ME AND MY GUEDES

(his what?)

[This article originally appeared in the November - December 2000 issue (Journal No. 148) of "The Fouling Shot." (The journal of The Cast Bullet Association)]

For me, at least, this is one of those happy stories - of the "dream come true" type.

I'm not sure just when I became aware of the elusive Guedes single-shot military rifle, but I think it may have been when I came across a drawing of one for sale in a c. 1980 reprint of the 1927 Bannerman catalog. There, on page 53, in the midst of pages and pages of a lot of other neat guns - Krags for $12.50 each, Canadian Ross rifles for $8.50, and Wesley-Richards "Monkey Tail" carbines for $10.00 -- - was a "Guedes Breech Loading Rifle" priced at the (in 1927, at least) princely sum of $50.00!

Over the years, I managed to put together quite a bit of information on these guns - even though I never actually saw one (in person, that is). The design itself is credited to a Portuguese military officer, LT Castro Guedes (pronounced sort of like "Get-us"). This was in the early days of experimentation with small caliber military rifles. In the 1880s, when most military rifles were chambered for 11MM/.45 caliber bullets, the Guedes became one of the first black powder military rifles designed for a small caliber (8MM) bullet. After some trial and error, and a number of developmental modifications, the Portuguese government eventually accepted the design, and contracted with the famous Austrian weapons manufacturer Oesterreichische Waffenfabrik Gesellschaft ("OEWG") of Steyr to manufacture them. Some sources indicate that the initial order was for 40,000 rifles.

Before the order could be completed, however, the Portuguese looked around Europe and quickly realized that single-shot military rifles were fast becoming obsolete. They managed to stop production of the Guedes, and substituted their order with one for the tube-magazine Kropatschek rifles - in the same chambering as the Guedes (8x60R). (Some sources claim that the Guedes order was canceled because the hollow breechblock was not standing up well to repeated firings with full-power ball cartridges.) At any rate, most sources indicate that about 18,000 Guedes rifles had been manufactured before the order was canceled - and they were all put into storage by OEWG; none was apparently actually ever delivered to Portugal.

I later learned that some of these same, undelivered Guedes rifles were later sold to the Boer republics, and some actually saw service in the Boer War. Others (in "brand new" condition) later appeared for sale on the European second-hand market through the German firm of Deutsche Waffenfabrik Georg Knaak (1910). And, like so many other old military rifles, some eventually found their way to the U.S. via the surplus markets - ala Bannerman.

The late Frank De Haas even included the Guedes in his excellent book on single shot rifles - describing the Austrian-manufactured gun as having "some excellent design features," and as "quite outstanding." For some years I read and reread the Guedes chapter in de Haas' book - fully realizing that my chances of ever seeing such a gun, let alone owning one, were slim to none.

I did buy a nice Kropatschek rifle once, through an ad in "Gun List," - and the 8x60R cartridge intrigued me - it was similar to the cartridge for which the Guedes was chambered. This cartridge is basically a necked-down version of the 11x59R black powder cartridge used in the French Gras - which is understandable, since that was the cartridge that LT Guedes first designed his pivoting-block rifle action around. It was only later that the caliber was reduced to 8mm.

One day, while "surfing" the Internet, I learned that Navy Arms had 8x60R Portuguese black powder, wooden-bulleted blanks for sale. They were Berdan-primed, of course, but at only $60.00 for a full case of 1,000, I figured I couldn't go too wrong.

My wife, who has been quite tolerant of my guns, reloading and shooting over the years, drew the line when the UPS man showed up at our front door with a full wooden case (complete with rope handles!) of 1000 rounds of antique LOADED Portuguese ammo. She wouldn't have it in the house, so it has since found a home in our detached garage.

When I pried the lid off the ammo case, I found layer upon layer of red paper-and string wrapped packets of 10 cartridges each. The packets were clearly marked to indicate that they contained ten Model 1889 8mm cartridges with "simulated ball," that they were loaded with 3 grams (82.5 grains) of black powder, and that they had been manufactured in 1902 at the Portuguese "Powder Factory."

Someone had stuffed wadded-up paper in between the layers of cartridge packets - for cushioning during shipment. As I took out the packing, I began to realize what it was: waste paper from the Portuguese arsenal where the case had been packed. There were scraps of hand-written arsenal documents (one was from 1838, and another from 1826!), empty, unused paper muzzleloading cartridge papers (dated 1873), and even pages from an old Portuguese ordnance book. Pretty amazing -- and all for only $60.00!

My enthusiasm took a major hit, however, when I discovered that my Kropatschek rifle wouldn't chamber a groove diameter bullet. As a result, it soon became one of my former guns, and the case of old Portuguese blanks went back into retirement in a back corner of our garage.

In many ways, the Internet is a wonderful thing. Among other things, it has opened up whole new ways to locate, buy, sell, and trade antique firearms. One night, while again surfing some of the gun sites, my heart skipped a beat when I stumbled across a Guedes for sale on a gun auction site. The gun had a reasonable starting bid for such a scarce gun, but no one had yet put in an opening bid! Each day I went back and checked out the site, and each time I was relieved to see that the gun had not yet attracted an opening bid. While the end of the auction approached, I silently lurked in cyber silence. When the auction was only a few seconds from ending, I sent in a bid. Lo and behold, my bid ended up being the only one submitted for the gun. It wasn't too long before I had my first ever Guedes in hand - and she was a beauty. It was a little smaller than I had expected, but nice and graceful - it reminded me a little of an oversized Australian Martini Cadet rifle. It had an excellent, shiny bore; matching numbers; lots of original finish; and decent wood. Only the cleaning rod was missing. Soon the bore had been slugged - .330" groove diameter (just like the Kropatschek I had parted with).

Out to the garage, and a few packets of Kropatschek blanks were liberated from their wooden case. Using an old pair of pliers, I pulled out the wooden bullets. With an old dental tool, I picked out the tuft of cotton underneath, and dug out the caked black powder. Then I put the still-primed, but otherwise empty cases, into my tumbler - which I filled up with hot water. (I use a "Thumler's Tumbler" to clean my brass. It's designed for use polishing rocks for jewelry, but does a great job on cartridge brass, too.) After two hours of tumbling, I figured the primers would be dead. Each case was then chambered in the Guedes and "fired." The primers were all dead, and each one now had a neat firing pin indentation in the middle.

I then de-primed the cases. Here's how I do it: I have an inexpensive "O"-type press which I use for this operation. I screw in - from the bottom - the full-length resizing die for my Swiss Vetterli (10.4X38R). I put my Kropatschek case nose first into the die until it fits firmly, and then use the RCBS Lachmiller-type Berdan de-priming tool I got from Huntington's to pop out the spent primers. The tool works well when properly adjusted -- and when there is a firing pin indentation in the primer to guide the de-capping pin.

The empty cases then got another ride in the tumbler - this time with a solution of hot water, about a cup of white vinegar, and an ounce or so of Joy dishwashing detergent. Along with the cases, I put in a pint container of air gun "BBs," and about six small boxes of wire brads (unplated, mixed 1/2"and 5/8" lengths) into the tumbler, too. After three hours in the tumbler, followed by a good hot water rinsing, the cases looked brand new. In a couple of days, after the cases were thoroughly air dried, I annealed the necks with a propane torch, followed by a cold water quench. The cases were allowed to air dry again, and I used a tiny drill bit held in a jeweler's collet to clean out the two small Berdan-style flash holes in each case head.

I shoot an old GEW 88 German Commission rifle, and had some cast bullets for it on hand. These were 165-grain, cast in linotype from a Lyman 323470 mould, gas checked, sized to .325 and lubed with Alox. I took one of these, and one of my shiney cases, and attempted to check the chamber of my Guedes for proper bullet seating depth.

Imagine how my heart sank when the dummy round wouldn't chamber. Visions of my earlier problem with the Kropatschek hit me right between the eyes. It looked like this was going to be yet another gun that wasn't going to chamber a groove-diameter bullet (had the same problem with a M74/80 French Gras, too).

But the Guedes was just too interesting to give up on.

I took the bullet out, and replaced it with a .34-40 bullet I had handy - it was a 165-grain plain-based Lyman 319247, cast of 1:16 alloy, and sized to .323". This time the loaded round chambered - but only by taking full advantage of the camming action of the Guedes' pivoting breechblock. It was a VERY tight fit, and I didn't feel comfortable about it.

Unfortunately, good information on the Guedes and its ammunition is not easy to come by. Checking in an old reprint of a 1904 DWM ammunition catalog, I noticed that there were two different cases listed for the Guedes and Kropatschek (a "Model 1886" cartridge). Although both were shown with the same case length (59.7mm or 2.35"), the Kropatschek was listed as taking an 8.2 mm (.323") bullet, while the Guedes bullet was listed with a diameter of only 8.1 mm (.319").

Barnes' "Cartridges of the World" and Smith's "The Book of Rifles" both list case length as 2.34". An Italian article on the Guedes, published in 1989, gave case lengths of both 56 and 57 mm. When I bought my short-lived Kropatschek rifle, I also received an original packet of cartridges for it. These were marked as Model 1899 cartridges, manufactured in Portugal in 1928. When I compared one of these to one with one of my blanks, I found that the later case length was 2.207" (close to 56.1 mm), as opposed to the blank cartridge - which was 2.346" (close to 59.6 mm). Maybe we were getting somewhere. But where?

I trimmed one of the blank cases down to match the shorter case length, seated one of my .323" .32-40 bullets, and this time the dummy cartridge seated fine. Now to try a bigger bullet. I took one of my .325" 8 mm bullets and tried it. Nothing doing -- it wouldn't chamber! So I dug out my .323" sizing die, and ran one of the gas-checked 323470s through it, seated it in my new shortened case - and voila, it chambered just fine! So now I at least had a way to make up loads that would chamber.

The next step was to see if the Guedes would shoot. I had earlier ordered some inexpensive, Brazilian-made Berdan primers from the Old Western Scrounger, and managed to gingerly prime a couple of my original cases with a piece of dowel and an oak board. (These cases fortunately take standard 6.45mm/.254" Berdan primers.) The primed cases fired OK - but the tip of the Guedes' internal hammer ripped right through them. This clearly wasn't going to work. I got on the phone with the OWS and ordered two packages of his expensive German-made Dynamit Nobel Berdan primers. Then I sent one of my empty original blank cartridge cases off to Huntington's with a request for a shell holder to fit, and bored out to accept the bigger Berdan primers. I also ordered a Berdan ram-type priming rig from them.

Time here for a couple of asides: I know that 8x60R cases are now available from Dave Gullo at Buffalo Arms. He makes them out of .new 348 Winchester brass, and they are beautiful cases, and would certainly work quite well in a Guedes. And they're Boxer primed to boot. But to me, there was a special challenge connected with making these old original cases work with my 114-year-old rifle. Even if it was time consuming and difficult - not to mention expensive.

Secondly, a caution: blank cartridges are often made up from sub-standard brass, or from casings which fail to meet arsenal standards for ball cartridges. This appears to be the case with the Portuguese blanks I am using - even with my anemic 100-yard target loads, I am experiencing a reject/failure rate of 20% to 50%. These cases should not be used for full-velocity loads, with either black or smokeless powder!

To continue with the story: it took another few weeks, but eventually I had everything assembled for my next step. I properly primed another case - this time with the Dynamit Nobel primers - and chambered the empty primed case. Everything went "bang" - but this time the primer was only dented - not punctured! This was progress!

A range trip was now in order. My powder measure was already set to throw 10.5 grains of Unique, so I used that charge under a few of my 323470s, as well as some 319247s -- both sized to .323". And I used shortened cases made up from my blank cartridges.

I was anxious to shoot the old war horse, but wasn't expecting too much in the way of accuracy. The sights on the Guedes are fairly crude - a standard Mauser-type front sight (inverted "V") and a sliding leaf rear (quite clearly copied from the French Gras). Then there's that stiff military trigger pull -- not to mention the grossly undersized bullets: .323" in a barrel with a .330" groove diameter.

Nevertheless, I stapled my targets out at 100 yards and set my bench rig up. My loads were light ones, and seemed to go off with "pops" instead of "bangs." But they did go off, the bullets hit the target (at such low velocity I could hear them hitting!), and none of the primers was punctured.

When I walked down range (after shooting off my few loads), I made a couple of interesting discoveries. First of all, my shots had all hit the paper! Secondly, probably because of the "battle" sights on the gun, all of my shots were quite high - about 16" above point of aim. The plain-based .32-40 bullets were all over the place. But the seven gas-checked 8 mm bullets I had fired were all nicely grouped in about a 2-1/2" circle! Certainly not a match-winning group, but much smaller than I had reason to hope for! I couldn't believe it, nor can I explain it. With some real load development and practice, sub-2" groups (or better!) may be possible with this old gun. There may even be a CBA Postal Match in this old gun's future!

Now I'm beginning to wish that I still had that old Kropatschek rifle back - and maybe even the Gras, too!

Members interested in more information can e-mail me at:

"Tom@vintage-gunlore.com"