The Saloon Rifle

Owen Guns acquired this piece from a farmer who sought to trade it for an Adler lever action shotgun. When we received it you couldn’t make out the gold inlay because it was so dirty. It now sits in pride of place near our other target rifles. It was made in Vienna Austria and has the name K.Kalina scribed on it. This is a “one off”, handmade, custom rifle and it is possible that “K.Kalina” was the maker. The barrel itself is very short it is but only the length of the octagonal end of the barrel, which is 14cm long.

The Zimmerstutzen was the ancestor of the 10-meter target [air] rifle and extends back to at least 1850. Zimmerstutzen is the rough translation of “parlor rifle” or “Saloon Rifle”. The first zimmer was powered by a percussion cap that propelled a small lead ball through a short rifled barrel. It comes in the nominal caliber 4mm, but in fact there are over 25 obsolete calibers that range from 4mm to 5.55mm, in half-milimeter increments.