| My Hans Larsen collection |
| I've been a gun collector for more than 40 years, most of this time I have been concentrating on Danish/Norwegian and Norwegian long-guns, later also edged weapons and pistols, see my main collection page. Around the turn of the millennium, I was given a yearbook covering Drammen Museum 1967-1973. Most of the content covered a gunsmith from Drammen - Hans Larsen. Mr. Larsen must really have been a fascinating and creative man, being in the right position at the right time. Hans Larsen held more than 60 patents for getting a bullet as fast and straight out of a gun as possible, some of them also covering different ways of getting the bullet in to the gun. I already owned a couple of really beautiful Larsen rifles and the reading made me want more - more information and more guns! If you want to read more about Mr. Hans Larsen, his different operations and his designs, you find more information here. ?On this and the following page you will find pictures and short descriptions of the different Larsen's in my collection. |
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| Most of my Larsen collection is located in our kitchen (I am one of the lucky guys with a positive wife). The first picture showes from the left: Larsens 5-shot percussion revolver rifle from about 1860 with a mechanism more complex than an average Rolls Royce automobil! Some kind of lever for loading evidently was the big thing in Norway the last 50 years of the 1800's. All quality rifles needed a lever. So did this revolver rifle. Turn the lever 360 degrees and all you have to do is pull thre trigger for the nest shot! Breech loaded chamber loaders was the other big thing in the 1850's and '60's, preferably of course with a lever. This Larsen lever-actioned chamber loader is also from around 1860. The third big thing was to combine the lever-action with a falling block cartridge rifle. Rifle # 3 is a very early Larsen tennstempel rifle, probably from the mid 1860's The next is a rather "cheap" Larsen Remington, not much TL&C went into designing this one - but still, it is a Larsen! The rifle on the far right is a jewel of a tennstempel rifle. Beautifull carvings and wonderfull workmanship. This is market Hagen, but is probably really a Larsen at his best. |
| The tennstempel rifle on the far left of the second picture is a beautifully carved rifle market Larsen. A truely well made halfstocked little masterpiece. The second rifle on this picture does not really belong here at all, it is a Hagen that was not made by Larsen. The two remaining rifles with bolt actions in the middle of this picture really are weird ones. They were produced by Larsen, using the Schou's patent for bolt action. The left one is a target rifle - skiveskytningsgevær - the right hand one a hunting rifle. I have no problem seeing why Schou's patent never caught on, not only was it lacking the lever, it also was of poor design. The last rifle on this picture is a Hagen Hercules, again probably made at Hans Larsens Belgium gun works in Liege. These really were sold "by the thousands" to Norwegian "skytterlag".. Please find more different Larsens on the next page. |
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| The Larsen percussion revolver rifle is so complex in design and mechanics that one really would believe it to be German! By pulling the lever upwards, the hammer is cocked, the cylindre retracks some 3-4 mm away from the barrel and is turned 72 degrees. When turning the lever futher - a full 360 degrees, the cylindre is moved forwards again and the chamber to be fired is "sealed" against the barrel. How to load the rifle? No problem, you don't even need a screwdriver. The plate in front of the cylindre is hinged and can be pulled forwards. You muzzle load one and one chamber. It's just as the Henry from the periode: You load it on Sundays and shoot all week - ok, here you only shoot on Mondays and Tuedays. There were probably only made a total of at most fourteen of these rifles + three prototypes. The one on the picture is possibly the very last one to be made. If you look carefully at the top picture, you'll see that the rifle is fitted with a bayonet lug. Well, I don't think you could fit a bayonet on it - half the lug is covered by wood.... The idea was to receive a refund from the state as it then "could be used against the Swedes". If it had been, I'm afraid Norway might still have been in a union with Sweden.... |
| Chamber loaded breech loaders were the Norwegian armed forces main weapon whilst most other armies still were concidering rebuilding their flintlocks to percussion. Larsen was a bit late when designing this rifle somewhere round 1860 and these are (also) rather scarce. |
| Hans Larsen is most famous for two things, his accuracy in shooting and his tennstempel rifles. This is one of the really nice ones, but it is actually a Larsen produced rifle sold through Hagen and marked as a Hagen (Hagen might have done the woodwork). Extremely well fitted, lovely work and probably a magnificent shooter in its day. There still are rather many tennstempel rifles in Norway, but the really good ones are getting difficult to find. A number of Norwegian gunsmiths sold the tennstempel rifles. From the top of my head: Larsen, Eriksen, Hesselberg, Hagen, Torgersen and probably many more. As far as I can understand, just about all of them were made by Hans Larsens operation in Liege, Belgium. |
| February 5. 2005 |