HW/Weihrauch HW 55 stock variations

Having been a fan of the HW 55 for years, I've come to admire how each of the different stock designs is its own little masterpiece.

+ The 55S is a true dual-use gun - what the frugal German used to win the match, and then shoot dinner on the way home! Tough beech wood, clean smooth shape with no cheekpiece or other sharp edges to get dinged in the field, but the full-contoured butt and flat-bottomed fore end still work for target shooting. It has a slight right-handed palm swell, but is acceptably comfortable to shoot lefty. Not as collectible as the walnut ones, but is IMHO quite underrated, and an attractive and desirable rifle in its own right.

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+ The 55T is a real beauty. To me, the graceful tapered fore end makes it by far the prettiest of the classic-era springer Tyrolean designs from Weihrauch and their rivals at FWB, Diana, and Walther. A functional piece of sculpture and a fantastic gun for offhand shooting (if - as with all Tyros - a little weird for other positions).

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+ The 55CM is an elegant interpretation of that oh-so-70's "squared up" look, but much lighter and more hand-friendly than you might think. The deep flat-bottomed fore end makes it the best HW 55 for "real" 10-meter shooting. The adjustable buttplate (an off-the-shelf Anschutz model 4709 base, for which various shoulder-piece shapes are made) is useful, and the accessory rail is a lot of fun to play with.

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+ But the 55M (or MM) is to me both the prettiest and most versatile, just an all-round functional design, and gorgeous to look at with its traditional German "Bayern" design. When I got my first one I often left it sitting out around the house in the open, just cuz I enjoyed ogling it so much (well - when the lady of the house was out anyhow, LOL!).

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Thanks DMM! 

For what it's worth, the Tyro in my pics also bears Beeman markings, and also came with the 900-gram sleeve. You'd have to be more of a body-builder than me to shoot well with that monster though! The lighter 400g sleeve is more to my tastes, giving a very nice, muzzle-heavy "hang" proper for a target rifle.

I bought that gun many years ago, from a wealthy engineer (shipped from his apartment overlooking Central Park in NYC). He sold it to please his fiancée - and was plainly quite annoyed by that!
 
Thanks for the excellent information and pictures Mike! I agree, I think the 55M is the bee's knees. Wish i could find a decent one of those. 

My 55T tyro is Beeman marked as well, does that make 3 of the 25? :) Or was that just the ones with barrel sleeves? Don't know if mine originally had a sleeve, but the front sight grooves are milled in and flush rather than crimped like other Weihrauchs. Don't know if all the old guns were that way, but it would certainly make it easier to slide a sleeve over the barrel.



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Wow Matt, those are a couple of stunners! Gorgeous wood, great condition, and one never gets tired of checking out the nifty little hand-hewn variations in shapes and checkering with those stocks.

I actually have three T's that date from rather different eras. Here is a poor pic of each LOL...

This one is from 1956. Early examples of Rekord trigger and insert-type front sight, 400 gr barrel sleeve, and lovely slender diopter sight with solid steel base. Note also the rounded red rubber buttplate, and fore end finger grooves on the stock.

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This one despatched in 1969. Beautiful full-coverage checkering and blonde European walnut of that era.

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And finally a late example from 1991. Same one pictured in my initial post above, with Beeman markings and dark-stained walnut. Came with a 900 gr sleeve that I seldom use (!), 400 gr sleeve seen mounted here. Probably has an OEM plastic piston seal.

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I also have two other actions that were originally in Tyro stocks. No. 1404xx came to me as a German "club mule," in a re-finished CM stock. But the action is in fine condition, is actually marked "HW 55T" on the left breech block, came complete with OEM sights and a barrel sleeve, and has some of the most beautiful blueing I've ever seen. No. 8781xx is from the era that no longer marked the variant, but a very reliable previous owner told me it came from a Tyro. It arrived in an S stock, but I used it to replace the OEM rusty spray-painted action in another CM stock!

To be honest I've always doubted the claim of only 25 Beeman-marked Tyros...if it's true, I've laid eyes on a freakishly large percentage of them! Maybe the good doc was just remembering a single order or some such...
 
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Interesting! As far as I know, there were no differences in how the each variant's action was made, and ya just need a screwdriver and about 2 minutes to swap stocks on a 55, so there's no telling what the story is. If might have left the factory that way, or been an aftermarket upgrade by a previous owner.

I have one HW 55, likely an ex-shooting club "mule," that has a T-marked action from 1963, a CM stock at least ten years newer, and a trigger group from about 1980! It's no wonder that HW eventually stopped marking the variant on the breech, can you imagine how many arguments ensued from stuff like that, LOL...

In my experience, it's hard to date HW 55 stocks by the checkering pattern. I suspect they were subcontracted in small batches, and seem to have gone back and forth between the patches with "W" shaped ends, and the larger "squared" ends, over time.
 
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IIRC the reason I thought the stock was produced around the same time had to do with the small triangle shape checkering pattern in front of the trigger guard and the stippling behind the palm swell. The serial number being in the 350xxx range seems to be consistent with when that checkering in front of the trigger guard was introduced.


Any idea when or for how long the stippling behind palm swell was offered?



 
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I don't know why I click on these threads. I look at the pictures and just get jealous! I've been wanting a nice HW55 for SO LONG. The cost for a nice HW55 has gone thru the roof over the past few years. My dream gun came up on ebay about a year or so ago. It was a clean HW55T with a tiger-striped walnut stock - absolutely gorgeous! I ended up bidding more than I could afford - about $600, and the bidding just kept going, and going, and going! It ended up well over $1k. Nuts!!!

You guys have have some real beauties here - hang onto em!
 
IIRC the reason I thought the stock was produced around the same time had to do with the small triangle shape checkering pattern in front of the trigger guard and the stippling behind the palm swell. The serial number being in the 350xxx range seems to be consistent with when that checkering in front of the trigger guard was introduced.

Any idea when or for how long the stippling behind palm swell was offered?

Matt: Those are a couple of great detail points! I'd completely forgotten about the stippling, which surely IS a date-specific detail. Let me do a bit of poking around and get back on that...

Flintsack: DANG those are nice! Wood on that top one is unbelievable, the bottom one is a Maccari custom, right?

General note: If the recent show at Findlay is any indication, the recent nut-ball auction prices are NOT bleeding over into the real world. In the old springer match gun department, I saw two HW 55's, two Walther LG 55T's, a lovely first-variant Anschutz 250 with fresh rebuild, and two Tyro FWB's in INCREDIBLE condition - one of them a lefty! - all for what were, IMHO, pretty reasonable money. If the following generation of SSP guns are more your thing, there was an FWB 601 and a Walther LGM-2 to be had.