Old Sauer

[ArtS]

I recieved an old Sauer double the other day I just purchased. It had been listed on GB through several cycles with no bids. It is a hammer Cape Gun. The rifle looked pristine, and in person looks even better. As near as I can tell the finish is all original, the gun is tight and the barrels look like they have never been shot. Blued steel barrels and case colors are nice. The overall quality of the gun seemed better than the average Sauer of this agethat I have seen. The seller thought it was a 16 ga/ .577 Snider. Not my first guess but it was plausible. The gun was made in 1875-1876 which was only 3-4 years after the British dropped it as their military round and several British builders did build for it at the time. The seller had taken some rough measurements and his guess seemed reasonable. When it came, a Snider case fell down into the chanber. I tried a few things on hand and a 20 gauge case fit exactly, but needed to be trimmed to 2". I cast the throat and barrel which showed the fore to be about .615 and the grooves about .645. I posted to some of the German gun specialist people on DoubleGun and finally found that they made a series of chamberings at the time called Ball Rifles (With of course an unpronounceable German term). The chambering is likely the 20 bore x 40mm cartridge. Unlike most Cape guns, the barrels look like normal, equally sized shotgun barrels. In this case, the left barrel is a normal 16 gauge, and the right barrel is a 20 bore barrel that has been rifled to almost a 16 gauge depth. The full length rifled barrel differs from British Paradox style in that the right hand rifled barrel has a much thicker chamber and wall thickness under the grooves is much stronger than a typical Paradox style.

It turned out to be a really interesting piece in tremendous condition which I had never seen or heard of before.

I'll try and post a couple of pictures in the next day or so.

[ArtS]

I got sidetracked, but managed to get a few pictures and load some ammo and try some of it.

The gun appears well made and while only moderately engraved, it has nice wood and a lot of touches such as the platinum wedding bands and barrel script around the breeches. As said, the chambering is 16/65 and 20 bore X 40mm. The 20 gauge bore rifle case is loaded with a 399gr .646 round ball at about 1000 fps. Cases are brass 20 ga cut to 40mm. The load is simply 10 gr of Solo 1000, a BP sporting wad with the petals removed,a lubed round ball and a paradox crimp to the edge of the mouth. A very easy load to shoot. The 16 ga slug is a BP DGS slug with an attached wad and loaded to about 1100 fps at around 7500 psi. The slug weighs just short of an ounce. I haven't shot this load yet. A couple of 18 gauge cushion wads brought it up to the proper case mouth position. It, of course, will shoot about any mild 16 gauge shot load. The barrels are steel.

I can't get over the bore and mechanical condition of the gun. Finish is excellent except for acouple of light knicks in the blueing on the bottom of the right barrel. It is like it was stored in closets and attics in 1876, moved around and handled a little but never shot. The rifle caliber may have had something to do with that. Ammunition may only have been generally available for 25 or 30 yrs. Twist I estimate to be about 80-90", so pointy slugs are likely out.



It is ccertainly turning out to be interesting to play with.

[B. Dudley]

I have not seen a Sauer underlever before.

[ArtS]

Originally Posted by Brian Dudley

I have not seen a Sauer underlever before.

I had never really thought about it in those terms. I have owned a few German Drillings from the 20's that were underlever hammer guns. I believe they were Suhl guns if I remember. I Googled "Sauer underhammer" and came up with a goodly number of references and pictures, on the Sauer museum website. All the ones I found were hammer drillings and cape/combo guns. The others were underlever single shots like the Tell rifles made in the first third of the 20th century. I did not see any underlever shotguns at all.Maybe that is the dividing line. I saw a list of Sauer models made in the early 20th century and it was lengthy. Maybe the underlevers they sold were limited to rifled firearms like my Cape gun.

[6pt-Sika]

For future reference I saw a guy is selling does to do the crimping like you have on the brass cases around the punkin balls . https://www.gunsinternational.com/gu...n_id=101354472

[ArtS]

I bought one from him on ebay. He sells there, GI and a couple of gun boards. It works nice, but he markets them for both gauge and length combinations. After I bought his, I ordered a barss crimp starter from BP at about 25% of the cost. I did the 16 gauge slug load with it and it seemed to work well. Just set it on the top and tap till you get the crimp. I am of the firm opinion that minimal is best when crimping the brass. WIth a tight ball or slug, a very slight ring of dimples is allyou need.