Today we have a disassembly video for you – we were fortunate enough to be given access to one of the very few Gerät 03 rifles ever made. The Gerät 03 was the first effective roller-locked shoulder rifle, built essentially by replacing the operating mechanism of a Gewehr 43 rifle. It was originally intended to become the standard-issue, but the focus of Germany’s arms development ended up changing to the 7.92×33 cartridge instead of the 7.92×57.
For a comprehensive history of the Gerät 03 and the rest of its family of roller-locked firearms, the best resource is Blake Stevens’ Full Circle: A Treatise on Roller Locking
Superb work – thank you for your work on this.
A very interesting Firearm prototype,
i seen it in book Hitlers Garands,this model maybe was half milled but if you see closer at end where safety mechanism mounts or trigger guard screw goes in this piece shows some spaces and reciever housing plates goes over it..
this called simple machinework process..
First plates getting milled with machine than some trunions goes on middle and everything get neather rivited or spot welded..
I was work On one of my projects and this is exactly what i was doing a full or spot weld..
A trunion or Barrel extension is a main base of reciever where barrel get mounts,well there is a lot similarities between G43 and Garet 03,both of them have grooves in reciever for bolt locking support…
G43 have a locking flaps in bolt which will enter in specific area of reciever and during fire those flaps would be lock in this area,while firing under pressure firing pin housing moves backward along side with front recoil spring and unlock locking flaps and bolt moves backward along with bolt carrier…
Garet 03 have rollers instead flaps but contest is identical,VZ58,VZ52 and Walther p38 have a locking block instead which will enter its own locking grooves in reciever or frame…
For example MG42 also have thats kind of rollers which under pressure of recoil spring those rollers will unlock in barrel extension and release a firing pin…
In one word those things called locking devices for bolt mechanism,i dont know about Garet 03 very much but about G43 systems I really knows how it work…
GREAT video !!! A lot of interesting information about such a rare gun!!! Thank you!
I wonder if it has flutes in chamber like HK G3 (Revelli flutes)? I guess it doesn’t need to have, because it’s not a roller delayed blowback , but a gas operated gun, so there must be no need to support extraction.
Sorry for the late reply, but the Tokarev SVT 40 has flutes. It still tends to tear rims off cartridges. I do not know if its predecessors the SVT 38 and Simonov AVS 36 are likewise fluted.
Great informative video that I enjoyed watching. Thank you.