doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Cuckoo Clock Drilling....

Seen yesterday at a tiny gunshop, a Will. Brenneke, Leipzig drilling, 16x16 over 9.3x72R. A real Cuckoo clock.
(I apologize for some of the closeups, perhaps my Macro function was not set correctly.)

What look like hammers cannot be manually cocked and do not strike anything, they just seem to be elaborate indicators.I imagine if one was used to a hammer drilling they may this might ease the conversion to hammerless?





There is a top tang slide switch behind the toplever, just like a normal safety, only marked "S" and when pushed forward pops up the "50" rear leaf sight, there is a second manual leaf for "150". I am not sure if it is also the barrel selector, the owner stated that this piece behind the top tang is the selector, it's pushed down and then forward where it will lock. He also said it didn't have a safety, I'm not sure, didn't want to play with it without snap caps.




No set trigger that I could see and I had no snap caps to confirm any of this. Nice engraving and cartridge trap, looks like a cappercaille on the plate.

As usual he thinks it's worth a fortune because last week he saw a drilling offered for sale for with lesser engraving and a high price....
















[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v323/hvpcno1/DGS%20BBS/P9030085.jpg[/img]

[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v323/hvpcno1/DGS%20BBS/P9030086.jpg[/img]

Yeah, I’d say a bit more complicated than a Cuckoo Clock drilling as Wilhelm Brenneke was firmly grounded in safety. Brenneke either witnessed a terrible accidental discharge on a hunting trip or had one himself as he had a least 4 safety features on his guns. The tab on the rear of the top tang is a grip safety & apparently they were in several locations on the top tang as well as in the comb of the stock. It should have the November 27th, 1896 patent number 94620 stamped on it. The tab would have to be fully compressed and upon compression it accomplishes at several safety functions: disengagement of trigger & scear as well as a hammer block and removes a bar(T) in the path of hammer-striker relationship. I think the compression tab may slide from a safe position to a fire position. So the other bar on the tang should be the shot and solid projectile selector. Another added safety feature is what looks to be hammers but are more or less cocking indicators that can be used to cock or uncock the drilling. Usually the hammers wear the D.R.P. patent number 95046 also from November 27th, 1896. This example with the Witten scattergun tubes, and Krupp rifled tube, is 1 rung lower than the top offering of the same with musselshell side frame reinforcement, which had a 1905 improvement involving 2 lumps on the tubeset which locked into the inner walls of the action. Also in 1905 ejectors are seen on Brenneke examples with push-buttons on each side of the forend. Sources give that number of Brenneke examples approached 400. His drillings were very expensive to manufacture and sources give that he had his Brenneke Selbstspanner Sicherheits Drilling, or self cocking safety drilling, made in a shop in Suhl that had Konrad Heym at the helm. On April 1st, 1895 Wilhelm Brenneke purchased a business in Leipzig from a fella named Reichard. Brenneke renamed the business as Wilhelm Brenneke, Gewehr und Geschoßfabrik or Gun and Projectile Company. Soon after the patent Brenneke opened the Suhl facility which I guess was nothing more than a storefront where component sourcing and sub-contracting occurred. The Suhl branch office was open for no more than 7 years. Brenneke was more involved with bullet construction and autos that making longarms.

Anyway regressing a bit to gain some personal info on Wilhelm Brenneke, which is difficult to come by or pin down, sources give that Wilhlem Brenneke was born on March 30th, 1865 in Leipzig. He may have been born there but at some point, according to his great-grandson Dr. Peter Mank, Wilhlem Brenneke was roaming around Hannover playing Robin Hood with his bow & arrow. It was here that Brenneke crossed paths with Scherping and there was an attempt by a Büchsenmacher, master gunsmith, Scherping, who noticed the raw talent of the lad, to bring Brenneke under the fold and get him on the path to being a master gunsmith. M4 might want to chime in here to give his thoughts but then again it might just add another layer to the Heinrich Scherping story. Unfortunately the track for a master gunsmith was not to be for a time and Brenneke traveled down the apprentice path for a metal worker as well as a builder of safes. Some time around 1883, duty for the Kaiser called and building on his experience in ship building in Hamburg, Brenneke served as a machinist on a torpedo boat in the Navy. After his obligation, Brenneke returned to Leipzig and believe it or not made a living peddling textbooks on his bicycle. He made enough money to set the stage for marriage, etc. Brenneke had 2 sons and twin daughters with the sons both being killed during WWI. Info is a little confusing but it seems one was killed in action and one in an auto accident. Later both daughters were fully involved in the business. He also lost a grandson to combat in Russia in WWII. Wilhelm Brenneke himself expired on April 11th, 1951.

The example in question is a pre-1910 example and doesn’t have the additional slots in the frame for the lumps so either this model didn’t have the feature or this example was made prior to 1905. There looks to be a "Crown" over "F"(Gothic) adjacent to the load data on the Witten scattergun tubes.

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse

Here's an image from a 1920s(I think) Brenneke catalogue of the Musselshell lockup and following are proofmark pics of Mark Baumgarten's Brenneke safety drilling with Poldi tubes. There's an article in GGCA publication No. 22(Summer 2004) detailing Mark's father and the receiver.


Anyone know what currency units the "Cr. 1000" might be?


Interesting that some function of the tube making was performed by Valentin Christoph Schilling on this Suhl made drilling. I wonder if ole Konrad Heym was still involved. The rifled tube at 65cm is a good deal shorter than the 72cm scattergun tubes.

Robert Schrader of Göttingen(founded firm 1885) had a patent on September 10, 1902 for drillings with rifled tubes of lengths 40 - 50cm and scattergun tubes near 72cm(I'd like to see the patent to see the actual range). Robert Schrader had several patents and his drillings were complex with odd features similar to Brenneke's. Baron von Münchhausen was a client of Robert Schrader's and was a fan of the 40-50cm rifled tube on a drilling. Schrader more than likely sourced the craftsmen of Suhl.






Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse

Cr. must be Crowns of some kind. Austrians introduced them in the 1890s but usually marked them K (Kronen), so maybe Swedish Crowns?

With kind regards,
Jani

I love it!




Cheers
Tinker

Thanks Jani and you may be correct. In the 1894 Swedish Bastman catalogue Sauer & Sohn's new hammerless with pattern welded tubes was "Kr. 200". So I guess 1000 Kr. for the complex mechanism would be within reason.

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse

With the 12 gram bullet weight, and considering that Wilhlem Brenneke worked with Ernst August Vom Hofe in the 1930s, I wonder if the Valentin Christoph Shilling Brenneke with a 65 cm rifled tube was chambered for the 9.2X74R Brenneke? Also does anyone happen to have a copy of the a 1960 Gun Digest which has an article on Wilhelm Brenneke by H. Jung & L.P. Davison?

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse

I'd guess that the stamp "POLDI ANTICORRO No. 280" is a steel type recipe, which was evolving at the time. It appears that Karl Wittgenstein's Poldi Hütte Kladno facilty(Krasna Poldi - Beautiful Poldi poem) in 1910 was the 1st to turn out stainless steel( Rostfreie Stähle ) and there were a couple of variants like AK(AnitKorro Stahl), AK1, AK2, AK3, etc. Poldi Anticorro contained 10% nickel was acid and corrision resistant to the point that it took 5 to 10 times the application of rust bluing for the finished product.

Baumgarten's Selbstspanner Sicherheits Drilling Patent Brennke took a great deal of effort which may have been a year or so in the making and it may have begun as early as 1910, the 1st year Poldi's Anticorro was produced. So the drilling had the latest and greatest steel type recipe at the time. There was nothing short about this drilling and the price reflected it.

Circa 1900 the Poldi Hammer hardness tested was developed and the following site has an interesting description:
http://www.alexdenouden.nl/08/poldi.htm



Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse

Evidently those sources giving that Brenneke was born in Leipzig are incorrect as thanks to Baumgarten's efforts of digging out the 1960 Gun Digest article, he confirms that Wilhelm Brenneke was indeed born in Hannover and the pieces fall into place. Also by age 13 Brenneke revealed his fascination with guns in that he had cobbled together some components to make a percussion longarm and had saved enough pennies to purchase a longarm, which he used to inflicted a lot of misery on the local rat population, chambered for one of the Teschner rimfire cartridges.
Also as a side note he too like Kreighoff with their Montage, had a small patented(D.R.G.M.) scope mount improvement termed the "Seitliche Fernrohrmontage System Brenneke", which I'm not positive on the correct translation. I don't know about ya'll but to me this story gets more interesting by the minute.


Polid Hütte's 7.18.1893 trademark
from http://www.poldi.cz/history/historie-rozsirene-1-3/?sess=wm3bc7ea48b2c92f1382519b497f89009da

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse

Seitliche Fernrohrmontage = Side Scope Mount

-Jani