Colts and 'Needle Guns'

[PJ Hardtack]

Just bought the latest 'Man At Arms' - Gun Collector magazine. Good articles on the Colt shoulder stock variations, well illustrated.

Another very detailed article on the Prussian 'Needle Guns'. It says that an unnamed European maker is producing a repro M/65 model! No mention of what the hell you are supposed to do about ammo .....

[pony express]

No mention of what the hell you are supposed to do about ammo .....

Strictly roll your own. On a positive note, it makes brass pickers unnecessary....

[Grenadier]

The latest word on the replica  Zündnadelgewehr is that they are going to only be prop model guns, non-firing. I am hoping this is not true, but it appears to be fact.

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[pony express]

Well, I guess that answers the ammo question....

[Niederlander]

I've always wondered, "What the h*** good is a non firing replica"?!!  What's the POINT?!!

[Pitspitr]

  They look cool hanging on a wall??

[Niederlander]

They look a lot cooler going "bang"!

[Grenadier]

A couple friends are putting together Franco-Prussian War impressions and have been following the replica news closely.

I am assuming since they are being produced in Europe, the reason behind making them non-firing is to make them easier to distrubute in countries that have tight regulations and to avoid any litigation that may arise if there is an accident.

[Pitspitr]

They look a lot cooler going "bang"!

Absolutely, but for instance I have three hanging on the wall to look cool. One is a toy that I bought for a foster grandson that I never got the chance to give him, one isn't safe to shoot any more and one is really just a collection of more or less broken parts that I was able to put together to hang on the wall. Where they are hanging it'd be tough to get them down and shoot them very often and I wouldn't want to put a valuable real gun there as they are in the sun room where anybody could see them. If I had, say a class III Thompson and liked the idea of having a Thompson hanging on my wall, I'd probably rather hang a $100 denix copy up than to hang up the $60,000 original. That's just me though.

Having said that I do only own 3 guns that I haven't shot. One is a Damascus barrel shotgun and the other 2 are guns that I haven't been able to find the parts needed to restore them to shootable condition.

I never much saw a reason to own a gun I wasn't going to shoot.

[Delmonico]

I won't tell you about someone who missed a real one about 20 some years ago, was $100, I was clear home and had to dig out a couple books before I realized it wasn't some old bolt gun missing a bolt head.   No it was gone when I got back.

[Grenadier]

They are still out there and not terribly hard to find once you start looking. Unfortunately they are getting expensive when you do find them, unless you are just luckly...or unlucky in Delmonico's situation