Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Single Shots 11.7mm Danish Rolling Block at the Range!

Spent a little time with the 11.7mm Danish Rolling Block today, at the range! Dad bought this rifle shortly after WWII, and fired one round through it. He and I have talked of shooting this rifle for years, and a few years ago we unraveled a few of the "secrets" of this long-obsolete cartridge and he assembled some ammo on .45-70 cases, shortened a bit. He never did get it out to try the new ammo at the range, but is real happy that I made it happen today. Only fired 4 shots through it, and only at 10 yards. Mild recoil, pleasant sounding dull "boom" (like a .45-70 Trapdoor load). Trigger pull is about 963 pounds... Maybe more... Danes must have strong trigger fingers! Hey, I'm 1/4 Dane myself, no problem!









Wow! This was so much fun! I'm going to stretch the range next time, out to 50 or 100 yards, and start doing some handloading for it myself. Todays loads used a .459" 405 grain flat-nose cast lead bullet. I don't know what Dad's powder charge was. It was very mild though. As is appropriate for the ol' beast.

Regards, Guy

Nice.

Outstanding! That looks like a fine piece!

You should hook up with Crossfireoops. He has a bit of knowledge about those rifles and that caliber.

Ed

Thanks Ed, I'll look him up.

I've got a lot of learning to do here...

Guy

Nice looking rifle!

Major cool points there!

Thanks! I surely do like the ol' Warhorse!

Those old rollers are cool. And they pretty much all have heavy triggers, in my limited experience. But the triggers aren't creepy, so you can actually shoot them pretty well once you get used to it.

I'm guessing that a Danish soldier who grew up milking cows and toted one of those rifles around all day had pretty strong hands. Light trigger not needed, or even much wanted, since the rifle had no safety once cocked.

The SPORTING Nordic rollers are a different cup of tea, as are the original American Domestic Sport and Target models.

Tuning a roller to a SAFE 2 1/2, 3 Lb. trigger pull is pretty standard here,....

One of the things that the original guns were up against was that ENORMOUS firing pin, needing to be driven like the wrath of God into some pretty weird and insensitive (at times) primers. The requirement for a Gonga Main spring is not condusive to fine tuning,...

The sporting Nordics will take one's breath away,....BEAUTIFUL, no nonsense hunting / stalking rifles.

GTC

Any ideas for reducing the trigger pull on this wonderful monster? The 963 pound pull is taxing even my enormous strength...

Thanks, Guy

A.) Do NOT let anybody change the sear notch or sear geometry,EVER. If they show you a bisected rolling block action that they use as a "tuning fixture",...well, maybe.
If the hammer's full cock notch has been hacked on by bubba and his trusty Dremel,....the half cock notch is likely battering the hammer sear, and decelerating the hammer fall.

B.) The "Pull" is influenced to a lesser degree by the trigger spring, and the lever lock spring. I'm putting this here so's to advise that they be left alone, 'til later in the job.

C.) The PRIMARY factor that must be looked at is Mainspring tension, and trigger sear to hammer sear notch DEPTH of engagement. With a snap cap in place, or a piece of leather fitted into the firing pin recess as a cushion,....slowly break the trigger, and while pulling it out of the overly deep military sear notch,...take careful note of the way that the trigger sear is actually LIFTING the hammer, e.g. moving it backward,....just prior to finally allowing the hammer to drop. This indicates CORRECT trigger sear / sear notch geometry. Having established that the foregoing is indeed what's taking place we can than move on to how to lighten, and slick up the situation,....simply, safely and non invasively.

GTC

Thanks for the great input!

I'm not ready to plunge into tearing this thing apart and modifying it at all yet. Just a fun range toy, and although this rifle has been in my family my entire 60 years, this year is the first time I've ever seen it fired. Feeling good about that!

I doubt it will ever be a high-use rifle, so am content to just keep it clean & ready, and load a little ammo for it. Take it to the range now and again. Who knows? Might talk myself into hunting with it someday!

GTC - thanks for sharing your knowledge - I'm just not in any kind of hurry to get this thing torn down and start working it over.

Regards, Guy

Great piece of history, enjoy her.

The field stripping of rolling block pattern rifles started a VERY long time ago, and was probably performed more often by complete illiterates, after a brief training session. It's not about "tearing down", by a long shot.
The removal of ONE screw is required.
Field stripping that thing, blowing it out with some compressed air, and dabbing a bit of good gun grease around with a Q-tip might cut the trigger pull in half.

Oh well,

GTC

Cool. Thanks!