Diamondtreo
US Veteran
WINCHESTER MODEL1873 LEVER ACTION RIFLE ENGRAVED AND GOLD INLAID BY EMMA ACHLEITHNER.
Emma Achleithner, the lady who engraved this 1873 Winchester taught me the basics of engraving. Her husband, Frantz, taught me gunsmithing. Both of these wonderful individuals taught at OIT while I was there in the late 1970's. Frantz took a leaf off an old truck spring home & two weeks later brought in a complete double set trigger assembly for a double barrel shotgun that he had created using only hand tools. He annealed the spring in Emma's kitchen oven, laid out the design & hand drilled the periphery of the parts before sawing the outlines with a hacksaw, then finishing each part with a hand file. He disdained the use of machinery when the job could be done by hand. It was a beautiful creation, with the finish slow rust blueing and wheat straw coloring on the triggers and springs.
We would hang around after hours & talk with Frantz, listening while he shared his life experiences. He had trained at Ferlach, Austria as a master gunsmith, then apprenticed to become a master tool & die maker. His first year as apprentice consisted of sweeping and wiping machinery & hand filing a lump of steel into a perfect square. Next, he was instructed to hand file the square into a sphere, and with that accomplished, so was his time as an apprentice.
He was inducted into the Werschmant after the Anschluss & ended up on Eastern front where he was captured at Stalingrad. Because he was an Austrian, he received better treatment & eventually was released to return home. He talked of walking for two months to make the journey. After the war, he made his living by scrounging old tools that had been lost in burned out factories & refurbishing them for his own use, while building sub-caliber rifles for the farmers to use for rodent control as all firearms had been confiscated by the Allies.
Both Frantz & Emma have passed, but their work is still around & a few of us remember some of the tricks he taught. My favorite is: "Ven you need to drill a hard receiver, like an Eddystone, find the cheapest carbon drill you have, make sure it is sharp and then heat it up red hot. Hold it vith a pliers & shtick it in a red onion - the sugar vill carbonize & hardface the drill & you can drill through glass vith it! (it also makes your shop smell vonderful)"
Emma Achleithner, the lady who engraved this 1873 Winchester taught me the basics of engraving. Her husband, Frantz, taught me gunsmithing. Both of these wonderful individuals taught at OIT while I was there in the late 1970's. Frantz took a leaf off an old truck spring home & two weeks later brought in a complete double set trigger assembly for a double barrel shotgun that he had created using only hand tools. He annealed the spring in Emma's kitchen oven, laid out the design & hand drilled the periphery of the parts before sawing the outlines with a hacksaw, then finishing each part with a hand file. He disdained the use of machinery when the job could be done by hand. It was a beautiful creation, with the finish slow rust blueing and wheat straw coloring on the triggers and springs.
We would hang around after hours & talk with Frantz, listening while he shared his life experiences. He had trained at Ferlach, Austria as a master gunsmith, then apprenticed to become a master tool & die maker. His first year as apprentice consisted of sweeping and wiping machinery & hand filing a lump of steel into a perfect square. Next, he was instructed to hand file the square into a sphere, and with that accomplished, so was his time as an apprentice.
He was inducted into the Werschmant after the Anschluss & ended up on Eastern front where he was captured at Stalingrad. Because he was an Austrian, he received better treatment & eventually was released to return home. He talked of walking for two months to make the journey. After the war, he made his living by scrounging old tools that had been lost in burned out factories & refurbishing them for his own use, while building sub-caliber rifles for the farmers to use for rodent control as all firearms had been confiscated by the Allies.
Both Frantz & Emma have passed, but their work is still around & a few of us remember some of the tricks he taught. My favorite is: "Ven you need to drill a hard receiver, like an Eddystone, find the cheapest carbon drill you have, make sure it is sharp and then heat it up red hot. Hold it vith a pliers & shtick it in a red onion - the sugar vill carbonize & hardface the drill & you can drill through glass vith it! (it also makes your shop smell vonderful)"
