Schiffer Publishing Drilling

The factual content is good, and the research impressively detailed in places, though the illustrations provide patchy coverage and the quality of the photography is variable -from professional to decidedly amateur. The translation, however, despite apparently having been made by a native anglophone, shows little knowledge of firearms terminology in English or how to incorporate the original German terms as necessary within the translated text. The result is a text the informed reader is constantly having to transpose into standard terms so as to reconstruct its original meaning, and which will lead the uninformed reader to misname almost every part of a gun. Ironically, by insistently substituting literal English approximations translating for specifically German terminology it also loses much of the character of a subject intimately associated with the German lands. This is, however, the only book on the subject, and contains much valuable information, especially the penultimate section on how to decide whether a second-hand drilling is worth buying. I would love to see a revised edition, with the text expanded in places -with more coverage of typical cartridges and ballistics, for example, and of the sequence of different models produced by the principal manufacturer by dates-; with more consistent photos coverage, and most of all, re-translated, by someone who knows the subject.

Great reference book

Book is great - the pictures and the text, but falls down in that the translator obviously doesn't know anything about guns. Some terminology is way out.

One of the few books on this subject, so I bought it; but the writing is incomprehensible in some places. It was written in German and translated by someone who knew very little about firearms. The pictures are beautiful, the printing is well done, but sometimes following the text is hard, especially when he is describing technical stuff like the operation of the lockwork. Klups' main interest is in current production drillings, not the exquisite historical ones from the "Golden Era" of 1920-1940. Useful as far as it goes but not useful enough to a collector to be of more than marginal interest except for the lovely images.

Despite the occasionally-stilted syntax of the author's commentary (an understandable consequence of tutonic phraseology that did not "translate" into English very well), I am finding this book eminently interesting, and well-worth having. Having admired, and collect examples of, German combination guns-- especially drillings-- for some years, I dove into the book eagerly, when it arrived! And I was not disappointed! The author takes pains to employ photograpy and prose paired as a "team" (and he does so, proficiently), to chronological, and categorically, present evolutionary elements of design during the still-unfolding Century-plus history of this genre, he ALSO takes you "inside" the various action innovations, examining and showing you HOW they worked (or, in some cases, didn't, very well) so that you end up with a much clearer sense of why and how these unusual firearms differ from one-another so much!Definitely worth the money. Anyone who enjoys this category of arms collection will be really missing-out if they don't get a copy of this book (which, because the topic is so esoteric, was presumably published in limited quantities, and thus may not remain available for long).