M1860/67 Kammerlader/Lund
The M1860 is virtually non-existing in its original breech loading version, just about all the military M1860′s were rebuilt to cartridge rifles – the navy to Landmarks, the army to Lunds. One does, however, find a number of the civilian version (iron bands, not brass) with the original hexagon chamber.
The M1860 was a precise and accurate rifle. At trials in Belgium in 1861, Norway participated with one short and one long M1860. Of a total of 47 rifles to be tested, only nine passed on long distance shooting (1000 m) – of these were both the M1860′s!
The army’s M1860 came in two versions – the “Kort Lund” (Short Lund – two bands) and the “Lang Lund” (Long Lund – three bands). The long M1860 Lund, M1855 and M1859, are the three most common Norwegian kammerladere. Norway had a total of about 80 versions of the kammerlader.
Both the army’s M1860′s are long, slender rifles with high decoration value, when in nice condition. A great one should have a deep chocolate coloured staining on the barrel and outer lock. A lot of Lunds have had modern attempts for reaching this staining colour, but compered to an original one you can always see the difference.
The M1860 were small-bored with “only” a 4’’’ calibre (11,77 mm). After the rebuild to cartridges it was to fire the Remingtons 12,17 mm cartridge. The first converted rifles were re-rifled to fit the new calibre, the later ones not. These guns have 11,77 mm barrels firing 12,17 mm bullets – an advantage with black powder and soft lead bullets. One can easily see the difference when looking, the old rifle had a hexagon rifling, the re-rifled ones conventional rifling. After 1879 the calibre was only called 12 mm.
The Lang M1860 was equipped with a socket bayonet, the Kort M1860 with a sword bayonet seemingly identical to the later M1867 Remington bayonet (the M1860 will fit the Remingtons, but hardly ever the other way round)
There were produced a total of some 9000 of the long version and about 3000 of the short one. This does not explain why the short rifle is so extremely scarce. There were probably only made about 1000 rifles of the naval M1860, but this tends to be much easier to find than a Kort Lund.
The best source of information on Norwegian kammerladere is Harald Sunde’s book “Norske Kammerladningsgeværer og Karabiner for Hæren 1842-1877″ from 1993 – regretfully difficult to get hold of and in Norwegian.
There is original rim-fire ammunition to be found for these rifles, even packed in neat little 10 round paper packages with a string. These are usually dated from the late 1870′s til the mid 1880′s.
The picture shows my two Kort Lund rifles. The bottom one has the standard birch stock, whilst the top one has a flammebjerk (flamed birch) stock. Flamed birch was very popular on the more expencive civilian rifles, but I have never seen a stock like this on a military rifle before. I really have no idea as to why this stock was made, but believe that this probably must have been done in an effort to have the right of a master gunsmith title. The markings are military correct.
The Lunds cartridge conversion
When converting the army’s M1860′s to cartridge, the chamber was replaced and an extractor was mounted on the left side of the receiver. There right side of the receiver was lowered some 5-6 mm and the bottom plate exchanged from a brass plate to a steel plate with a track for the extractor.