Nova Air Pistol

Nova Air Pistol 

Pics copyright Holts Auctioneers.

Nova Air Pistol (similarity with Tell 3) 

John Griffiths, author of the Encyclopedia of Spring Air Pistols, writing on the airgunbbs.com, said:

While carrying out some long overdue restoration work on some of my lesser items, I suddenly realised that there was one pistol that used a very similar cocking principle to the Tell 3, and was patented several years before. That was the little known German semi-toy air pistol and air rifle called the Nova. The pistol version shown below is cocked by the grip as shown:

The mechanism works as follows, using the 1914 patent drawings for the rifle version for reference.

The first figure shows the gun uncocked. When the grip is broken and swung forward the piston is pushed to the end of the air chamber and the spring is compressed. At this point the trigger, which is part of the cocking lever, is engaged with the piston hook and keeps the spring compressed. This is shown in the second figure and is more or less what happens when the barrel on the Tell 3 is pulled fully back.
The grip is returned to the closed position (third figure) so dragging the piston/compressed spring unit back to the ready- to- fire position. This is also what happens with the Tell 3.

I don't know if Foss was inspired by this earlier patent or not, but the difference in the build quality of the Nova and the Tell 3 could not be any greater. The Nova was more suited to shooting darts and spuds than the Tell 3!

 

Resurrecting a relic Nova air pistol 

With thanks to John Griffiths, author of the Encyclopedia of Spring Air Pistols. He says:

The Nova air pistol would not be every air gun collector’s cup of tea, being just a notch above the level of a toy, but for me it was a must-have.  Made in Germany between about 1914 and 1924, these are very rare, probably because they were cheaply made and difficult to repair, so most would have been long since consigned to the scrap heap. I was lucky to pick up this survivor several years ago, which was complete and original, and worked OK after some minor tweaking.

The cocking method is quite unique. When the hinged grip is pushed forward, the spring is compressed. At full cock (as pictured below) a rod attached to the piston engages with a sear located inside the large cocking link.  The ring-pull trigger unit is also located in the link. When the handle is returned to its original position, the piston is pulled rearwards still held by the sear.  

The gun is loaded by unscrewing the bayonet-fitting end plug and inserting a dart or pellet in the short brass barrel.  The  smoothbore 4.5mm calibre barrel is only about 1½ inches long, and it also has an adapter to take corks, which gives you some idea of the intended market for the pistol. As you might expect, the accuracy is abysmal, but even so, this 100 year old packs a surprising bit of a punch when used with pre-sized waisted pellets.  A harmless toy it certainly is not!

Not so long back I was surprised to be offered another Nova, but in this case it was in terrible condition.  The barrel unit was missing, the reinforcing strip under the cylinder had come adrift and a crude and unsuccessful attempt had been made to solder it back, and it was rusted with none of original nickel finish remaining. On the plus side there was no pitting, the lettering was still very clear, and as it was obvious that no one had ever been inside it, I was confident that  the internals were all intact.

Despite the gun’s condition, the price was too low for me to ignore, so I bought it and put it on my long list of future restoration projects to tackle.  I dug out the relic a few weeks ago and set about restoring it, and this is an account of how things went.    

Dismantling the Nova is not easy as there are no screws and it is held together only by peened-over pins.  The grip could be separated from the cylinder by carefully filing the pivot pin to free it from its retaining washer and tapping it out.

The piston and cylinder tube could then be extracted. The spring looks like an amateur replacement, with its unfinished ends, but it is actually original.  My other Nova has an identical spring, so obviously the manufacturer’s attitude was “Out of sight out of mind.”   As you can see, the leather piston washer was also shot and needed replacing. 

Inside the cylinder was a leather washer, which helped provide an airtight seal between the barrel and air chamber, and a steel washer. The latter I figured out was to prevent pellets being sucked into the air chamber, as it had a hole narrower than the bore of the barrel. Without it this would be a constant hazard, as there is no air transfer port as such.

The badly soldered reinforcing strip under the cylinder/barrel section was removed, together with the surplus solder. The strip was cleaned up, straightened and then soldered back on:

The major challenge of this project was to make a replacement barrel unit.  This is what it should look like:

So it basically consists of three parts:  (i) an inner brass cup with knurled flange;  (ii) an outer steel jacket;  (iii) a brass barrel passing through, and soldered to, both.

The inner cup was made by turning down some round brass bar to produce a flange, which was then knurled:

This was then trimmed off and drilled through to provide a hole for the barrel to be eventually soldered into:

The piece was drilled out to form a cup and then shaped to give a tapered interior profile.

The outer steel jacket was turned down from steel tube:

The barrel was cut from brass tubing  drilled  to 4.5 mm internal diameter.  The barrel, brass inner cup and outer jacket were then soldered together, and the bayonet slot milled into the outer steel jacket. The result is shown here on the left, alongside an original barrel unit :

This is the unit fitted to the pistol:

With replacement leather washers the gun worked perfectly, so I decided the next step would be to get rid of the rust and give it a sympathtic nickel finish.  I wanted it to look reasonably smart, but well used, befitting its age.  After taking off most of the rust with emery paper and steel wool, the rest was removed by an overnight soak in oxalic acid solution.  This had the advantage of giving a slightly matt finish to the surface, which is ideal for a more vintage-looking nickel plating. 

I nickel plated everything by the electroless method* and this was the final result:

 This is a comparison of the re-finished pistol (upper) and my other pistol:

So how does it shoot?  Well I put half a dozen darts through it, using a 5” diameter target at a distance of 3 meters, and this was the result.  No kidding, my first shot was the one in the bull. But my optimism was short lived and it was all downhill after that.

John added information about the electroless nickel plating method: