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Steyr MONOBLOC barrels
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A rather long prologue/narrative to this post/thread.
It started with an occasional inquiry to me during a lunch
in a shooting club on the name of Atkin on a pair of guns.
The man who had it on offer wanted to know my opinion and
a possible price.
At the next meeting the owner appeared with the pair.
He had recently bought it and wanted apparently "test the
market". A nice pair with one gun rebarreled, standard sidelock, all in unmolested condition.
I told him that there is for sure a double-guncase
behind. So next time he came with the cased pair.
Seeing the case I told him he should go back to the vendor
because there is for sure a case cover.
So next time he appeared with the cased pair incl the
found case cover.
I told him he should keep the pair and go hunting with it.
To complete it I sold him a nice small Atkin cartridge
magazine.
When asking what else he has at home he appeared next
time with a Steyr sidelock 16 bore with this uncommon
feature of barrels in Monobloc construction.
This means the barrels, the barrelhooks, the hook for
the forepart, the toprib made from one solid billet
of steel. No bottomrib, no soldering at all.
We agreed I wold make photos of the barrels and the
gun and put it into this forum.
This did not happen and my contact to him got lost as he
retired.
I finally fould him now and we agreed to meet in march to
complete the story.
....
The second beginning to this story is this comment in a
thread in the common section titled "Ironies of the trade".
Reading there that 2 English companies Boxall&Edminston
and Longthorne are building their O/U barrels from
one solid billet of steel.
The first went broke, the second is telling in their homepage
that famous Whitworth had a patent on such
one-solid-billet-made barrels.
I admit that this UK story has triggered me to complete
the Steyr story.
....
I contacted Steyr. They have been sold more than once in
recent decades and their multiple divisions split.
Steyr arms - as they are called now -have several of
these Monobloc-guns in their collection.
Even a rarity of a socalled "Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand"
double-bore rifle with this monobloc construction.
To make it clear, we are speaking of the years
1901 to about 1930, very very long before CNC times.
There emerged some hammerguns with this barrel-type
in recent years at local auctions.
Featuring with their OEWG name (the abbreviation for
"Oesterreichische Waffengesellschaft").
When asking Steyr if they can provide any info on the
patent/machinery used to produce, they came back
and one of their retirees told that Steyr had a cooperation
with Pieper/Liege and the monobloc is based on a
Pieper patent.
I am not sure if this info holds as Pieper is well known
for a shotgun with "sleeved" type of barrel-construction.
I contacted littlegun.be . They referred me to the
author of a book on Bayard-Pieper and gave me his e-mail .
The book has no Isbn, since long out of print, I sent an e-mail to the author.
I got an answer via littlegun.be.
The details I got back refer to another
patent. Need to wait now till I have the photos.
....
I thought it may sense to put it up here - there is so much
intelligence in this forum - may be someone has the
book or knows which and how the machine-tools they used
to make these monobloc-barrels.
....
Photos to follow in march...
...
Felix Neuberger
..
PS:I am "suffering an obsession" to find out how they
did the barrels contour - which is not a simple
cone-contour but a swept one.
Its all 100 years before CNC...
....
Text edited feb 12/2019