please pardon my relative ignorance, but exactly what is a "schimmel" rifle, its a new term to me?
Some of the resident Pa. Dutch experts can help with the actual meaning of he word. My understanding is that it refers to mold or mildew and the Pa. dutch use the term to refer to anything "Not Pretty" or something you might not want to show off. Wayne? Jim Correll? Any Help?
As used in reference to a gun , it means plain or not embellished. A schimmel in Pa. is a poor boy or a barn gun elsewhere. Most of the originals you see will be from Berks or Lehigh area. They are actually rather rare likely due to survival rates but they are very rare outside of those areas. They are usually limited to a trigger guard of some sort as far as furniture goes. They are all about lines and architecture from a contemporary builders stand point.
About 15 years ago Chuck Dixon was going to do a book on the Schimmels and their relationship to the area around his shop. I seem to recall that Tom Ames was going to help in this project. Last time I mentioned it to Chuck he had given up on the idea of a book.
The term schimmel can be translated to a number of things. One translation is that of, "man with greay or white hair". But the common useage was "mildew".
Chuck used to talk about the Schimmels and often described them simply as barn guns. They were simply tools rather than works of art as is seen in the highly decorated rifles.
Today we tend to over do a schimmel rifle. I built mine in 1984, copying one that Chuck had hanging on the wall behind the counter. I used a budget grade of curly maple when all those in his collected are simply straight grain wood.
He had one up there that was real cute. Stocked in cherry where insects had been at the wood before it was made into a stock. Several "worm holes" ran down the stock where in shaping the stock half of the hole had been cut away.
Chuck explains that someone would order a gun from a gunsmith. The schimmel was the bottom price. Add fancy wood and pay more. Add some furniture and pay even more.
When you look at original longrifles from this area you have the bottom price schimmel as a work gun around the farm. Then you had the really fancy ones that would draw a crowd at the local militia shoot. The militia gatherings were sort of the gun clubs of their day. Fancy rifles got a lot of attention. Nobody would look twice at a schimmel and probably laugh at it.
It is unfortunate that Chuck decided not to publish a book on the schimmels that have gone through his hands.
Bill K.
