Hi All,
Heres another Andys Rubbish and ramblings to suffer through. I managed to find time to get into my gun room today and extracted one of my all time favourite firearms, a Gewher 98, nothing unusual or rare aside from being a superbly designed rifle with an very smooth and robust action action that is the basis of many a fine sporting rifle.
I enjoy shooting my K98, which is a very popular service rifle based on the infamous Gew 98, the K98 is deadly accurate and kicks like a mule as it sends its 7.92mm slugs down range, the Gew 98 by comparison is a far more gentle rifle to shoot due to extra length and weight with a satisfying recoil that is far more gentle than the later K98. The Gew 98 being almost gentlemanly to shoot. Although “sustained fire” with the Gew98 is suggested to be around 12 aimed rounds a minute in theory, it wouldn’t take a lot of shooting to leave you with memorable bruising in the region of your shoulder and without appropriate hearing protection you would definitely have some serious ringing in your ears, so in actual combat conditions, as refined as these rifles are, it would be an unpleasant experience.
Just across no mans land, the “Englander’s” were armed with their equally superb SMLE rifles, the one advantage the Enfield gave the Allied forces was a ten round magazine capacity, twice that of the Gew98. It seems there were murmurings about the advantage of the ten round capacity, as a consequence a twenty round magazine was developed for the Mauser.
The 20 round magazine is an interesting arrangement which unlike a conventional magazine, replaces the entire Gew98 floor plate which can be changed out by pushing a recessed button of sorts in front of the trigger guard. Changing the floor plate out is a bit of an act as the spring the spring and floor plate remove with the base plate and the twenty round magazine has a spring and floor plate that seem to have a mind of their own. Its ok provided the retaining wedge is fitted to the magazine preventing the spring and floor plate escaping to the bottom or the trench or worse over the parapet. Once the magazine is fitted it can be charged using stripper clips, as per the five round internal magazine.
The magazine was actually rather unpopular, it altered the balance of the rifle and made it harder to maintain a low profile when being used prone or from behind cover.
The magazine fitted to the rifle depicted has the wedge and chain missing, it has also been bent slightly, there is a crack in the rifle stock at the wrist, this may have been combat damage or just rough handling post capture, either way this remains a rather fine example of a 1917 Obendorf Mauser. The magazine has been with this Gew98 since it came to New Zealand after the First World War, the rifle was presented to the Whangarei Club by a high ranking New Zealand Officer and Club member, Colonel James McCarrol.It is unknown wether James McCarrol personally souvenired this rifle or if he drew it from the NZ Military trophy poole. The rifle remained in the possession of the Whangarei Club until approximately 2019 when it was removed from its display case where it had remained largely untouched since originally being presented , this was unfortunately due to changes in our legislation.
The two magazines depicted are both Junghans made examples, Junghans magazines are apparently much less encountered as opposed to their Bing made counterparts. Are they scarce? Yes they are a fairly hard item to find, occasionally ground dug examples turn up on ebay and there have been a tremendous amount of reproductions made to fuel the Reenactor market. Including versions with Imperial German proof marks, just to make things harder for would be collectors. I believe a give away with the reproductions is the shape of the floor plate, the originals having more rounded corners.