by Tom Gaylord
Writing as B.B. Pelletier
Hammerli model 100 free pistol.
- Hammerli or Haemmerli?
- Hammerli 100
- What’s free about it?
- Martini action
- The side lever
- Trigger
- Special grips
Hammerli or Haemmerli?
Before we dive in to today’s report, a word about the spelling I have used. It is incorrect. The correct spelling of the Swiss firm uses an umlaut (two small dots) over the letter a (ä). Since the English alphabet doesn’t have umlauts, in our language the letter e follows the a — sometimes kerned closely to it. The umlaut sounds like a diphthong (aha! caught you napping in English class, didn’t we?) that most native English-speakers have difficulty pronouncing. The letter e forces our way of saying it as close as English speakers can normally come to the correct German pronunciation. That’s okay, though — most Germans cannot pronounce Connecticut, and Brits all get aluminum wrong. And, this discussion is superfluous, since almost all American shooters pronounce it Hammerelli, anyway.