A boaring "Fwb" kinda day...

[Sammi1968]

As with most people, I find myself usually on the side of "just" missing out on the "good" deals or great opportunities.  Not complaining as that's how life goes but I'd like some love from lady luck too sometimes.😊 .  Well I think someone shined a light on me a few weeks ago when the planet's aligned and I randomly found this little gem posted for sale online within an hour of its posting. Now it wasn't priced as the greatest bargain I've ever seen, but it was fairly reasonable and pretty sure I did ok. I'd  say she's 99 out out 100 which is very nice for a 30+ year old rifle. Understand these don't come around very often so do consider myself lucky to pick this one up. Throwing it out here so others can see with patience and time, good things still happen. Mid 80', 300s.  Pics used with permission of previous owner.

[Yogi]

Looks AMAZING.

You won the lottery.

-Y

[Hoosier Daddy]

OH WOW!
Nick, that IS a real gem.
You just don't see guns like that come along very often.
Heck, I feel privileged to own a "simple" 300S, yours is amazing.

[uglymike]

I'm jealous.

[Sammi1968]

From my research only about 1k of these Beeman models were ever made. Feeling very fortunate.

[T-Higgs]

Wow! The elusive running target model. Very drool worthy.

[justinp61]

Beautiful rifle, congrats.

[limbshaker]

Eh, might be good for driving fenceposts or something I guess....

 

Just kidding bud, you hit the big time there! I've had a few 300S and all of them were beat to death. But they all had one thing in common, you could thread a needle with them at 25 yards.

I'm sure that one shoots out of this world. Congrats and enjoy it!

[YEMX]

You just don't see too many of those thumbhole stocks very often!  Love it! 

[Rick67]

Those Germans and Austrians really know a thing or two about airguns.

What a beautiful piece of artwork--yes, I deliberately intended to sound redundant 

[VillageSniper]

Hold on to her and don't let her go. Enjoy.

Vs

[SpiralGroove]

Hey Sammi1968,
Just Gorgeous, you'll likely be sleeping with that for awhile .
How much does she weigh?
Kirk

[Royale]

Nick WOW a running target model the one gun I would pay full price for, if I had the money. Nice find I know your happy.

[Sammi1968]

Thanks all for the comments. Yes she's a really beautiful air rifle which I'm amazed at the quality of the rifle and the stock. The trigger is a bit heavier (slighty) then my other 300's but it's almost fully canted to the side for smooth shooting bringing it to your shoulder. Amazing how this stock just fits as you bring it up. I'll have to weigh it but to be honest it feels really well balanced overall. This one won't be going anywhere any time soon. I read somewhere that guns like this won't be made ever again and I tend to agree with that. 

[bReTt]

SCORE!

Beautiful rifle.  Did it come with the Blue Ribbon scope too? 

[Sammi1968]

Brett - yes she came with the blue ribbon scope.  I considered that a built in bonus😁.

[Sammi1968]

Kirk - I put her in the scale this morning and she weighed in with scope at about 10lbs.  Of course, she really doesn't like me talking about her weight..😇

[dtdtdtdt]

For those who are interested.  My guess from the pictures is 90-95%.  100% is unfired in a box.  Note the upvalue for Running Boar Stock of 100% in value.

The Blue Book of Air Guns says this:

Model 300S - .177 cal., SP, SL, 640 FPS, 8.8-10.8 lbs. Disc. circa 1996.
Last MSR was $1,235.

Historic Prices Used:
Grading - Price
100%.     $950
95%         $650
90%.       $525
80%.       $425
60%.       $325   

Add 50% for Tyrolean stock.
Add 100% for Running Boar stock configuration or Universal Model with adj. cheek piece.
Add 20% for Match L Model, similar to Universal Model w/o adj. cheek piece.
Add 10% for figured walnut.
Subtract 10% for left-hand variation (all styles).
Add 10% for junior stock.

History of the FWB Brand taken from the Blue Book of AirGuns:

Feinwerkbau, an airgun industry leader, has been responsible for developing many of the current technical innovations used in fabricating target air pistols and rifles. In 1992, Feinwerkbau swept the Olympic competition. Feinwerkbau guns are prized by both match shooters and those who just enjoy fine guns - especially ones they can shoot indoors!

"Feinwerkbau" means "fine work factory" and was just a brand name. For many years it was only a prefix to the actual company name (named for its founders): Westinger & Altenburger. Gradually, the word Feinwerkbau (and the abbreviation FWB) came to be an equivalent term for this airgun maker and their products. So, you find this text under "F" instead of "W" in this book.

Although the Westinger & Altenburger company never used big advertising campaigns or sponsored top shooters, their products are on top: the first recoilless match air rifle with a fixed barrel was the Feinwerkbau Model 150. Introduced in 1961, it soon forced the UIT (Union Internationale de Tir, now known as the International Shooting Sports Federation or ISSF) to reduce the size of their targets. This success was repeated in 1965 with the introduction of the FWB Model 65 Match air pistol. This pistol was in production and pretty much ruled air pistol competition for more than three decades. The Feinwerkbau 600 series have simply owned this title since 1984. The pre-charged successor to the FWB 600 series, the FWB P 70, wins one title after another (including the world record with the maximum score of 600 out of 600 points).

The firm was founded by two engineers, Ernst Altenburger and Karl Westinger. They both worked in the famous Mauser factory in Oberndorf/Neckar, which has been the leading gun manufacturing city in Germany since 1870. After WWII, the factory fell into the French occupation zone. The French authorities ordered the disassembly of all Mauser´s machines. Metal processing was forbidden, and the two engineers desperately sought a new way to use their technical knowledge. In 1948, they were allowed to establish a small workshop in Dettingen. It was not far away, but because the French military authority had poor maps, they did not realize that they had allowed the establishment of a shop across the line in the adjoining Hohenzollern territory, which was not under French control.

With the help of a small punch machine they produced wooden wheels for children´s scooters, wooden casings for pencils, and even wooden spoons. Stealthily, in the attic of what is now Oberndorf College, they designed their first prototype of an electro-mechanical calculator. In 1948, after the Allies again allowed metal processing companies in that region, Feinwerkbau Westinger & Altenburger became a registered company. Their new calculator went into production at the Olympia-Werke in Wilhelmshaven, Germany. Thousands of their machines were sold internationally. Later they produced textile mandrels, counters, and for IBM, a small device to cut letters out of paper punchcards. Today, a part of the company manufactures vital, but undisclosed, parts for "Formula-One" race cars.

The Feinwerkbau Westinger & Altenburger factory is still located in Oberndorf at the headwaters of the Neckar River in Germany´s Black Forest, and has about two hundred employees. The company is managed by two sons of the founders: Jörg Altenburger and Rolf Westinger, while two other sons, Reiner Altenburger and Gerhard Westinger, respectively, oversee the sales and purchasing departments. Note: Do not depend on dates in importer catalogs for model production dates.

In 1951, the German Shooting Federation was re-established. Starting in 1952, the production of rifled barrels was again allowed. The 1950s was the decade of the Carl Walther Company in Ulm. Their barrel-cocking air rifles Model 53, and later Model 55, were used by almost every competitive European air rifle shooter. However, many of the top marksmen believed that wear at the hinge point in these barrel-cocking guns caused reduced accuracy.

In 1961, Walter Gehmann, one of the top marksmen in Germany before WWII and also a famous inventor, came to visit his old friend Ernst Altenburger, with whom he had worked in the legendary Mauser R & D department. (Together they had invented the Mauser "Olympia" smallbore rifle, which was the predecessor of all modern .22 match rifles.) Soon the company started to design air rifles with the barrel rigidly fixed to the receiver.

Anschütz also presented a fixed barrel air rifle, their side-lever Model 220. Feinwerkbau replied with their Model 100. It was immediately successful. Helmut Schlenker, the reigning German shooting champion, took the German championship with this gun in 1961 - this is especially significant because that was the year of the German Shooting Federation´s centennial.

Feinwerkbau exceeded that success with the Model 150. This gun featured an elegantly simple, very effective recoil-elimination device which made Feinwerkbau rifles almost unbeatable during the next decade: When the trigger was released, the entire rigid, upper action and barrel was released to ride on concealed steel rails and thus absorb the recoil. The basic mechanism was based on a recoil control mechanism that Westinger and Altenburger had developed, when working for Mauser, for controlling machine gun recoil. All the succeeding FWB spring-piston match airguns used this mechanism. It was covered by patent 1,140 489, awarded in February of 1961 to Westinger and Altenburger and their chief engineer, Edwin Wöhrstein. Walter Gehmann was honored for his input with a gift of the Model 150 with serial number "000001."

The 1966 World Shooting Championship in Wiesbaden, Germany was a turning point for air rifle shooting. Here the world was introduced to precision match air rifles. While the first world championship was won by Gerd Kuemmet with a non-production, prototype Anschütz Model 250, Feinwerkbau would come into its glory with world championships by Gottfried Kustermann (1970), Oswald Schlipf (1978), Walter Hillenbrand (1979), Hans Riederer (1986 and 1990), and Sonja Pfeilschifter (1994).

Feinwerkbau extended their very successful recoilless sledge mechanism to an air pistol in 1965; the FWB Model LP 65. It had special arrangements to block the recoil compensating mechanism and to switch the trigger pull from 500 to 1360 grams. This allowed this air pistol to be used for simulated firearm pistol training. It was produced in several minor variations until 1998. Although other models, such as the LP 80 and the LP 90 (the first air pistol with an electronic trigger), were introduced during that period, the Model 65 reigned supreme. Air pistol shooting became an official international sport in 1969 and Feinwerkbau had come to virtually "own" that field of competition. Model 65 air pistols also had become very popular with non-match shooters, especially in the USA.

At the beginning of the 1980s, two Austrian technicians, Emil Senfter and Viktor Idl revived the century-old French patent by Paul Giffard for a CO2 pistol with a tubular gas cylinder under the barrel. The first "Senfter" pistols were very successful in competition and could be shot like a free pistol. Their advantage over the spring-piston air pistols was a lack of movement from a piston during firing and a quicker shot release. When Senfter and Idl parted company, Senfter offered the system to Walther and Idl went to Feinwerkbau. As a result, the first two CO2 pistols of both companies, the Walther CP 1 and FWB Model 2, respectively, appear to be almost identical. (Some years later a lawsuit awarded the patent and system to Senfter.)

Feinwerkbau took an excursion into producing sporting air rifles in the early 1970s. This was the "Sport" series under the model numbers 120 to 127. These were slim, highly efficient barrel-cocking, spring-piston air rifles. The primary market was the United States where the high power versions were known as the Model 124 in 4.5 mm (.177) caliber and the much less popular Model 127 in 5.5mm (.22) caliber. A lower powered version of the 5.5mm caliber model was fairly popular in Great Britain. Limited numbers of the lowest powered version, the Model 121, were made for countries like Germany where there were very strict airgun power limits. Feinwerkbau began a joint effort with Beeman Precision Airguns to develop a 5mm version, with a special stock to Beeman specifications, to be known as the Beeman R5. Regular production was not possible because Feinwerkbau was not able to find suitable 5 mm barrels in the numbers projected for first sales. The Model R5 is now one of the rarest of collectors´ items. Production of the Sport series was halted in the 1980s because Feinwerkbau´s technicians were so tuned to produce limited quantities of match guns with extremely close fitting and quality control that they could not seem to produce such production level items at a reasonable cost! Now much sought after by both shooters and collectors, its slender profile and trigger placement make it a favorite for restocking with premium quality custom stocks.

In the USA, Beeman Precision Airguns, Feinwerkbau´s American partner, had taken an unusual step. They created a larger market for match air rifles among America´s quality conscious non-match gun buyers than had existed for America´s much lower concentration of match shooters. So, in America, the sales of FWB match guns continued to exceed those of all other match airguns combined
.
In 1973, Walther introduced a new type of recoilless air rifle, the Walther LGR, a single-stroke pneumatic. It had a shorter shot release time than the spring-piston air rifles and was soon adopted, at least in Europe, by most of the top competitive air rifle shooters.

In 1984, Feinwerkbau struck back, from its factory deep in the German Black Forest, with their own single stroke pneumatic rifle, the FWB 600 (named after the 600-point maximum possible score in the new 60-shot international competitions). This rifle featured a reverse cocking lever which closed towards the body, a much easier motion, and had a shorter barrel of only 420mm (l6.5 in.), which reduced the shot release time even more. Feinwerkbau again dominated the world of match air rifles. Scores of 600 became so common that the international shooting authorities again had to reduce the size of the ten ring, from one to one/half millimeter (2/100") diameter! However, the FWB 600 shooters soon began to crowd even that incredibly small bullseye with all of their shots. The models FWB 601, 602, and 603, introduced during the 1990s, were only slight modifications of FWB´s basic single-stroke pneumatic system.

In air pistol competitions, only a few shooters preferred pneumatic pistols instead of CO2 models (and later PCP), but the air rifle shooters were more reluctant in choosing the easy-to-shoot carbon dioxide systems: They didn´t want to rely on uncertain CO2 supplies during competitions in foreign countries and therefore had to tolerate the heavier cocking effort of the single-stroke pneumatic rifles.
That changed again in 1997, when the key manufacturers of precision airguns introduced their pre-charged pneumatic (PCP) match air rifles. These guns did not depend on local supplies of CO2 and did not have the physical limitations of CO2 guns. They simply were charged from easily portable cylinder of compressed air. Despite the keen competition of Anschütz, Walther, Steyr-Mannlicher, and Hämmerli, the FWB Model P70 PCP match air rifle has maintained the lead in air rifle competition. Using the FWB P70, Gaby Bühlmann from Switzerland fired the first ever maximum of 400, followed by the first 600 score by Tavarit Majchacheep from Thailand.

Today´s leading airguns are the Feinwerkbau P34 PCP air pistol and the Model 603 single-stroke pneumatic and P70 PCP air rifles. These models use a special "Absorber" feature which reduces even the tiny recoil produced by the pellet itself during its acceleration. A five-shot version of the PCP air pistol, known as the P55, was developed for the new ISSF "Falling Targets" event. And, a five-shot PCP rifle, the Model P75, is used in the summer biathlon competitions. Several smaller and lighter versions of these models are designed for young shooters and smaller adults.

Feinwerkbau now also produces some very successful match firearms: The FWB smallbore rifle earned the Olympic gold medal in 1992, the FWB semi-auto .22 caliber pistol, and the AW 93 (based on a Russian patent).

[Yogi]

What a wealth of information!

Thanks for posting it.

-Y

[dtdtdtdt]

Yogi:

I found this in the Blue Book of AirGuns.  It sometimes has articles about company histories especially for the German manufacturers who were radically affected by WWII.

Being a cynical person, I note the "self-serving" interpretations of their efforts during war to make money and to support their country.  "We weren't Nazis but were forced and intimidated into cooperating with them.  We were really part of an underground resistance."  We really were trying to save all those people we worked to death from the concentration camps.  Oh wait, my factory had its own camp but we treated them very well!! 

The vague reference to a patent used to develop the recoilless mechanism as being adapted from a machine gun system they were making for Mauser??

They do make good guns though!!