Schultz & Larsen are Danish rifle makers that date back to the late 1890's, they had an excellent reputation as barrel makers as well as rifle makers and the barrels were used to great effect in the 70's in target shooting. The current owner has been running the company since 1999. Our visit was for two reasons, firstly we shoot one so thought it would be good to see the factory, also there was a recall on the firing pin as apparently they had seen a couple of failures so S&L swap the old type pins out for a revised version.
The factory moved to it's current location at Rask Molle a few years ago and still uses a lot of the original equipment for cut rifling and lapping the barrels so we knew it would be an interesting mix of old and new. Upon arriving we were greeted by a youngish chap (late 30's is my guess) who was all ready to change the firing pin, it was fascinating to walk past boxes of magazine springs, bolt assemblies and actions, with unfinished wooden stocks in racks and machinery humming away in the background. The young chap took one look at our rifle (M97-DL Sporter) and announced he had built it, he very quickly swapped out the firing pin and stripped and reset the trigger to a lower weight whilst we chatted and asked questions.
He explained a couple of interesting points on the rifle and it was at that point I commented that the barrel is always black when I cleaned it. Oopps.. 'Do not put solvents near my barrels, I have no interest in other barrels, but mine you NEVER put solvents through' So that was me told. Apparently they do not copper strip factory rifles until 4k shots because of the way the barrels are built, so with that we were shown the barrel manufacturing process, the start by drilling the blanks, followed by reaming, followed by cut rifling, the cut is so fine it cannot be measured however it can be calculated, they build with four or six grooves. Followed by more work finishing with tin indexed lapping which results in a very very small taper to the front, think of it as a very slight choke. As far as he was concerned his barrels are the most accurate in the world. Did I say his? Yup he owns and runs the company and he is certainly a hands on man.
We were also shown the latest generation of hunting rifles. The one I handled had no bolt and scope fitted and was one of a batch to be shipped to Italy. Weight of the rifle I held minus bolt and scope was no more that 2.2kgs. It was simply amazing to handle something so light.
All in all it was a fascinating albeit rushed overview of the manufacturing space. They build around 2000 rifles a year and have 15 employees. Christel asked if she could take some pics and he was quite OK with that and told us they had very few secrets. He also gave us an overview of where he wants the company to be in the next few years.
This is the barrel shop where they take the blanks and turn them into barrels, the machine I am looking at is lapping finished barrels and at the back is the rifling machine, they can build a rifle with absolutely any rate of twist.
