Room connection

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Zimmerstutzen rifle
Protect with the room nozzle when shooting

The room nozzle is a traditional weapon that was used for entertainment and sport in the last quarter of the 19th century. Even today competitions up to the German championship are held with the Zimmerstutzen. Today the shooting is in a standing position at a distance of 15 m. In Germany, the rules for shooting with the room nozzle are set out in the sports regulations of the German Shooting Association .

The room nozzle is also intended for shooting in closed rooms. During the cold season at the beginning of the 20th century, the wealthy shooter (who could afford a large-caliber sport rifle, a so-called fire nozzle) retired to the heated ballroom of his shooting house to train with the room nozzle for the next competition season. Anyone who could not afford a fire nozzle and was therefore not even accepted as a member of the club of wealthy riflemen was a member of a shooting club that (if at all) only had a system for shooting with the room nozzle. If this shooting range did not exist either, you would shoot in a restaurant in the next room or on the bowling alley. Even today there are shooting clubs that call themselves "Zimmerschützengesellschaft" or the like, even if they now have a modern shooting range . Sports shooting with the air rifle did not emerge until the 1950s, before that air rifles were considered (in the sense of the word) children's toys.

technology

From a technical point of view, a room socket is a rifle ( rifle ) with a rifled barrel , which, however, due to the type of ammunition (see below) is only between 15 cm and 30 cm long. This barrel is (in order to achieve a sufficient line of sight) placed in a carrier tube on which the front sighting device is also attached. Due to the low propulsion of the projectile, the barrel is no longer than necessary to stabilize its twist , so that the fired bullet is not slowed down more than necessary by the friction in the barrel.

In the case of early room nozzles, the short barrel is usually located in the front part of the carrier tube and is loaded by means of a swing-out flap, the so-called "loading spoon". The reason for this is, on the one hand, that fire nozzles with "shot out" (worn) barrels were converted into room nozzles by drilling out and soldering the small-caliber barrel, on the other hand the weapon should of course look and feel like a "real" rifle. The distance between the rear trigger mechanism and the barrel attached to the front end of the weapon was sometimes bridged by an approx. 50 cm long firing pin , which was located in the original barrel of the weapon (which now served as a carrier tube) or laterally outside. Later room nozzles are technically mostly largely identical to a small-bore rifle; the short barrel is at the rear end of the otherwise empty support tube. In the end, room nozzles were only produced in series at the company Anschütz in Ulm; this manufacturer has also stopped producing these weapons.

Ammunition and oil
Order of ammunition introduction
Shoot with the room nozzle

The ammunition usually consists of a loose lead round ball with a caliber of 4.3 mm to 4.65 mm, the exact caliber being indicated by an additional "number" stamped on the barrel (or rather the carrier tube). The ball "number 7" measures 4.3 mm; the ball "number 12" has a diameter of 4.55 mm (the reason for the variety of calibres is probably that the lead balls required were made in a ball tower and came in different sizes. The barrels were therefore made according to the ball supply, the maximum size e.g. in Bavaria but already limited to No. 14, 4.65 mm in 1878.). Shooting also includes a tiny rimfire case, but without powder charge, which is inserted into the barrel behind the bullet (there are also cases with a pressed-in bullet and shooters who push the bullets into the cases at home).

When the shot is fired, the bullet is driven through the barrel by the exploding priming mass alone, due to the lack of a powder charge. As a result, the shooting precision of a room nozzle is considerably worse than that of a modern match air rifle, because deviations are all the more pronounced with the tiny amount of propellant. Many a shooter therefore makes use of (sometimes mysterious) remedies to anoint the bullets in order to improve the shooting precision; oiling the bullets before firing is common practice. Finally, it is interesting that in the last 20 years the manufacturers of match rifles, air rifles and small bore rifles have taken up the idea of ​​the short barrel again, albeit for a different reason: the shorter the time the bullet is in the barrel, the less time the shooter has to shake the shot.

Legal position

Austria

In the Austrian Weapons Act , room nozzles are recorded separately and are classified as less dangerous. They are not assigned to any of the usual three weapon categories (A, B and C), but must still be kept safe. Room sockets and ammunition intended for room sockets are freely available in Austria from the age of 18.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. Circular 2006 on the Austrian Weapons Act 1996 (PDF; 835 kB) ( Memento from December 28, 2015 in the Internet Archive )

Web links