This weekend the gf and I went to her moms house. Dad passed away about 3 years ago. Dad was retired AF, retired civil servant and hunter shooter. Oh yeah, and he hoarded stuff. Like powder and cast lead bullets, shotgun reloading stuff like stores have never had. The story mom gives is that he would lose things and then go to town and buy another...like 20 plus pairs of pliers.
So for the shotgun stuff he had wads, 100 plus pounds of lead shot, and about 20 pounds of powder. And cases, I'm not kidding when I say cases, of loaded shotgun shells, guesstimate those at 10 cases of loaded shells. 38 special/357 mag reloading stuff...I brought home over 100 pounds of commercially made cast lead bullets for this. I left 1300 loaded rounds of loaded 38 special ammo. I paid her what I thought was a fair price for this stuff, mom thinks I over paid, she wanted to give me more.
Then the surprises came out of the gun case. A working but well used 1894 Win lever action in 30-30, several Italian shotguns, some old remy 22's and a clean Carl Gusthof 1917 Mauser made in Gstaad Switzerland. Uhh what? A what thats how clean? Mom says this one is broken. I popped the bolt out and check for ammo/obstructions in the barrel and everythings good. Some minor scratches and the blueing is worn off but this thing looks good. Check the safety and the trigger and it looks great and operates smooth. Nothing broken here.
So we go back down stairs and are sitting around the kitchen table when moms says can I legally sell a gun. Yes I can but I don't have an FFL. Then she says I have one more gun to show you. But I believe its stolen...and its been in the family for a long time. WTF is all I could think. So back upstairs we go and out of the bedside table comes this weird shape in a wooden holster with a leather holster over it. I can see the handle of a pistol sticking out of a cutout in the big end. So I open it up and out comes a german pistol. I know its german but am unsure of what it is exactly. It doesn't have the toggle link on top like a luger. It has Walther stamped on the side. But someone somewhere has taken a milling machine with an end mill and done some serious material removal on both sides. But they left the proof stamps and serial numbers alone. and there are numbers stamped in several places on this thing and they all match.
An hour of searching on google for the right image and this thing is a walther 9mm broomhandle pistol with the long barrel. Mom says its stolen because my dad took it of a german POW while he was incarcerated in WY during the war. What? Dad was a prison guard right? Nope, a farmer. It was late and I really wasn't keeping up here. One more time how did dad get this? Well it turns out that prisoners who weren't likely to escape were ummmm farmed out to local farmers for laborers. And in some cases just lived with the farmer instead of going back to a makeshift prison camp every night. So dad found the gun, somehow, and confiscated it because the prisoner never should have had it in the first place.
So to the best of my knowledge. mom has a broomhandle walther that hasn't been fired since WWII and it passed my limited knowledge of its function tests.
I could never have predicted this weekend 8) ;D
So for the shotgun stuff he had wads, 100 plus pounds of lead shot, and about 20 pounds of powder. And cases, I'm not kidding when I say cases, of loaded shotgun shells, guesstimate those at 10 cases of loaded shells. 38 special/357 mag reloading stuff...I brought home over 100 pounds of commercially made cast lead bullets for this. I left 1300 loaded rounds of loaded 38 special ammo. I paid her what I thought was a fair price for this stuff, mom thinks I over paid, she wanted to give me more.
Then the surprises came out of the gun case. A working but well used 1894 Win lever action in 30-30, several Italian shotguns, some old remy 22's and a clean Carl Gusthof 1917 Mauser made in Gstaad Switzerland. Uhh what? A what thats how clean? Mom says this one is broken. I popped the bolt out and check for ammo/obstructions in the barrel and everythings good. Some minor scratches and the blueing is worn off but this thing looks good. Check the safety and the trigger and it looks great and operates smooth. Nothing broken here.
So we go back down stairs and are sitting around the kitchen table when moms says can I legally sell a gun. Yes I can but I don't have an FFL. Then she says I have one more gun to show you. But I believe its stolen...and its been in the family for a long time. WTF is all I could think. So back upstairs we go and out of the bedside table comes this weird shape in a wooden holster with a leather holster over it. I can see the handle of a pistol sticking out of a cutout in the big end. So I open it up and out comes a german pistol. I know its german but am unsure of what it is exactly. It doesn't have the toggle link on top like a luger. It has Walther stamped on the side. But someone somewhere has taken a milling machine with an end mill and done some serious material removal on both sides. But they left the proof stamps and serial numbers alone. and there are numbers stamped in several places on this thing and they all match.
An hour of searching on google for the right image and this thing is a walther 9mm broomhandle pistol with the long barrel. Mom says its stolen because my dad took it of a german POW while he was incarcerated in WY during the war. What? Dad was a prison guard right? Nope, a farmer. It was late and I really wasn't keeping up here. One more time how did dad get this? Well it turns out that prisoners who weren't likely to escape were ummmm farmed out to local farmers for laborers. And in some cases just lived with the farmer instead of going back to a makeshift prison camp every night. So dad found the gun, somehow, and confiscated it because the prisoner never should have had it in the first place.
So to the best of my knowledge. mom has a broomhandle walther that hasn't been fired since WWII and it passed my limited knowledge of its function tests.
I could never have predicted this weekend 8) ;D
