Bob,
The Luft brothers were Carl and Harry and I had the good fortune to meet them in 1976 when at Fairchild AFB for altitude chamber recertification.
Jay Frazier, an Alaskan friend, thought I might like to meet them when I was in Spokane and he set up the introduction. Carl had swaged some .375 bullets to .366” for the 9.3x74R and Jay asked me to bring them back. At the time 9.3 bullets were not common and Carl thought the Speers were too fragile to be of practical use.
Here are two photos that Carl sent me after I purchased one of their Borchardts that Harry had made. Harry was the gunmaker of the duo and to my knowledge Carl did no gunsmithing. As you can see they were not young men when these were taken, they were bachelors and I think this contributed to their longevity, as well as a big gun collection and what seemed a general contentedness with life.
Carl and Harry
Harry
When I visited them they had maybe six or seven Harry Luft Borchardts in a rack and all had extensive modifications. Mine has an octagon barrel with a full length top rib which is nicely matted. It has a beautifully reshaped lever, tang safety, a four cartridge butt trap and an early Voigtlander Panskopar 31/2 to 6x variable scope in levered quick release mounts made by Harry. Carl said that this is the only variable scope of this age that they had ever seen. Continental guns were a speciality for them. It is a 9.3x74R and I took a bison with it in 1991 near Delta Junction, Alaska.
I saw a Luft Borchardt on Guns International about 10 years ago and contacted the seller to see if they knew anything about the Lufts. He wasn’t much interested but the photos of the rifle showed most of the same features as mine but it had a Monte Carlo cheek piece. I think this was one of the last of the rifles that Harry built in 1983.
The first double rifle I had seen built on a shotgun action was Harry’s. It was a .45-70. They had a number of Heeren rifles also the likes of which that I had never seen before.
One of the photos shows a nice collection of Native American tools and spear and arrow heads. These were collected on the ranch along the Columbia River.
Interestingly, Harry did stock work but did no checkering. Jay moved to Spokane before coming to Alaska so that he could be near Al Biesen and learn as much about gunmaking as he could from him. This is how he met Carl and Harry. All of the Luft Borchardts on hand during that time were checkered by Jay.
I learned a bit of their history from them and some from Jay. They were born in Eastern Washington and their dad had a ranch on the Columbia River and also owned a theater(s) in Spokane. I have another photo of a meat rack in a camp about 100 miles north of Spokane with a number of large white tailed deer. Ironically, this is where the Air Force conducted its basic survival school and I was there in 1971 after graduating from navigator school. We spent three days in a simulated POW camp, mostly alone in a very small box and then we were put out to fend for ourselves for another three days in the woods. It was a relief, the country was beautiful and I can see in retrospect why they had a hunting camp there.
I corresponded with Carl for some time and still have the letters. Harry went to a nursing home at some point and shortly after that Carl starting disposing of the many guns and other things they had collected. I believe Harry was 93 when he died and Carl some years later. Carl had been slowly losing his vision and was blind when he died. I used 24 and then 36 point fonts on the computer in letters before he could no longer read. He wrote with a thick-nibbed felt tip marker so that he could see what he was writing.
Michael knew some of the Luft history and had handled guns made my Harry. We had a Borchardt day some time ago and he admired the work in Harry’s rifle
If there is any interest in the contents of the letters related to guns and shooting I’ll go through them and sort some of it out to post.
Dennis
