isn't too far off of the idea of something like the Archangel stocks for Mosin-Nagants.
Where you buy a cheap Mosin-Nagant and then you really kind of want to turn it into a sniper rifle,
and so you buy an Archangel stock to drop it into.
And it's really not actually a sniper rifle, but it sort of works a little bit better maybe for that,
and it certainly looks cooler.
And, I think, that's fairly in line with the intent,
or certainly the practical reality, of the Alofs conversion.
So with that aside, let's go actually shoot this thing.
Alright, shall we see if this actually works?
... I'll tell you, I did a little bit of cheating,
and I did a little bit of testing back home before we came out here
because this system is very sensitive to overall length of the shells.
And fortunately, by cool happenstance, I have this really cheap old Federal Target Load
(red, white and blue no less), that runs (or appears to run) perfectly in the Alofs.
So the loading process for this, we can hold 3 rounds in this tube.
In fact, just demo that.
So that'll hold 3, it looks like it'll hold 4,
but there's not really enough space for the spring and the follower if you try and cram 4 in.
So what I do is I'll put 3 in here, and then one of them will get transferred into this back tube,
and then I'll top it up so I have 4 rounds total. [Plus 1 in the chamber, if you like.]
Now I will also point out that I have got an empty round,
and I have a fired shell in the action, which will be important for actually cycling it.
So let's go ahead, this is really kind of tricky and finicky to load.
There are no shell stops in these tubes,
you've got these little plates that act as essentially shell stops.
There's two.
There's three. Now, ... don't put my finger in that.
There we go, so now we've got one round back here,
and I can top this main tube off with round number four.
Alright, fully loaded.
Now I'm left handed, but I can't shoot this left handed because this big hinged lug
gets right in the way, and I don't want to take 12-gauge recoil onto that.
So we'll be shooting this right handed.
Oh! Alright.
Come on, buddy.
Well, that's not the best start, but we'll keep going.
So I got a round in the chamber now.
Now ... ha-ha!
- That is so cool.
- There you have it,
four rounds out of a single-shot break-action gun.
Now ... you may have noticed, the one thing I have to do here is I kind of do a little double hiccup.
And the first little bump down in the action just ... it pops it into place,
and then I can close the thing.
... So this should be staying open.
... Alright, it just stuck.
- Well I mean it's old, it's that old.
- ... Basically this device is about 100 years old at this point.
So let's load it up and do it again!
Get this out of the way.
Put our first shell, let's actually just pop that ... there we go.
Alright, so we've got our transfer tube I guess you could call it, loaded.
And then we can put three
into the main tube.
There we go. Ready?
Now.
Alright, here we go.
So there's my little hiccup.
That one. One little hiccup and in it goes.
Oh, come on. It's close, there we go.
That one worked nice and smooth.
So the thing here is if the shells aren't exactly the overall length,
they won't go quite far enough or they'll go just slightly too far,
and you've always got two shells pushing (well, until you get to the very end)
you've got two shells pushing against each other.
It is frankly an unbelievable miracle that this thing actually works even as well as it does.
In theory you don't actually have to put a shell in, I could just trip that manually.
Just go pop, and there it goes, and now I'm ready with my first round.
The one thing that's ... in the way of this being an actual sort of automatic operation,
or like a pump action sort of operation, is that I have to manually cock it every time.
Show you this.
That one worked exactly perfectly.
Open it, close it, empty shell goes out, new shell goes in, cock it.
Can get that again.
No, I had one little bobble there to get it loaded.
Yeah, and the last round is being a little finicky, there we go.
Now the real question I guess would be: is this actually faster than just having a break-action gun?
And I think it is, it really is, until you're out of those first four rounds.
And then you fall ... perpetually behind the single shot guy,
because reloading this thing is like sit down, take a break,
have a cup of coffee, and reload the assembly.
But once you're used to it, you can run this pretty fast.
I've still got 10 rounds, we might as well just use it all.
Do you want me to leave one for you, Matt?
- Yes. - Yes you do, course you do.
Alright, so I will do three here, let me try what is, probably now that I think about it,
the ... way you are supposed to do it. There we go.
We have been having some issues with that first round properly loading in.
And maybe that is in part due to me putting more ammo in than it's supposed to have.
So I've got an empty in there ... one little bobble.
And, alright, shall we speed run this?
- Do it. - Three rounds. - Ready?
- Up!
- I feel like that's faster than I could have done a single shotgun
where I have to actually go to my belt and pull a new cartridge every time.
Alright, you want to try it? - Yeah. - Of course.
- Alright, Matt Haught our resident shotgun expert. - This is so cool.
- Has anyone ever run an Alofs in one of Symtac's tactical shotgun classes?
- No, but I have a feeling you're going to show up with one. - Well, I might.
OK, so go ahead and close it.
And then pull the rear tube off to the left. - Yep.
- And then you're going to load rounds into the long tube.
- No, not that way. - Nope, and there is nothing to hold them in place.
So what I do is ... yeah, exactly like that.
You bring the short tube up just far enough to catch the rim.
But if you let it go too far ... - It'll pop back and load the transfer chamber.
- Yup. - Come on, get in there. It's kind of like loading a Model 12.
- So what's happening now is you've got the rim of the case sitting there ...
- Ow! - And yeah, what I was about to say is
if you push it with your finger you will get a blood blister, as I have already done myself as well.
So, a little late for that though.
Now you can either open it and manually hit that little lever.
- I need an empty, yeah, here we go. - We can give you that.
- Plug that little guy in there. Alright, let's see.
Yeah, one little bobble. - Yep.
- Thumb cocker. Oh, yeah.
- That's slick isn't it? - Yeah.
- Uh oh! - Oh! Ah, you broke my Alofs!
- Yeah, you kind of have to hit the release before you try to open it up, that was my bad.
That is so cool! - Isn't that cool?
- That is just the most Rube Goldbergian glory.
- And yet it works. - Yeah! - There are so few devices like this that actually work.
- I mean it seems like something you'd see on like a late night infomercial.
QVC network, or something. - Well I think the Sears Catalogue was the 1920s equivalent of late night QVC infomercial.
- That is true, but I mean it certainly does work.
And I'd say, yeah, you're probably right, at least for the first 3 rounds.
It's a lot easier than trying to fish a shell out of your ... coat pocket or something.
- Yeah, - I mean there wasn't a whole lot in the way
of modern load carriage gear, web gear, loops, or anything like that back then.
- Exactly. - It was just rally around the family, pocket full of shells, that sort of thing.
- There you go.
Yeah! There we go.
Alright, well we are now out of ammo.
The poor Alofs here is probably getting a little tired,
that's probably more shells than have been fired through it in the last 80 years put together.
I apologise to you guys that it took me so long to finally get this video out for you.
I never really meant to delay it, just never got around to actually getting out and filming this.
So, I'm very glad that I did now.
Hopefully you all enjoyed the video, thank you very much for watching.
Have a wonderful New Year in 2022.