Not as classic, but…

…bigger calibre 🙂
I refer to my inheritance (see below) as opposed to Kim du Toit’s recent acquisition.



click for larger view


This baby is an 8mm Model 98k made by J.P. Sauer & Sohn, Suhl. We think it is 1944 vintage. It’s got a muzzle velocity that would curl your hair after it parted it (loads test variously from 2300 to 3100 fps at 15′). Dad picked it up on a French battlefield in 1944 or ’45 and tore it down and mailed it home. (Luckily; otherwise he would have lost it with all his other souvenirs when someone stole all his things out of his tent after the war was over.) When he got home in ’46 he had the original stock replaced — I seem to recall him telling me that the original stock was “a piece of shit” — and a sport sight installed (see the pics). The new stock also has a rubber cushion that the original lacked. I can vouch for the fact that this weapon needs it…
The real problem is finding a range to shoot this thing at. I think the NRA range near here has sufficient backstop to handle it but I’m not sure. As far as I know the gun hasn’t been fired since I was a tad. We used to take our guns up to my Uncle Jack’s place in Peru, Indiana at Christmas time. Uncle Jack’s family lived at the time on the edge of a big honking gravel pit (he worked for the company that mined the pit) and we’d stand in his driveway and shoot across the pit to the opposite wall. Just to shake the dust out of the barrels, mind you.
Now there’s something you wouldn’t be allowed to do in the civilized State of Indiana these days. (For one thing we probably were less than 200 feet from the highway, albeit we were firing away from it.)