doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion German & Austrian Sporting Guns @ doublegunshop.com Med. Amrusch Pinsdorf near Gmunden

http://www.hallowellco.com/r_g_owen%2012ga.htm
Hallowell & Company has a very interesting Robert Griffith Owen round action type for a client named Fred W. Hicks ordered from Med. Amrusch fine gunsmith and weapons maker of Pinsdorf near Gmunden, who may have been a descendant of Johann Amrusch.

Pinsdorf: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinsdorf

Interesting in the fact that an American gunsmith sourced thru an Austrian firearms merchant to a group of Suhl gunmakers. It may be that Robert Griffith Owen was the prot�g� of Fred Adolph and continued the sourcing, which may have been the status quo.

I hope Jani is still awake penning an article and can give some insight on the order form:



Jani what would 8k Austrian monetary units get you back then?


Max Heym(MH) more than likely was the barrel knitter and may have been the primary contact as the firm has roots back to the mid 1860s.



The retarded time between 1927 and 1946 is puzzling. I can't make out the forge marks on the Roechling Special Steel tubes but H.S. was involved in the tube making. Would be very insightful to find the Med. Amrusch order form to the Suhl craftsmen.




Robert Griffith Owen may have jeweled the flats and that may have been the extent of his efforts.



I wonder if the Barella case is original to the longarms and he was also in the sourcing line???

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse

Hi Raimey, these are not order forms, but bills/receipts for a lot of apparently unrelated second-hand items, both dated 1946, short time post-WW2, while the gun is clearly much earlier, though overrestored recently. The bills read:
1.) September 1, 1946
1 complete guncase
1 shotgun number 5329, 12 bore
1 rifle cal. 9.3x74 number 5914, engraved
2 scopes
all in all Schilling 8000.-

2.)November 18, 1946
1 scope by Kahles S 240.-
mounting S 180.-
total S 420.-
The stamps and signatures say that the amounts have been paid.

So the shotgun is only mentioned in receipt nr.1, only with the serial number. Remember, in 1946 neither Germans nor Austrians were allowed to own any guns. Allied officers could then buy guns for a song or some packs of cigarettes. At that time about 20 Austrian Schilling were one US$.

Thanks for all the effort Axel but when it notes 8000 Austrian schillings I'd think much more was involved than some periphery items. The paid receipts note 2 longarms and tell much more of a tale and I think are related to the sourcing of the longarms. If it was for only some secondary items, why list the longarms? I'm still puzzled and wonder if H. Barella was involved seeing his name on the case.

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse

I disagree. The first receipt merely sais he bought a guncase, possibly marked Barella, an old shotgun, a rifle and two scopes, all items pre-war perhaps, at the same time. For the whole shebang Hicks paid S 8000.-. Some time later he had a Kahles scope mounted on a gun, most likely a rifle. If you see more it is whishfull thinking and overinterpreting to me.

All right I'll submit to that you can call me a dreamer, a cockeyed optimist caught up in retracing a web of international intrigue centered around the sourcing of sporting weapons. Let's say Cap. Hicks did fork out over 8000 Austrian Schillings in Austria for the whole lot, purchased at different intervals and summed in one receipt. What did he do then, take it to Robert G. Owen and have R.G. Owen inlaid on top? He may have cottoned to Owen's name better than his??? Or maybe an order to Robert G. Owen was never shipped due to the war. Something is awry and the longarm is being peddled as an American completed longarm. I realize it is post wartime in a difficult period and odd things happened.

By the way, if you have any more of those "old shotguns" lying around I'd like to see the lot of them.

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse

The more I look at the photos, the more I get confused.
The receipts are dated late 1946. At that time there was no Austrian state, only "occupation zones". Mr. Hicks was a "Kapt." = captain at that time. All the items shown predate WW2 by several years, so it is unlikely that captain Hicks had them made to his order originally.
We may dismiss the "Barella" guncase first: Obviously it was not tailor-made for the gun, as it is blocked in a different colored material to fit it. The F.W.H. stamps on the leathergoods may have been applied anytime. The shape of the letters looks neither Austrian nor German to me, but was common in English or American use. BTW what is the use of a scope case combined with a shotgun case?
The gun itself was proofed in Suhl, NITRO in block letters, 8 27 =August 1927, so it was already 19 years old when Hicks bought it. Unlikely a man who was still a captain in 1946 placed an order for a custom shotgun 20 years earlier.
The barrel flats are jeweled over the proofmarks, typical for American workmanship of the 1960s, but very unusual on a 1920s Suhl gun.
The "RG OWEN SAUQUOIT ,NY" inscription on the top rib looks spurious to me too. Inscriptions of the retailer's name on top rib panels are common on Suhl guns, but these panels are usually level with the rib, only spared from the engraving. Here the panel is sunken into the rib. It's ends are cut jagged and it shows lengthwise file scratches. The letters of Owen's adress are cut uneven, look at the individual letters. The "gold" seems to be a simple color rubbed into the letters. No Suhl gunmaker would have accepted such shoddy workmanship on an otherwise fine gun.
IMHO F.W.Hicks bought all this stuff second hand from the country gunsmith Amrusch (did you notice the different handwritings on the two receipts?) in 1946 when allied officers were the only buyers of guns. Later, he had his initials stamped on the leather and had Owen to rejuvenate and further embellish the gun. Some of the gold inlays, especially the small one on the foreend iron, look like afterthoughts to me. Owen apparently also replaced the original initials on the foreend with the FHW. Have a close look at the top of the F and the bottom of the W. Here some gaps show that indicate a former, different inlay.

So now if we can locate the engraved H. Barella #5914 we could mate it with its case??? Can we assume that scattergun #5329 was unadorned??? The engraving on scattergun #5329 looks Germanic. Also why the time difference between September and November on the 2 receipts? Why 2 stamps on the 1st with one being signed? Could the firearms merchant Amrusch have been holding goods of Fred W. Hicks valued at 8k schillings until the scope was fitted??? I wonder if the forend wood mates with the stock? I know, I know, more questions than answers but I do concur that the jeweling was an attempt at concealment by a peddler in the U.S. of A. So is there a consensus that this is a spurious scattergun?

What would have been the value of the longarm ordered in 1927?

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse

Several questions:
German/Austrian legal customs: As long as a paper like those shown shows an adress on top, in these cases a stamp, and is unsigned, it is a bill. As soon as there is a signature of the recipent underneath, it becomes a receipt and the amount is legally considered to be paid. If there is a second stamp beside the signature or not is of no consequence.
The bill/receipt states #5914 was a rifle in 9.3x74R, perhaps a double rifle, no maker mentioned. How do you get the idea it was a Barella? The Barella guncase, the shotgun #5329, the rifle #5914 and two scopes are listed as seperate items, connected only by being sold by a country gunsmith to the same man on the same day.
The second bill is completely unrelated to the shotgun #5329. It concerns a scope by Kahles, Vienna being mounted, most likely by fitting claw mounts, on an unspecified rifle. This may have been rifle #5914 bought by Capt. Fred Hicks two months earlier or any other rifle. Hicks may have ordered the rifle he bought on 9.1.1946 to be mounted with a new scope and collected the completed work only on 11.18.1946. Perhaps Amrusch had to order the prescribed Kahles scope himself, hence the delay.
IMHO the rounded action boxlock ejector shotgun #5329 already came with some engraving in 1927, but those many gold inlais are very unusual for a 1920s German boxlock. OK, they may be original to the gun, but they also may have been added post-WW2 as well.The world then was full of unemployed German-trained engravers and gunsmithes. Several engravers survived by orders through the Rod-and-Gun Clubs then to enhance war trophies with engraving, inlais and even dedication inscriptions by famous Nazis. The gold inlay under the action bar is in a place that was perhaps left void for the retailer's adress, those on the top lever and on the foreend iron are where the numbers "1 or 2" would appear on a pair of guns. Note the inlay on the foreend iron runs over the borderline of the engraving.

Axel:
All good points and I guess Kapit�n Hicks could have picked up any ole gun case & scope case and probability was with him that day and all the accouterments, including the 2 initialed scope cases, and the DR, dropped right in the Barella case. I really don't think that it was happenstance that Kapit�n Kicks went to a weapons garage sale in Austria, purchasing all items independently and The weapons, accouterments, etc. not have some prior association. But when did someone take a piece of gold sidewalk chalk and rub in R.G. Owen on the top rib?

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse