Belgian Resistance Breechloader sawn-off
Hello everyone,
I am new on this forum and just wanted to share this gun that I bought that was found in an attic (in Belgium) recently. It is an old rifle converted by the resistance and its length makes it ideal to hide under a long trench coat making it remniscent of an 'obrez'. It still has its original sling which is just long enough to be able to sling it over your shoulder, be able to handle it, while still being able to be used. All the wood work has been done crudely and the 'pistol grip' is made from the handle of a (wood) plane and surprisingly enough it is comfortable to handle. Even though its barrel has been shortened, someone took the effort to put a crude front sight back on the weapon.
From what I have managed to find out it is a belgian Terssen rifle. The original story behind the Terssen is that while Belgium was adopting the albini-braedlin centerfire breach-loader in the 1860's it upgraded its old rifles to a similar standard, this resulted in the Terssen rifle which were based on multiple different percussion cap rifle rifles (some of which used to even be flintlock rifles before that). This one however as far as I know is based on the m1841 delvigne pontcharra.
As was the case in european countries back then, when rifles became obsolete they were offered as surplus on the civilian market and oftentimes converted to hunting rifles. This weapon is a smoothbore, so I guess this happened to this one as well. This gun is a really interesting example that shows that sometimes you just have to make due with what you have.
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Thank you for showing!
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