Combination gun - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

A combination gun is a break-action hunting

Hunting

Hunting is the practice of pursuing any living thing, usually wildlife, for food, recreation, or trade. In present-day use, the term refers to lawful hunting, as distinguished from poaching, which is the killing, trapping or capture of the hunted species contrary to applicable law...

firearm

Firearm

A firearm is a weapon that launches one, or many, projectile at high velocity through confined burning of a propellant. This subsonic burning process is technically known as deflagration, as opposed to supersonic combustion known as a detonation. In older firearms, the propellant was typically...

that comprises at least two barrels, a rifle

Rifle

A rifle is a firearm designed to be fired from the shoulder, with a barrel that has a helical groove or pattern of grooves cut into the barrel walls. The raised areas of the rifling are called "lands," which make contact with the projectile , imparting spin around an axis corresponding to the...

barrel and a shotgun

Shotgun

A shotgun is a firearm that is usually designed to be fired from the shoulder, which uses the energy of a fixed shell to fire a number of small spherical pellets called shot, or a solid projectile called a slug...

barrel, often but not always in an over and under configuration; side-by-side variations are known as cape guns. A refers to a combination gun that has three barrels. Very often, combination guns use flanged calibers, as rimless cartridges may be problematic to eject from a break-action weapon.

Use

Combination guns have a long history in Europe, dating back to the early days of cartridge firearms, and they are most popular in Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

, Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

and Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

. These guns are almost exclusively hunting arms. The advantage of having a single firearm that can fire both rifle and shotgun cartridges is that a single gun can be used to hunt a very wide variety of game, from deer

Deer

Deer are the ruminant mammals forming the family Cervidae. Species in the Cervidae family include white-tailed deer, elk, moose, red deer, reindeer, fallow deer, roe deer and chital. Male deer of all species and female reindeer grow and shed new antlers each year...

to game birds, and the shooter can choose the barrel appropriate for the target in seconds. The higher weight of the guns may be viewed as a disadvantage, especially for firing shot in situations where follow-through is required.

Firing mechanisms

The earliest combination guns were called swivel guns (not to be confused with the more widely known small cannon

Swivel gun

The term swivel gun usually refers to a small cannon, mounted on a swiveling stand or fork which allows a very wide arc of movement. Another type of firearm referred to as a swivel gun was an early flintlock combination gun with two barrels that rotated along their axes to allow the shooter to...

), which used a set of barrels designed to rotate to allow either the rifled or smoothbore barrel to line up with a flintlock

Flintlock

Flintlock is the general term for any firearm based on the flintlock mechanism. The term may also apply to the mechanism itself. Introduced at the beginning of the 17th century, the flintlock rapidly replaced earlier firearm-ignition technologies, such as the doglock, matchlock and wheellock...

mechanism. Modern combination guns tend to resemble double-barreled shotgun

Double-barreled shotgun

A double-barreled shotgun is a shotgun or combination gun with two parallel barrels, allowing two shots to be fired in quick succession.-Construction:...

s and double rifle

Double rifle

A double-barreled rifle or double rifle is a type of sporting rifle with two barrels instead of one, available in eitherside-by-side or over-and-under barrel configurations. Double rifles are one of the family of combination guns...

s, and are almost universally break open

Break open

A break-action firearm is one whose barrels are hinged, and rotate perpendicular to the bore axis to expose the breech and allow loading and unloading of ammunition. A separate operation may be required for the cocking of a hammer to fire the new round...

designs. Unlike double-barrelled shotguns and double rifles, where single selective or double triggers are used to allow rapid firing of both barrels, combination guns generally have a selector that allows the user to choose which barrel will fire. Drillings with two shotgun barrels and one rifle barrel may have two triggers, one for each shotgun barrel, and a selector that will allow one trigger to fire the rifle barrel. Vierlings generally have two triggers, and selectors to switch each between shotgun and rifle.

Combination guns

Combination guns are over/under designs, usually with a rifle barrel over a shotgun barrel. This arrangement allows a wider field of view than a side-by-side or shotgun on top arrangement, since the thinner rifle barrel blocks less of the shooter's vision. Iron sights

Iron sights

Iron sights are a system of shaped alignment markers used as a sighting device to assist in the aiming of a device such as a firearm, crossbow, or telescope, and exclude the use of optics as in telescopic sights or reflector sights...

are used for aiming the rifle, and the front sight alone is sufficient to point the shotgun. One of the better known combination guns is the Ithaca M6 Aircrew Survival Weapon

M6 Aircrew Survival Weapon

The M6 Air Crew Survival Weapon was a specially made firearm issued to the United States Air Force aircraft crews to help forage for food in the event of a plane crash....

and a civilian version Springfield Armory M6 Scout

Springfield Armory M6 Scout

The M6 Scout is a multipurpose firearm, combining rifle and shotgun. It has been in and out of commercial production several times since the late 1970s . The latest models were manufactured by Česká Zbrojovka Uhersky Brod and sold by Springfield Armory. Other variations of this firearm are the...

, an all-metal folding combination gun in .22 Hornet

.22 Hornet

The .22 Hornet is a low-end vermin, small-game and predator centerfire rifle cartridge. It is considerably more powerful than the .22 WMR and the .17 HMR, achieving higher velocity with a bullet twice the weight. The Hornet also differs very significantly from these in that it is not a rimfire...

over .410 bore

.410 bore

.410 bore, commonly misnamed the .410 gauge, is the smallest gauge of shotgun shell commonly available. It has similar base dimensions to the .45 Colt revolver cartridge, though the .410 is significantly longer, up to , allowing many single-shot firearms and some revolvers chambered in that...

Cape guns

A cape gun is a side-by-side version of a combination gun, and is typically Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

an. German

Germany

and Austria

Austria

n cape guns have the rifle barrel on the right side and it is fired by the front trigger. The front trigger is usually a set trigger as well. British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

versions of this firearm position the rifle barrel on the left. These were at one time popular in southern Africa where a wide variety of game could be encountered. A combination such as the .450-577

.577/450 Martini-Henry

The .577/450 Martini-Henry was a black powder, centerfire round used by the British and British Empire militaries prior to the adoption of the .303 calibre cartridge used in the Lee-Metford, Martini-Enfield, and Lee-Enfield series of rifles alongside the Nepalese Bira gun...

British service cartridge and a 12 gauge shotgun was common.

The German and Austrian versions are commonly chambered in 9.3x72mmR and 16-gauge, although they were chambered in a wide variety of rifle and shotgun cartridges.
They may be encountered in muzzleloading, pinfire, exposed hammer, and hammerless designs.

Drillings

Drillings, or "dreiling" (the German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

word "drei" means "three" so "dreiling" means triplet

Triplet

-Science:* A series of three nucleotide bases that form Genetic code* J-coupling as part of NMR spectroscopy* Opal in preparation to be a gemstone* Spin triplet in quantum mechanics — as in triplet oxygen, or simply triplet state in general....

) normally consists of two matching shotgun barrels and a rifle barrel , but may cover a much broader range of shapes and configurations:

Two matching rifle barrels and one shotgun barrel
Two rifle barrels of different calibers (typically one rimfire and one centerfire) and one shotgun barrel
Three matching shotgun barrels
Three matching rifle barrels

Since drillings were generally made by small manufacturers, each maker would pick whichever layout they preferred, or whatever layout the customer ordered. The most common layout was a side-by-side shotgun with a centerfire rifle barrel centered on the bottom. A similar arrangement of a side-by-side shotgun with a rifle barrel centered on top, generally a .22 caliber rimfire or .22 Hornet, was also fairly common.

Rarer were the drillings that used two rifle barrels and a single shotgun barrel. These were harder to make, since, like a double rifle, the rifle barrels must be very carefully regulated, that is, aligned during manufacture to shoot to the same point of aim at a given distance. This requires more precision than regulation of double-barrelled shotgun barrels, which are used at shorter ranges with wide patterns of shot where a small misalignment won't be significant. If the rifle barrels were the same caliber, then the three barrels were generally arranged in a triangle, both rifle barrels on top, or one rifle and the shotgun barrel on top (this being known as a cross-eyed drilling). If the rifle barrels differed in caliber, generally the layout would be an over/under using the shotgun and a centerfire rifle barrel, with a rimfire rifle barrel mounted between and to one side. These configuration, with shotgun/centerfire/rimfire barrels, are the most desirable configuration for modern collectors.

The triple barrel shotgun is the rarest configuration, and arguably is an odd variant of a double-barrelled shotgun rather than a drilling, since it lacks the rifle/shotgun combination that all the other drillings have. The triple barrel shotgun is generally laid out like a side-by-side shotgun, with the third barrel centered and below the other two. The barrels are all the same gauge

Gauge (bore diameter)

The gauge of a firearm is a unit of measurement used to express the diameter of the barrel. Gauge is determined from the weight of a solid sphere of lead that will fit the bore of the firearm, and is expressed as the multiplicative inverse of the sphere's weight as a fraction of a pound . Thus...

.

An unusual but notable drilling is the TP-82

TP-82

The TP-82 pistol is a triple-barreled Soviet firearm that was carried by cosmonauts on space missions.It is intended as a survival aid to be used after landings and before recovery in the Siberian wilderness. The upper two smoothbore barrels use 12.5×70 mm ammunition, or approximately 40...

, or space gun, is a short-barrelled drilling pistol consisting of two 12.5 mm smoothbore barrels over a 5.45 mm rifled barrel, with a detachable shoulder stock. It was developed by the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

as a survival gun for their space program, and was in use from 1987 to 2007, when it was retired due to the fact that the unique ammunition it uses had degraded too far to be reliable.

Calibers/gauges

Few modern makers make high quality combination guns for the retail market; most are simple, spartan models designed as survival guns or youth models. Drillings are even rarer, and are almost invariably custom made to order. If ordering a custom model, the layout and gauge/caliber choices are up to the customer, so it is difficult to make generalizations about them. The used market shows some strong preferences, however; the side-by-side shotguns with single rifle barrel is the most common type, and therefore the least expensive. The single shotgun barrel with different caliber rifle barrels is the most desirable, and will bring double the price, even more if one of the rifle barrels is .22 Long Rifle

.22 Long Rifle

The .22 Long Rifle rimfire cartridge is a long established variety of ammunition, and in terms of units sold is still by far the most common in the world today. The cartridge is often referred to simply as .22 LR and various rifles, pistols, revolvers, and even some smoothbore shotguns have...

.

Since these guns tend to be break-open designs, they work best when chambered in rimmed cartridges. Rimmed case rounds like the; .22 Hornet, .30-30 Winchester

.30-30 Winchester

The .30-30 Winchester/.30 Winchester Center Fire/7.62×51mmR cartridge was first marketed in early 1895 for the Winchester Model 1894 lever-action rifle. The .30-30 , as it is most commonly known, was the USA's first small-bore, sporting rifle cartridge designed for smokeless powder. The .30-30 is...

, 7 x 65 R, 8 x 57 IR(S) and 9.3 x 72 R are all common choices, with 7X57R and 8X57 IRS being the most common, as well as the heavier 9.3X74R, a round used commonly in Africa by European hunters. Gauges tend to be large, 16 or 12 being most common. Since drillings and vierlings are primarily European, American calibers are rarer and, at least in the American market, more desirable and expensive. 20 gauge drillings and vierlings also command a premium due to the relative rarity compared to the larger gauges. Many pre World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

European guns are chambered for 65mm or 2 9/16" shotgun shells.

Combination guns show a fairly wide range of calibers and gauges; Savage Arms

Savage Arms

The Savage Arms Company is a firearms manufacturing company based in Westfield, Massachusetts, with a division located in Canada. The company makes a variety of rimfire and centerfire rifles, as well as marketing the Stevens single-shot rifles and shotguns...

, for example, made models from .22 LR over .410 bore shotgun up to .30-30 Winchester

.30-30 Winchester

over 3" 12 gauge

Gauge (bore diameter)

magnum (the Savage Model 24). The Springfield Armory survival guns are typically .22 long rifle or .22 Hornet over .410 bore.

It is not uncommon to find combination guns paired with sub-caliber inserts

Caliber conversion sleeve

A caliber conversion sleeve is a device which can be used to non-permanently alter a firearm to allow it to fire a different cartridge than the one it was originally designed to...

for the shotgun barrels. These inserts, usually 9 to 11 inches in length, slip inside the shotgun barrel(s) and chamber rimfire cartridges such as .22 LR or .22 Magnum. These further increase the flexibility of the guns, and will add considerably to the value.

External links

HEYM, modern maker of combination guns, drillings, and vierlings
Double Rifles Reference site for Double Rifles and Drillings. Great photos, descriptions and price estimates at the time of past auctions.

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.