Reader Forum

German Shotgun I need to find a schematic for a 12 gauge Hege Waffen "Victoria" double barrel shotgun from West Germany. A customer had some one work on this before and now it will not cock, the safety won’t move, and the trigger hinge pin is bent. My customer is worried that I have not fixed his "expensive German shotgun." When he brought it in I started to disassemble it and saw that it had been looked at by someone else and assembled incorrectly.

However, it appears very different from the American doubles that I have worked on in the past. I called him back and advised him that I was emailing American Gunsmith folks to see if I could get some information and a schematic. I offered to put it back as-is and make a wall hanger but he said he would wait. Sorry you’ve taken on problems caused elsewhere. Unfortunately, we have no schematic and there may be none in existence.

We recommend you contact The German Gun Collectors Association germanguns.com) to pursue this matter further. All things considered and assuming the gun is repairable, the cost of returning it to firing condition will probably exceed its claimed original "expense." Walker Sight In In the July 2014 Reader Forum, Garry Moore asked about his Walker Colt that shoots about a foot high at 30 yards. I made a jig to soft solder shims on the top of Colt Clones to regulate elevation.

After all, the front sight is brazed or silver soldered on, so soft soldering a shim on will not loosen the front sight. I open up my rear sight notch with a 3/32" carbide end mill. A 5/64" might also work, but I found that to be a bit small for my eyes. Use a center finder to find the center of the original "V" notch.. Then, if I need to slightly correct for windage, I soft solder a shim on the appropriate side. Yes, it does work for 68 year old eyes.

Brownells has a jig for soldering on front sight ramps but I made my own. Walker clones area bit different. As far as the rear sight notch in the hammer is concerned, you can open that up with a three-corner file but, as the hammer is case-hardened, your file might be toast and maybe before you are done. However, this can be done. Elevating the front sight is easy. My buddy did that with his Walker clone using a metal repair and patching compound called Lab Metal.

Brownells has a number of products, such as Steel Bed or even Acraglas gel. Check out KBCtools.com and look for Loctite Fixmaster Metal Magic Steel epoxy stick or Loctite Fixmaster Steel Putty. You want a gel, although a liquid can be used but not as easily. Obviously, after elevating the front sight you will need to color it. Black Magic Markers work. JJ Huro Brady, You can even use these materials to change windage, but just a bit.

If you open up your rear sight notch just a bit, you can add one of those products to whatever side you need to slightly correct for windage. As an aside, I got a .32-20 Colt clone from the same guy who has the Walker clone. He re-made the front sight with some sort of Acraglas-like epoxy and it has held up for many years, shooting to point of aim, something that .32-20 Colt clones do not usually do. Perhaps an American Gunsmith contributor will expand on this further. Thanks for this.

Contributors interested in expanding on this or other topics are encouraged to submit a query. Our Writer’s Guidelines are at American Gunsmith.wordpress. com/writers-guidelines Browning BAR I need a rubber butt plate to fit on a BAR, preferably one that doesn’t have to be fitted to look good. As with most of us old codgers, my fitting skills are no longer good enough to provide a client with an acceptable finished job on a plate that has to be ground, sliced, filed, etc.

I tried a pre-fitted Kick Eez but it didn’t fit worth a darn. I’d be embarrassed to even show it to my client. I reviewed all those in Brownells catalog and didn’t see one there that would do the job. I need a plate about 5-1/4" x 1-¾" and approximately 1/2" to 5/8" at midpoint, preferably in rubberized black. Ken When a member of our staff got to be an "old codger" he purchased a recoil pad larger than the butt end of the stock and stuck with Brownells catalog number 64.

On page 417, second column, he spotted the B&R Recoil Pad Fitting Jig (#610-100-000AE). He fastened the oversize pad temporarily to the stock and deeply scribed the outline of the stock on the pad including the pitch angle matching and aligning with the bottom of the stock. The B&R has two pieces. One is an adjustable triangular plate to which a recoil pad can be attached. The other is a universal support that attaches to the old codger’s disc sanding table.

After transferring the pad to the jig’s triangle, scribed side upwards, and the universal support to the table, he ground down the pad to just outside the scribed lines. This was followed by a change to a finer grit on his sanding disk and carefully removing more material from the pad until all sign of an objectionable gap between butt stock and pad was non-existent. This required removing the pad from the triangular plate and fit-checking a couple of times.

When the fit was right, he abandoned further machine work, wrapped the finest grit emery cloth Bill

original to its final WWII configuration, and not the result of "sporterizing." The cut down stock, of course, would be an entirely different matter. The "SSZZA4" mark: he could find around a trued-up block of wood and smoothed up the pad to eliminate any sanding scrapes. He finished off the pad by applying Armor All to its surface, then screwed it to the butt stock. With the B&R jig, any damage to the stock finish is eliminated as is the need for masking tape in an attempt to protect it.

The pad fitting/mounting operation gets completed in about 30 minutes and our gray-haired, super-seasoned senior citizen says the B&R could be the best 50 bucks he’s ever laid out for a shop tool. Renovating Sporterized M98 Mausers I very much enjoyed this article by Paul Mazan in the July 2014 issue. When I noted that one was a ’17 Danzig GEW with 23" barrel, I was reminded of a similar rifle in my own collection. My rifle, though, is in its WWII as-issued Kar 98k configuration.

Your rifle’s short barrel, as it has retained its military front sight, may in fact be another example of a WWI GEW 98 recycled into a KAR 98k for WWII. My rifle started life as a GEW 98 from Danzig in ’17, as so marked on the receiver. It apparently was ac- Reader Forum/Technical quired in some manner by the Polish Army after WWI and bears FB in an inverted triangle, indicating inspection and/or renovation at Fabryka Broni in Radom. Subsequently, it was captured by the German Army at the outset of WWII.

Because the Wehrmacht resented the formation of the Waffen-SS, it blocked SS authorities from ordering new small arms at the beginning of the war. This forced the Waffen-SS to be equipped with a dog’s breakfast of obsolescent, cast-off and otherwise non-standard (by Wehrmacht definition) arms. My GEW 98 (technically, a Polish Wz 29 by then) was thusly appropriated by the SS, sent to Steyr- Daimler-Puch, and turned into a KAR 98k.

There, a turned down bolt was installed, the GEW-length (about 30") barrel changed for a KAR-length (about 23") barrel, and KAR furniture installed. The validation for the SS connection is the "SSZZA4" mark of the Waffen-SS arms depot that accepted the updated arm. I would suggest removing the stock and looking for said mark on your rifle’s receiver or barrel. I would be curious to learn if your rifle is indeed a kissin’ cousin of mine. If so, the bolt and barrel are Assistance Dr. Walter J. Kuleck, Ph.

D [contact withheld] From Paul Mazan. Thank you so much for your kind words and I am delighted you enjoyed the article. The roads some of the equipment used in WWII took make for fascinating study. The Mauser used in the article unfortunately did not have the SS acceptance stamp nor the Polish markings, both of which I would have been very excited to find.

As you mentioned, this gun probably started life as a GEW and was converted to the 98K configuration between the wars and was then brought home to be converted into an economy sporter. As a point of interest I bought an original GEW barrel, sights, stock, and barrel bands and converted it back to its original WWI GEW configuration. I even did an article on it titled "Back in Uniform" that appeared in the March 2013 issue of Brownells Web Bench. I think you can still bring up the article on the Brownells website.

I found the history of your rifle fascinating. I am of Polish ancestry and very interested in Polish military arms. I have a small collection of Polish Mausers and a few Nazi Radoms, but have never been able to afford an Eagle.

I even did an article To submit a letter to the Reader Forum column or a technical question to the editors of American Gunsmith, address an email to [contact withheld] or post a letter to for Shotgun News on Polish Maus- American Gunsmith, 14439 NW Military Hwy, STE#108 PMB#410, San Antonio, TX 78231. ers ("Soldiers of a Lost Cause") in a February 2003 edition. AG