doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion German & Austrian Sporting Guns @ doublegunshop.com Heym rifle date of manufacture

From several sources, that is the still unpublished "Flintenkalle's Directory of the German Guntrade", concerned with pre-war addresses only, and the books H-J Fritze "Suhl, Heimat der B�chsemacher" + W.B. Dixon "European Sporting Rifle Cartridges", I have put together some additional information or remarks on the subjects under discussion.
The eagle/J (in fact a German I standing for "Instandsetzung" = repair) indicates the gun was proofed as rebarreled February 1945. The 1940 proof law required each gun to be clearly marked with the cartridge name. This is still not done. The bottom of the barrel lumps is still unengraved. No quality gun would have left a Suhl shop with such blank spaces. The rifle was never mounted with a scope, even then a "must" on a flat-shooting stalking rifle. As US forces occupied Suhl on April 3, 1945, I think the rifle was "liberated" then from a shop in Suhl, before the Russians took over Suhl on July 3, 1945. The US forces prepared a document dated April 13, 1945, listing the Suhl guntrade then in business: 23 "factories", among them Gebr�der Heym at Schlageterstr. 53 and F.W. Heym at Schillingstr. 7 and Mauerstr.3, 28 independent gunmakers, 10 dealers or agencies, 4 barrelmakers, two of them Kelbers, Louis at Tr�benbachstr.1 and Wilhelm at Beyersgrund 3. They did not list the several hundred outworkers like engravers, stockmakers or finishers then still working for the gunmakers. On October 25, 1945 Gebr�der Heym are again mentioned as one of the gunmakers producing shotguns (only) for the Soviet Union. According to Flintenkalle , who lists no less than 59 Heym's in the German guntrade, writes "Gebr�der Heym", Judithstr.53, street renamed by the Nazis Schlageterstr.53, owned at first by Richard and Emil, later by Richard and Bruno Heym, was founded in 1913. Gebr.Heym at least made the original rifle, who did the rebarrel job remains a mystery.
According to Dixon in 1942 DWM assigned case number 605 to the 7x75R and produced a first lot of 1000 cartridges. So an avid experimenter may have ordered the rebarrel job in the 1940s, but WW2 ended before the job was completed.
By now I got wiser on that "L" or "Z", resembling the symbol for the British pound sterling: This mark was used by the Gebr�der Kelber barrelmaking company, founded by Louis Kelber in 1894, owned then by Louis, Robert and Wilhelm Kelber. They used either this L stamp or a LK. In 1927 the "Gebr. Kelber" company was dissolved, but as noted above both Louis and Wilhelm Kelber started again on their own, Louis using the "LK" stamp and Wilhelm the well-known "WK". Who, one or both?, for which orders?, continued to use the "GB pound" stamp? Wilhelm at least is known as a rifling specialist, while Louis also made barrel ribs as a side business.