When the German government bought up the controlling interest in Steyr in 1938, they made use of its production facilities to start making rifles for the Luftwaffe. Steyr had tooling for the Mauser 98, but not in K98k form – they had most recently made a Mauser-pattern carbine for Chile in 1934 (the M12/34). Under German ownership that rifle was put back into production, simply chambered for 8mm Mauser instead of the Chilean 7mm. About 50,000 in total were made between mid 1938 and the end of 1939, after which production changed to a standard K98k pattern. These rifles are known today as the G12/34 or G29(ö), and they are quite rare on the collector’s market.
Conversion
Erma/Glaser Luger .22 Rimfire Conversion
This conversion kit is lot #1713 in the upcoming Rock Island May 2019 auction. In 1927, a Berlin resident named Richard Kulisch patented a .22 rimfire conversion kit for the Luger pistol. Kulisch’s conversion used […]
Accessories
Sunday Miscellanea
A couple things that came in through the week… First up, Mark Serbu (owner of Serbu Firearms) has a neat video comparing the ATI .22 cal StG44 copy to an original StG44: Also, Leszek pointed […]
Prototype
Kraut Space Magic: the H&K G11
I have been waiting for a long time to have a chance to make this video – the Heckler & Koch G11! Specifically, a G11K2, the final version approved for use by the West German […]
You have to wonder how many of those “randomly selected bolt” bring-backs blew up on their owners, and how many local gunsmiths suddenly found themselves with a new cash cow: Headspacing bring-back Mausers.
I’d always heard warnings about needing to do this before firing one of these, but I’d no idea why. The mixed-up bolts make perfect sense, now that I know this.
Oh, to be Sam Cummings, wandering the forgotten byways of Old Europe, right after the war. Man, what you could have picked up for a song…
it would be interesting to find out what the guaging system and tolerances were at the various plants
also the process and procedures for any final chambering.
IIRC, Colvin and Viall, showed the finish chambering on united state ’03 Springfields being done by guys with finishing reamers held in carpenters hand drill braces, with the rifles assembled.
A Mauser 98 eliminates at least one of the tolerances present in a 1903; that from the breech face (cone on a Springfield) to the shoulder on the barrel.
I wonder whether the plants were able to hold the tolerances on the distance from the bolt locking seats to the bolt face
and
the tolerance from the receiver ring locking surfaces to the front of the inner collar
tight enough to allow true interchangeability on bolts, at least when they were new?
i’m not aware of any numbers on mausers, like the numbered bolt heads in number 4 lee Enfields, that would suggest an explicit matching up process during assembly
the presence of serial numbers on absolutely everything, may be an implicit suggestion but strikes me as more of a bureaucratic initiative.
a curious one
The numbering of parts comes from the time of indivdually fitting/modifying parts until they resulted in a working action. This was all done with parts still in the white (weissfertig in German).
Then the parts were blued. And to assemble the correct parts, the numbering was needed. Of course, the bean counters soon discovered the possibilities, like numbering magazines same as the weapon they belong to and so on.
One wonders how much of all that was necessary vice being a vestigial memory of that which was?
I know I was horrified to learn that an acquaintance’s family had owned a set of surplus Chilean Mauser rifles that they kept up at their hunting cabin, and used in rotation for all the extended family to hunt with during the season, and that there’d be an end-of-season get-together for them to shut the cabin down for the winter, clean the rifles and store them.
Their means for cleaning…? They detail-stripped the lot, handed out all the bolts to one kid, all the actions/barrels to another, and just randomly stuck them back together. Never had a problem, from that, in like thirty years. No idea how it all worked… They were doing that from the 1950s through to the 1980s, when all of a sudden, everyone wanted scopes on their guns, and started bringing their own.
was it us marines? who would put all of their garand or M14 bolts etc into a central bucket of solvent, before each man pulled randon bits out and scrubbing them, then each assembled them onto their rifles at random?
I think that rale came from Rayle, at the time he was working on the M14
apparently FN FAL production involved selective assembly, and the FAL would likely have had problems in that culture.
I had incessant problems with people doing exactly the same thing with their M60s and M16 rifles, both of which were bolt-matched.
Any time I caught the idjits doing that, I had to schedule another mass gauging, which 3rd Shop hated.
I had a couple of weapons failures that were probably attributable to this manifest idiocy, but I could never prove it conclusively enough to prove for judicial action, and since it reflected poorly on the commander, they always wrote it off as “bad weapon/ammunition”. Frustrating.
Part of the problem comes down to “Voodoo Training”, in that they never bothered to explain the why and wherefore of such things, only that they had to do it. Rules being for fools, to all to many, they usually just blew right past the things they’d been taught in lockstep training and did what they wanted to. It’s an endemic problem, with all military forces everywhere. You typically have larger problems with short-service conscripts from cultures where weapons-handling isn’t a thing; your average Swiss conscript is going to come in miles ahead of someone doing National Service in the UK, and who has never had a weapon in their hands before doing their time.
I knew what headspace was before I enlisted; I had a pretty good idea of what a weapon improperly gauged would do, and I knew better. Precisely zero of my peers in my entire basic training company knew anything about that, and even a couple of the drill sergeants were confused on the issue. Given that they were the sort of idjits that thought using a brass bore brush on a drill was a suitable tool for cleaning rifles at the end of a training cycle…? Yeah. Ignorance abounds, throughout most military forces. I’m amazed any of my rifles in basic training shot anywhere near point of aim, to be honest. I had three of them, because they kept changing how they issued them. From what I could tell, the muzzle crowns were all smoothbore, from all the “cleaning”.
It’s my belief that you have to include all of this when you’re making your procurement decisions; you can totally hose your small arms system by designing it for “expert” sorts of people, and failing to take into account that you’re gonna be issuing them to actual proven idjit types.
I only ever had good luck getting people to understand the reasons and rules about mixing bolts up in the immediate aftermath of a weapon malfunction, and then only for those who’d witnessed that salutary lesson in why you don’t do those things.
The average soldier has limited to no interest in weapons, believe it or not. They take what they’re issued, and that’s it. Trying to get them to take the time to learn all the details and so forth? LOL… Ain’t happening, McGee. At least, in my experience.
In 25 years of military experience in a combat arms branch of the US Army, I only ever encountered one “interested” officer that knew his stuff about firearms. He was a National Match shooter who’d been prior service enlisted and who’d made his way onto a Marksmanship Training Unit position, and from there to West Point through the Preparatory program for junior enlisted. Every other one I worked for or around? Total disinterest in weapons; they were basically stage props to them. Stage props they had no interest in understanding or really using…
I reckon one could just tell ’em that mixing bolts can cause a blow up. A few color slides in a BCT lecture might drive the point home. Nothing technical.
@Martin Tyrsegg…
Oh, my sweet summer child, who has obviously never dealt with the usual sort of lower enlisted/commissioned personnel likely to actually enlist into the armed forces…
You have no idea how these things fail to get through to the average dolt. Seriously.
I had a guy whose M16 “just blew the f*ck up” one day in training. Upper receiver gone, barrel split, magazine blew out… Whole nine yards of your typical bolt failure. Did a little digging, determined that the squad in question had some questionable cleaning practices, and from that made the natural inference that it was likely due to headspace issues. QASAS, the ammo quality control people came in, looked at the weapon and ammo, said that if this was a case of bad ammo, then it was the only cartridge out of a couple hundred thousand in that lot which had been overcharged/undercharged, whatever. So… They agreed with me that it was most likely due to headspace issues attributable to swapped bolts between worn-out rifles. Our M16A2 fleet at that point had been through several successive years of running ROTC Advanced Camp, and God alone knows what else. At the annual gauging that year, we probably coded out 15% or more of the weapons for various wear-related issues; sticking one of those bolts into a weapon that wasn’t equally worn was a disaster waiting to happen. All the lugs had sheared off the bolt when it blew up. It was pretty spectacular, that failure… The soldier it happened to was left looking like a post-dynamite cartoon character, and was lucky to keep his eyesight, given that he’d been wearing zero protective eyewear. As I remember, he was walking around with a patch on for a couple of weeks.
Commander chose not to do disciplinary action over the event since we couldn’t “prove” anything about swapped bolts. We simply did a reinforcement training session that I made as graphic as possible… Went over to the safety office, asked for all their pictures of weapons failures, and showed them, along with explaining for about the hundredth time what headspace was, and why it was important. Even had one really memorable case-study where an improperly-headspaced .50 caliber M2HB had blown up, eviscerating the gunner. The proximate victim of the event was present for all training.
Year and a half later, in an entirely different unit, I ran into that specific dolt again. Now promoted to Sergeant, he’s running his own fire team and stepping up to fill in for a senior Staff Sergeant squad leader who was filling in for the Platoon Sergeant.
What, do you suppose, caught my eye? Walking through their platoon common area, I noticed that they were doing “production line weapons cleaning”, with no regard for what parts went to which weapons…
Normally, I’d have just put a bug into the ear of whoever he worked for. In this specific case, I lost my shit–I’d lost about a week of my off-duty time to investigating what went on with that blown-up weapon and setting up the training, and here this idiot was passing on the stupid to his guys, and repeating the same crap that led to him nearly losing an eye.
Absolutely none of his chain of command backed me, and all universally failed to understand at all why the issue was important or why I’d lost my shit on him. Very nearly got a reprimand out of it all…
So, yeah… Sure. Showing some pictures in a class most trainees will likely sleep through will certainly help. Likely not, but that’s the way “The System” likes to solve problems.
That was probably the most egregious example of that sort of thing going on I can remember. That idjit just did not believe a thing he was told, didn’t learn from personal experience, and was an example of “Evolution in Action” waiting to happen. I can’t remember what happened to him in Iraq or Afghanistan, but he wound up doing a tour in both, somehow survived, and then got medically boarded out of the Army sometime before I retired. I think it was cumulative TBI/hearing loss, which did not surprise me in the least.
In my opinion, that idjit was probably a pre-existing brain-damage case before he ever enlisted. Unfortunately, he looked really good in a uniform, said all the right things, and managed to do very well on anything that required him to look soldier-like. The rest of the job, like technical skills and common sense? Not a bit of it.
hi Kirk,
ou know, I think I’ve met that guy’s English cousin…
I’ll not put too many identifying bits in. We’ll call him Shaun. he’s actually a nice guy to talk to.
He had been in the British army, but not in any role that was supposed to see combat, but The middle East didn’t bother to read that particular memo.
I know Shaun’s older brother’s best friend from school, and it looks like poor Shaun was already messed up long before the army got hold of him.
I’ve repeatedly caught him arc welding or using abrasive cutting discs on steel, without any eye, ear or hand protection.
I also chased him out of an area that was about 70ppm carbon monoxide, when our upper limit for entry was 40ppm. he’d crossed a barrier with a warning sign on it to get in there.
“Shaun, what are you doing in here, get out”
“I was just…”
“get out!”
“I was Just…”
“Get!!! Out!!!”
There are plenty more examples like that and worse. I would like to share one other, but I honestly don’t think that there’s ever been another human who would do anything so stupid. it would be equivalent to sharing his real name and all of his contact details.
Fortunately, he’s no longer my responsibility. He is free meet Mister Darwin, without me being nearby when it happens.
All of that said, I think that he’s brighter than I am.
There’s no way on earth that I could dream up some of his deeds.
So, yes, absolutely. If something can be abused, assembled incorrectly (even if it needs a hammer to do it), parts left out, parts lost, incorrect solvents or lubes used, no solvents or lubes used, lube or solvent containers filled with something totally incompatible…
it will be done.
@Keith,
There are reasons that I’m as cynical as I am about the value of any sort of IQ or IQ-adjacent testing. I also don’t put a lot of faith in training credentials, because all the really egregious idiocy I’ve encountered over the years has come from people who “Did really, really well on all the tests…” and who had “…all the right credentials and certificates…”
Idjitry is a quality that’s entirely separate from whatever the hell IQ measures. I’ve known guys who were utter and absolute dolts, according to all the tests, who still had better outcomes than the guys who were super-highly scored. Once upon a time, I had a couple of fairly even situations illustrating both: I want you to imagine a winter vehicle recovery scenario, wherein a pair of trucks were run off the road and wound up in an icy ravine. One of the events was responded to by one of the smarty-smart sorts, fully school-trained and accredited for all aspects of vehicle recovery. The other event was dealt with by a guy who came up the hard way, did not “do well on the tests”, and who hadn’t been formally trained. Although, he had spent many years as a civilian doing commercial mountain vehicle recovery somewhere along the Rockies in Idaho/Montana…
Care to guess which “event” wound up being something that our senior maintenance warrant officer wound up calling all his buddies about…? The sort of thing you want to avoid at all costs, as a junior enlisted guy, where the senior leadership that shows up spends all of its time laughing and pointing? And, calling all their buddies to come take a look at the situation you’ve gotten yourself into?
To add insult to injury, the guy that screwed it up by the numbers was, at the time, the only authorized “train the trainer” guy we had for vehicle recovery. They pulled his certs afterwards.
The other guy’s “event” was actually far worse, far more complex, but he got the wrecked vehicle up and out of where it had wound up so quickly that the only people who really knew about it all were the guys who’d put it there, and one or two others that happened to be driving by.
You tell me you “did well on the tests”, and have all the education/training? I’m gonna be watching you, until you actually demonstrate some cause for me to trust in your performance and potential. Seen too many “school-trained” actual idjits wrecking things around me, over the years.
Kirk:
Ian has said that one of the reasons for the failure of the Reising gun was that the Marines cleaned the parts together, and then just reassembled them randomly. Is this habit common in the US forces? I have always been under the impression that the soldier was responsible for cleaning his own rifle. Mixing all the parts together for cleaning and then randomly putting them together again sounds a bit like a 1970s San Francisco bathhouse, and about as safe.
Thanks John K
I couldn’t quite remember where I’d seen the info about the Marines promiscuous gun cleaning habits.
@JohnK,
I can’t speak to the rest of US armed forces, but the problem you describe isn’t as uncommon as I’d like.
I suspect that the Reising had other problems besides the hand-fit parts, but that sounds about right for an issue that might arise under those circumstances.
Weapons-cleaning in the service is often a communal affair, and the specialized tools are often in short supply, so it makes sense for people to set up ad-hoc assembly-line situations. These are fine, so long as they don’t mix the parts up.
What’s often overlooked with these things is that the actual source of the problem isn’t so much the training and the soldiers involved, but the “installed base” of unit culture/procedure: If they’ve “always done it that way”, you’re gonna have a helluva time changing things. I ain’t kidding, either… I came into a new platoon on a new assignment, and tried doing the “good leader” thing of “observe, then change things…”. First time we had our weapons out of the Arms Room, I just watched what went on, and sure as God made kittens, the squad and team leaders working for me just set the M60 gunners off to the side, and had them all work together. Which was fine, until I noted two things: One, the barrels weren’t tagged for the guns (huge no-no…) and that they were dumping all the parts in together to clean, performing the classic “Mix-master” effect.
Being in a good mood that day, and fairly charitable, I put a stop to it all, stuck my nose into the Arms Room where I noted a distinct waft of the incompetent and untrained coming off the armorer, followed by a quick trip to the First Sergeant’s office and the Commander. Immediately scheduled a mass gauging, for everything you could stick a gauge into, and some remedial training. Did my “Here’s what headspace is and why we don’t ever, ever mix up parts…” spiel, was relatively gentle about it. Problem solved, right?
Yeah. Came back out of a lengthy field exercise, got sidetracked into doing an ammo turn-in, came back to the company area, aaaaaanddd… What were my little precious darlings up to? Why, we were doing communal weapons-cleaning, again. All parts in a pile, again.
I think the top of my head about came off, and I swear, they could have heard my ass in Seoul from where I was up near the DMZ. The guys had just gone into autopilot mode, and “done what they always did” in the aftermath of an exercise, wanting to “speed things up” so that people could get to their off-duty relaxation pursuits.
They all knew better. Muscle-memory of the organizational sort took over, aaaand… There we were, requesting a second “annual gauging” within 60 days. The higher echelons were not happy with us… The thing that flat blew my mind was how that unit had somehow managed to avoid a series of headspace-related issues for the previous many, many years they’d been doing that. When the guys from Third Shop had come down that first time, they had to code out a bunch of our M16s because of that crap, and quite a few of our barrels and bolts from the M60s had to be swapped back and forth until they got weapons that would pass the gauging. Second time through, no issues found, but the problem was that I couldn’t be certain, soooo… Everyone else was just A-OK with the whole thing, apparently because they simply didn’t know any better.
There’s a distinct lack of detailed knowledge about weapons in the military. You don’t ever see people getting training on these things during the interminable “NCO development” training sessions they require, and if you tried putting something like that on the schedule, the higher authorities would likely calve. “We don’t need that; it’s not in the guidelines…”
Yeah, but they don’t know it, so… What do you want me to do about it, if I can’t train it?
The number of times in my career wherein I’d find something somewhere that’d catch my attention, and then require an infinitely deep dive into “old school crap” was disturbing. They just stopped training certain things, and the vestigial outline of it would persist, with nobody knowing what the hell it was there for… Once it enters lore, you’re screwed insofar as making the correction on it all. I’m not a huge believer in “voodoo training” where you just force-feed the student trainee with something, never explaining the why and wherefore. You can get by knowing only that P=3/8A, but it really, really helps when an out-of-ordinary situation gets thrown up such that you know why P equals that, and how it was calculated. It’s all good when you’re working within the planned parameters, but once you have to get outside the box? You’d best know the basic principles involved, or you’re not going to be able to make things happen.
It’s the difference between knowing the textbook definition of “headspace”, and then being also able to explain why a weapon with improper headspace is a problem. Most military training will tell you that headspace is important, but then the next step of “Why” gets left the hell out, and the guys will never be able to explain why that weapon over there done blew the f*ck up when they went to shoot it…
I don’t blame the troops so much as I blame the system and the senior leadership that can’t seem to recognize and properly prioritize things like actual training on these issues. It’s endemic; not only do you run into this in the US military, but just about everywhere. In the Republic of Korea Army, for example? When I observed them, back around 1990, the NCOs simply beat the hell out of anyone they observed doing something stupid, such that rote memory and Pavlovian conditioning did the job. Ask those NCOs to explain why they were doing what they were doing…? “We’ve always done it this way…” I mean, it worked, and maybe that’s all it needs to do, but I find that approach to be really offensive in terms of equipping people to go and do the unexpected they can expect to experience in modern warfare.
Kirk:
It is always interesting to hear your real world examples of why things go wrong. It sounds like trying to train cats. You would think that people who volunteer to join the army would be interested in military things like guns, but clearly not. I imagine that in the British Army 99% of recruits will do as they are told because they will never have held a gun before they joined. Maybe that makes training them easier?