Antonio Zoli shotguns (success story)
The history of the Zoli family directly relates to the history of the Valtrompia region and its weapon-making traditions. Records show that Zoli's ancestors were building castles as early as 1490 and began producing firearms shortly thereafter. Giovanni Zoli produced a flintlock pistol around 1850, and the pistol is now in a private family collection.
The Antonio Zoli company was founded immediately after World War II by Antonio Zoli. The founder, driven by the desire to produce double-barreled hunting firearms, the over/under, is a typical weapon for the Brescia region, and started a business that made his own name and the company's brand known throughout the world.
It's no surprise that Zoli from Italy has an excellent reputation. The company has a 400-year history of gun manufacturing in Brescia, and its 40 employees demonstrate a passion and enthusiasm for their work that helps their owner and his products stand out in an increasingly crowded market.
1950s.
The company began producing hammer side by side shotguns (AVI and Santa Barbara models), Anson-Type over and under shotguns (Ariete, Empire and Silver Fox models) and Holland & Holland - type side by side shotguns (the prestigious Vulcano model in three versions - Standard, Record and Record ELM). In the late 50s, legislation introduced Anson-type over and under shotguns (Delfino model) and H&H over and under shotguns with Merkel-type locking systems.
1960s.
In the early 60s, the ZOLI brand was known and appreciated in every market, not only for the quality, but also for the uniqueness of the weapons produced, which could be distinguished from the most traditional Italian products available at that time. During this period, ZOLI was the first company in the world to produce replica black powder cannons and created a completely new market. This ceased in the late 70s after more than 200,000 units were produced, mostly for America. Zouave, Mississippi, J.P. Murray, Duck, Harper's Ferry and Sharps were the most successful products reminiscent of the American Civil War era.
The Delfino line gave the company its best international recognition, but it was with the production of shotgun/rifle combination shotguns and rapid-fire rifles that Zoli earned the reputation for quality and accuracy that he has known ever since. ZOLI was the first Italian company to produce combination shotguns and rifles that could compete with the products of renowned Austrian and German manufacturers and be appreciated by customers throughout Europe.
1970s.
Times were changing quickly and by the end of the 70s Giuseppe Zola decided to modernize the Delfino O/U line. He radically changed the mechanism and moved away from the top clasp to use a more traditional bolt-on locking system.
Delfino has been replaced by Ritmo. The Ritmo line consisted of smoothbore shotguns and combination shotguns and shotguns. Thousands of units were built from the late 70s to the early 2000s.
1980s.
In the early 80s, only very few manufacturers in the world produced as many different products as ZOLI. From O/U shotguns and hunting side-by-side shotguns to more and less rifles, side-by-side rifles and shotgun/rifle combinations. However, Giuseppe Zoli decided to introduce a bolt-action rifle and called it the AZ 1900. ZOLI was the first Italian company to make a bolt-action rifle, using the experience of making thousands of rifled barrels. Thousands of az1900 bolt action rifles have been produced in both hunting and Varmint versions to this day.
1990s.
In the early '90s, ZOLI's success was so great and its sales network was expanding so quickly that the company decided to design and engineer a drilled model called the MG-92. The project presented a real challenge for the company, which had to compete with well-established manufacturers from Central and Eastern Europe. But drilling has been very successful since it was launched, and it is still in production today. ZOLI is the only three-barrel (two smooth barrel and one rifled barrel) drill ever produced in Italy.
It is because of this rich history that Zoli can now proudly be called one of the few companies offering a wide range of prestigious shotguns that are designed and manufactured in their own factory.
The material was prepared based on data from the website premiumgun.ru
The oldest Italian gun brand?
Everyone knows the famous Italian weapon brand Beretta. The modern generation knows it thanks to cinema; in action films, this brand of weapon is often mentioned. Officially, Beretta appeared in 1526 and many probably believe that it is the oldest Italian arms brand. However, as it turned out, there is a family in Italy that has several generations of gunsmiths, and their roots stretch back to 1490. This is the Zoli brand, which at the moment is rightfully considered premium.
Official serial industrial production of premium quality weapons by Antonio Zoli Spa begins after the end of the Second World War. Its founder is Antonio Zoli
, who was born in 1905 and already had weapons roots. The fact is that his father Giuseppe made flintlock guns in his workshop in the small village of Magno, province of Brescia. This place was famous for the fact that several families of gunsmiths made weapons there, among others was the Zoli family. It was Brescia, in the Middle Ages, that was considered the weapons center of Italy.
But let's go back to the very beginning. In the 14th century, Magno was highly regarded as a manufacturer of weapons intended for the governments of Venice, Piedmont and Naples. It is known from archival research that the Zoli family was already active in Magno in 1490, where they were closely associated with local crafts, supporting the first arquebus makers, artisans who, in the first decades, created firearms with extreme precision. In the following centuries, the prestige of the Zoli family was further strengthened, so much so that in 1845 Giovanni Zoli
became the famous creator of silicon weapons.
The Zoli family could have continued to be excellent gunsmiths and work for the benefit of other arms companies, but thanks to their son Giovanni, their family name has become a separate brand.
Thus, Antonia Zoli, having rejected a number of offers from other arms companies, started his own business in October 1945. In the post-war period, at the peak of the crazy demand for weapons, in a short time the Zoli company became a reliable and rapidly developing enterprise in the area.
To beat our partners in the market, innovative solutions were needed. Thus, Zoli became the first weapons company in the world to introduce silver welding of barrels into the mass production of combination shotguns and tees. Usually this method is used in the production of very expensive hunting rifles, but Antonio Zoli decided to have the barrels welded with silver on inexpensive basic models, since this method has many advantages.
The company then changed its approach, thanks to the input of Antonio's sons, and expanded its product line. Which gave a new impetus to improving the quality of products and conquering new heights of the arms market. This gave excellent results. For hunting rifles, consisting of high-quality parts, in accordance with the classical parameters used by gunsmiths, production included the production of smoothbore shotguns, hammered or hammerless, double-barreled with vertical and horizontal barrels.
One of the most epochal events in the history of the company was 1956. The Antonio Zoli Spa company began to conquer a different area of the market. For the first time in history, Antonio Zoli craftsmen have recreated replicas of antique barreled guns.
To increase sales, the company set a course for conquering the United States of America. It would seem that this is madness, given the fact that it is virtually impossible to compete with Winchesters and Remingtons. But Zoli focused on replicas, or more precisely on weapons from the American Civil War, as well as replicas of breech-loading pistols. Thus, the company received fantastic profits in a market that seemed closed to them.
The replica direction continues to this day because the demand for the replica is very high. At the same time, the company did not forget about the European market, where, for example, it modified the Norwegian carbine of 1900 Husqvarna 1900, receiving the name AZ1900
, became a hit, which was appreciated by the Norwegians themselves. Zoli has revised its approach to the production of individual spare parts, thanks to which the quality of weapons has increased many times, as has the demand for them. This carbine is still in production and can be purchased in Russia.
In the early 90s, the Zoli company reached its peak, sales grew, new outlets opened, and the company decided to release another new product. MG-92 were born
. It was a bold decision, because... had to compete with leading arms companies from central and eastern Europe. But the Italians coped with this competition. They managed to achieve the low weight design (weight approximately 3.45 kg), which was the main problem of drilling, while maintaining the forged steel receiver. The company also seriously worked on the mechanical filling and the model became recognizable on the market. Moreover, on the Italian market, Zoli became the only one who produced three-barreled (two smooth barrels and one rifled) weapons.
The company's growth was not limited to the production of weapons products for hunters and Zoli began to develop the sports shooting industry. In various shooting disciplines, Zoli shotguns showed amazing results, which prompted the company to create the production of custom shotguns and gun lovers had the opportunity to fulfill the most sophisticated requests.
As for the main assortment, Zoli produces a whole series of weapon lines - Columbus Gold, Corona and Taiga. You can read more about them on the website of one of our members of the gunsmiths' union - the Kolchuga company
, and also, if desired, purchase.
Zoli is an example of how a family tradition craft, with maximum attention to detail, develops into a serious business that captures the hearts of many hunting and sporting enthusiasts.
All photos are taken from the official Zol website .
Antonio Zoli Drilling
Tees, or drillings.
The task of describing tees in the “up to 5000” category is simple, there is only one here, Antonio Zoli Drilling. By the way, as far as I know, Zoli is the only manufacturer of tees in the world, with the exception of German and Austrian ones (TsKIB with model 140 does not count, due to the limited production). In general, the classic tee, which has two smooth and one rifled barrel, in many ways personifies the same desire for universalization as the German cops. Obviously, the appearance of this type of weapon was dictated to a greater extent by the classic German manhunt, in which you can often shoot everything from a red deer to a hare. This is where a combination of shot, buckshot and slug comes in handy.
On the other hand, the understanding of a tee as an exclusively universal weapon for running hunting in the vast expanses of our Fatherland seems to me rather strained, primarily due to the cost of tees, and is usually incompatible with the social stratum of our population that allows itself to go hunting. But there are exceptions to every rule, so let’s move on to the descriptive part.
The Italian in question is a fairly simple, classic model, with a soldered block of barrels and mainsprings of smooth barrels, cocked when this block is broken, just like in a regular double-barreled shotgun. Cocking the mainspring of a rifled barrel using a gate. Safety and gate on the neck of the stock. The trigger is double-trigger, with a rifled/smooth barrel switch on the front trigger. The block is locked in a single manner, with a bar on a groove in the breech of the block.
The tee has smooth barrels only in 12/70 caliber with fixed choke constrictions of 0.5 and 1.0 mm. The length of the barrel block is 600mm. Rifled barrel calibers 6.5x57R; 7x65R; 8x57IRS; .30-06 and 9.3x74R.
There are good and, at the same time, relatively inexpensive branded insert barrels in calibers .22Horn; .5.6x50RMag and 5.6x52R Savage, however, importing them into Russia not at the same time as drilling itself is a slippery business. However, imported with the weapon itself, the insert barrel significantly expands the tee's capabilities in terms of versatility.
The rear sight is folding, that is, aiming without optics can be carried out in the classic rifle way, the rear sight and front sight, or, for shot shooting, we fold the rear sight and get a sighting bar free from the rear sight. There are standard, although rather expensive, quick-release brackets for optics.
The sample in question has a relatively small weight for a tee, only 3.3-3.5 kg, depending on the caliber of the rifled barrel and the quality of the nut.
I shot from this tee only once, and at 100m the 8x57IRS rifled barrel showed an accuracy of about 2.5MOA out of five shots, which is quite a decent result for this type of weapon.
Comparison of weapon types
If you are thinking about which rifle system to choose, you should keep the following in mind.
Leaving the quality of workmanship out of the equation, that is, taking it as equal and good, the same for all samples, and considering only the design advantages and disadvantages of the weapon, we can say that carbines with bolt action will be the most accurate. They are, rather, the most reliable from a technical point of view and lightweight. However, they do not always have good agility (for long samples) and rate of fire.
All other things being equal, self-loading carbines have the highest (after the second shot in front of the rifle and the first in front of the bolt gun) rate of fire, which makes it possible to compensate in a certain way for errors in aiming due to the second or third shot.
When shooting offhand, as well as when firing a quick second shot, fittings are good; they, to a greater extent than all the other weapons listed, correspond to the concept of a weapon for “proper hunting.”
Vertical fittings often hit more accurately than horizontal fittings due to the lack of rotational moment relative to the vertical axis. Horizontal rifles break when reloading at a smaller angle, which contributes to its speed.
In certain types of hunting, for example in a den, the nitroexpress rifle has few competitors among rifled weapons.
The combined weapon is the most versatile, allowing you to shoot both a hazel grouse with shot and a bear with a bullet from a large-caliber rifled barrel. However, this weapon is the heaviest among all others, and the process of firing a second shot from a rifled barrel is lengthy.
