Sunday Smith #11: Model 34, 1957

"Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag,
And smile, smile, smile!"

Once upon a time, everybody knew what a kit bag was. The lyrics above were from a World War One marching ditty that was later used for the title and theme song of a Laurel and Hardy film released in 1932. At the time, S&W had been without a truly "packable" .22 caliber revolver for over a decade, since the tiny "M-Frame" Ladysmith had been discontinued in 1921 which left the "Bekeart Models", with their 6" barrels and target stocks, as the only small-frame .22 revolvers in the catalog

Three years after the release of Pack Up Your Troubles, Smith released the .22/.32 Kit Gun. With its round butt grip profile and 4" barrel, this little .22 revolver on the .32-sized I-Frame was perfect for tossing in your kit bag for camping, hunting, fishing, or hiking. The little gun was extremely popular, and continued in production after WWII with a 2" barreled version added to the lineup. In time, the excess screws in the frame were dropped, the gun went to a coil mainspring, and was eventually moved to the larger "J-Frame" platform. S&W has abandoned the small steel-frame .22 revolver market to Taurus these days, but old Kit Guns are still extremely popular and increasingly coveted as plinkers, and the 2-inch guns make excellent "understudy" pieces for .38 caliber snubbies used for self-defense.

The pictured piece was made in 1957 and is therefore not a romantic "Kit Gun", but rather a prosaic "Model 34" (Such a difference a change in nomenclature can make!) It still shows many vintage Smith traits, such as the "diamond" grips (safely stored away for this photo), the 'flat latch' cylinder release, and the fact that it was made on the old "Improved I-Frame", which is the smaller, older frame size with the newer coil mainspring. It was purchased in "Like New In Box" condition back in early '03 for $375, which was about right for the gun's condition. Even given that it's been shot since then, the fact that it has the box and has suffered no finish wear means it's a sound investment. Look for prices on Kit Guns to range from $225-250 for a mediocre postwar piece to a couple of grand for a pristine prewar with all accoutrement. If you're not sure what you're looking at, it pays to get the help of a more experienced collector before plunking down the green for this most excellent of plinkers.

Sunday Smith #10: Model 1955 .45 Target, 1956

During World War One, the shortage of M1911 semiautomatic pistols forced the US Army to seek alternative handguns. One source they turned to was Smith & Wesson, who adapted their large N-frame hand ejectors to fire the standard military .45ACP round, using spring steel "moon clips" to allow the revolver's ejector to work with the rimless autopistol cartridges.

The revolvers were popular on the surplus market into the post-WWII era, and were sometimes converted into target pistols by their owners by the simple expedient of installing a set of adjustable sights. Smith & Wesson got into that market themselves in 1950, offering a version of the big .45ACP revolver with S&W's fine micro-adjustable factory target sights, as well as an oversized target trigger and hammer and large, hand-filling target stocks.

For 1955, a new model was added, referred to as the "1955 .45 Target Model". The standard barrel was a 6.5" untapered heavy barrel, giving a slightly nose-heavy feel in the hand and further dampening the recoil of the .45ACP, already mild in the big-frame Smith. After only two years of production, Smith and Wesson went to model numbers instead of the old name designations, and the "1955 .45 Target Model" became the "Model 25".

The revolver pictured above dates to 1956, one of those early pre-Model Number guns, and was purchased at a dealer in Spring of '05 for $425, which even at the time was well under market value. It was just sitting unnoticed in his showcase, surrounded by newer and flashier long-barreled stainless guns. Even the most wretched specimen of this 5-screw target N-frame will fetch almost $300, and a completely pristine example with box & docs could bring a grand or more at auction. Look for street prices in the $600-$700 range on an excellent condition shooter like the pictured example.

(For those just thinking about getting into S&W collecting, the finding of this gun is an example of why it's fun. This was "Corvette in a barn" stuff; the kind of find that has a Smith nut laying awake with the sweats the night before a gun show...)

Sunday Smith #9: .38 Military & Police, 1953

After introducing their new Hand Ejector design to the market in 1896 chambered for a .32 caliber round, Smith & Wesson was quick to scale up the basic design to accommodate .38 caliber cartridges in order to go after lucrative government contracts. In 1899 Smith began making the new, larger revolver, calling it the "Military & Police". One hundred and seven years later, they haven't stopped.

Although largely replaced by semiautomatics in this day and age, for the better better part of a century the M&P was the police handgun in the United States and many other countries as well. It served the U.S. military and our allies in WWII and many conflicts thereafter. It has served as the basic platform for a host of variants in every caliber and configuration imaginable. It is still seen in the holsters of security guards and the occasional cop even today.

In 1899 the Wright Brothers were still four years away from their flight at Kitty Hawk. General Electric wouldn't patent the tungsten-filament light bulb for another seven years, and it would be nine years before Henry Ford built his first Model T. And the Military & Police revolver from Smith & Wesson has been in constant production, largely unchanged, for the entire time and is just as effective now as it was then. If there is a more enduringly successful piece of industrial design, I'm sure not aware of it.

The pictured revolver was made in 1953, before the evocative "Military & Police" moniker was replaced by the sterile designation "Model 10" when S&W went to model numbers rather than names for their handguns in 1957. About the same time, Smith deleted the upper sideplate screw and the screw in the frame ahead of the trigger guard as being superfluous. As a result, pre-'57 guns (referred to as "Five Screws") command prices that are spiraling steadily upwards. It was purchased in excellent condition, complete with the gold-foil covered box, at a gun show in '03 for $275, and has appreciated rather handily since then. With the box, a revolver like this could bring close to $400 in today's market.

Not bad for a gun that originally sold for under fifty bucks.

Schmidt-Rubin Gew. 96/11: Like a Swiss watch.

The Swiss Vetterli, so outré in 1869, was beginning to look a little long in the tooth only a few short years later. By the mid-1870s, Switzerland's continental neighbors were fielding bolt-action designs like the Mauser Gew.71 and the Gras Mle.1874 which, while still single shots, fired modern centerfire black powder cartridges with ballistic performance that eclipsed the now-quaint-looking stubby little rimfire round chambered by the Vetterli.

Rifle performance at the time was limited largely by the bullet itself. Above certain velocity and pressure thresholds, the paper-patched lead bullets of the time just left smears of soft lead that quickly filled the rifling. By the early 1880s, Swiss engineers led by a Major Eduard Rubin were investigating the possibilities offered by enclosing the lead bullet in a protective jacket of copper alloy. They soon discovered that a smaller diameter bullet, 7.5mm versus the then-common 11mm, enclosed in a copper/zinc alloy jacket and seated over a compressed black powder charge could offer a much flatter trajectory and longer effective range than any current military round. The limiting factor was now the powder, as the residues from black powder charges would quickly foul such a small bore.

Schmidt-Rubin Gew.96/11. Photo by Oleg Volk

Meanwhile, also in the early 1880s, another Swiss Major by the name of Rudolf Schmidt was hard at work on a rifle design with a straight-pull bolt action, which was submitted to the army for trials. Unlike contemporary Mannlicher straight-pull designs, which used interaction between an inner bolt and outer bolt sleeve to manipulate a vertically-hinged locking wedge, Schmidt's design used a bolt handle connected to an operating rod; a lug on this rod traveled in a helical track on the outer bolt sleeve causing it to rotate the locking lugs in and out of alignment. Spurred by neighboring nations starting to adopt tube-fed repeating rifles, trials commenced using a combination of Major Rubin's cartridge designs, along with an innovative loading system using disposable chargers, and the straight-pull rifle designed by Schmidt. The leisurely pace of the testing was sped up when the French shocked the world by the adoption of the Mle.1886 Lebel, with its small bore smokeless cartridge.



LEFT: Disposable paper and tin charger holding six rounds of 7.5x55 Swiss. Based on the original charger loader designed by Major Rubin in the 1880s. Photo by Oleg Volk.








By 1890, the Swiss equipped their troops with the Schmidt rifle chambered in a stopgap "semi-smokeless" loading and designated the Gew.1889. Unfortunately, the original rifle design turned out to be somewhat of a stopgap, too. Its locking lugs were located at the rear of the bolt sleeve, which necessitated not only a very long receiver, but also severely limited the amount of pressure the rifle could safely stand. The GP90 cartridge (GP = Gewehr Patrone, or rifle cartridge), with its 211gr round-nosed iron jacketed and paper patched bullet pushed by a semi-smokeless propellant, only generated about 37,500psi of chamber pressure; about all the Gew.1889 could take. Improvements were clearly needed, and by 1896 a new variant with an action strengthened by the virtue of moving the locking lugs to the front of the bolt sleeve was put into service and designated the Gew.89/96.



RIGHT: Detail of the action. Clearly visible is the helical track on the bolt sleeve, as well as the rear edge of one of the locking lugs which are at the forward edge of the sleeve. The cocking handle is Bakelite. The grooves atop the receiver are lightening cuts. Photo by Oleg Volk.





Fortified with a stronger rifle, work began on a new cartridge. By 1911, the Swiss army adopted a modern cupro-nickel jacketed spire point 174gr bullet. Fired from a rifle-length barrel the new GP11 round offered an amazing 600 foot-per-second advantage over the old GP90, and while production ramped up on the new Gew.1911 rifles, old Gew.89/96 rifles were converted to the new Gew.96/11 standard. (The original Gew.1889 was, obviously, unsuited for conversion, as the 45k+ chamber pressures of the new round would turn the older design into a clumsily long pipe bomb.)

LEFT: Detail of the muzzle end. Note the upturned stacking rod tip to minimize the chances of snagging on underbrush, and the hinged barrel band secured by a screw so as to keep it from crushing the stock onto the free-floated barrel. Photo by Oleg Volk.


The 96/11, like the example shown here which was originally produced at Solothurn in 1900, exhibits the craftsmanship one would expect from a rifle made by the Swiss. The barrel bands are piano-hinged and tensioned with screws, rather than just being slid on and retained with leaf springs like most rifles. The walnut stock was carefully inlet to float the barrel and was prevented from swelling and touching the barrel at the muzzle end by a metal collar insert that surrounded the barrel. 89/96 rifles being brought up to 96/11 standards had pistol grips expertly inlet into their stocks in a display of woodworking skill rarely found on nice furniture these days.


RIGHT: Closeup showing the ring-type safety/decocker and the exquisite inletting of the pistol grip into the existing stock. Photo by Oleg Volk.





The rear sight, in keeping with the doctrines of the time, was graduated to 2,000 meters. Windage adjustments could be made by an armorer drifting the dovetailed front sight, which was unprotected by wings or a hood. The 96/11 replaced the 12 round magazine of earlier rifles with a 6 round magazine that protruded less and didn't interfere with carrying the rifle at the balance. The magazine cutoff, an archaic device intended to keep troops from "wasting ammunition", was also discarded on the newer rifles. Like all other rifles based on the Schmidt design, the 96/11 used a large ring on the rear of the striker as a combination safety/decocker, and it could also be used to cock the rifle for another try at a hard primer.

Though its length and weight betrayed its 19th Century origins, the Gew.96/11 and Gew.1911 served their country as frontline rifles until the 1930s, when they were relegated to reserve status with the adoption of the K31 carbine. Many remained in the hands of reservists well into the era of the automatic rifle before being sold off as surplus. The older Schmidt-Rubins are not seen anywhere near as often on the US collector scene as the recently-surplussed K31. Whereas older Gew.89 and 89/96 rifles are handloader-only curiosities, the 96/11 can handle modern Swiss 7.5x55, which can be found in surplus GP11 form as well as in commercial loadings from FNM, Wolf, Norma, and others. Prices for a good 96/11 can range anywhere from roughly $100 for an ugly one to as much as $400 for one in outstanding condition. Along with Finnish Mosins, the Swiss Schmidts are some of the most accurate bolt action military rifles ever made, and fortunate is the collector who gets his or her hands on a nice one.

Sunday Smith #8: .38/44 Heavy Duty, 1936

During the days of Prohibition, lucrative profits to be made in the alcohol business led to increasing sophistication among the gangs who trafficked in it. Bullet-resistant body armor had made great strides in the trenches of France during the Great War, and was adopted by some gangsters. More significantly, the widespread availability of the automobile meant that the new criminals were fleeing crime scenes behind sheet metal auto bodies moving at 40, 50, or even an astounding 60 miles per hour. With longer ranges and harder targets becoming more common, law enforcement began to find that the .32 S&W Long, .38 S&W, and even the newer .38 Special were inadequate for their needs.

Smith & Wesson responded by developing a new .38 S&W Special round, loaded to much higher muzzle velocities. This gave a flatter trajectory at longer ranges as well as more punch against hard targets, and was referred to in marketing as the ".38 Super Police". It was soon apparent that this round would be detrimental to long service life in their .38 (or "K") frame revolvers, and so the large .44 (or "N") frame revolvers were adapted to shoot the smaller bore round. The new large-frame .38/44 revolvers were introduced to the market in 1930 and 1931, respectively, as the "Heavy Duty" (fixed sight) and "Outdoorsman" (adjustable sight) models, and these were a key stepping stone to the development of the .357 Magnum cartridge in 1935.

The revolver pictured above has led a colorful life. It was manufactured in 1936 as a fixed-sight ".38/44 Heavy Duty". At some time a "Mr. Middleton" purchased it and, after the war, sent it to Jim Clark in Louisiana to be transformed into a Bullseye gun. Adjustable sights from Micro were expertly fitted, the hammer spur was gas-welded up from a narrow projection into a wide and finely checkered pad that juts noticeably to the left for ease of thumb-cocking, and the trigger was tuned to a fare-thee-well. Lastly, the owner had his name etched in nicely-done cursive letters on the sideplate. After he passed away shortly after the millennium, his gun languished in a trade-in case at a gun shop before I found it, passed over by kids who didn't know what they were looking at.

Smith made just over 11,000 .38/44 Heavy Duties before WWII, and even an ugly one with issues will bring close to $200. For a really nice example, expect to pay $800 or more and (as with all pre-war Smiths,) if it's Like-New-In-Box with the tools and whatnot, the sky's the limit at an auction.

Sunday Smith #7: .38 Regulation Police, 1928

Realizing that not everyone would accept the .32 Regulation Police as a viable sidearm, Smith & Wesson released a parallel model at the same time. The small I-frame was able to accept a five shot cylinder chambered for the .38 S&W cartridge, originally introduced back in the 1870s in their top-break revolver line, and so a .38 Regulation Police only made sense. While the .38 S&W, which in its most common smokeless incarnation launched a 145 grain bullet at something just less than 700 feet per second, is not considered to be a serious defensive cartridge nowadays, at the time it was considered perfectly adequate, and was in fact adopted by Great Britain as their standard service handgun cartridge (albeit with a heavier bullet.)

The .38 Regulation Police was never Smith's strongest seller, with less than 55,000 copies sold between its introduction in 1917 and its first cancellation in 1940. While Smith did bring it back into production after the war and it was made as the "Model 33" as late as 1969, it's not the most common gun on the used gun market today. Still, like most I-frames, it is considerably cheaper than the larger-framed revolvers of the same vintage.

The blued example in the above photo, a good condition shooter with honest cosmetic wear and a dark bore with mild pitting, but good mechanicals and matching numbers, was made in 1928. It was picked up at a gun show in late 2003 for $190 and while it has appreciated a small amount since then, similar examples can be turned up for $200-ish still. A really outstanding prewar example might run over $400, possibly well over $400 if it has a matching box and all accoutrement.

The vz 52 rifle: Handy hybrid.

When the new nation of Czechoslovakia was born after the end of WWI, they received two important gifts from the vanquished nations. From the Austro-Hungarian war machine came the Imperial arsenal at Brno, which became the new Czech State Arsenal in 1919. From the defeated Germans came the tooling and licenses to build Mauser rifles. Given something to build and a place to build it, the industrious Czechs wasted no time in setting up an arms industry that was competitive with any in the world. Of course, this prize asset made their much larger neighbor to the north eye them greedily, and the Czech arms industry was one of the plums with which the Germans walked away from the table at Munich.

vz 52 rifle. Photo by Oleg Volk.

Like most factories in occupied Europe, the Czech factories spent the first part of the war turning out arms for their German occupiers and the last part getting bombed flat by the Western Allies. Compared to the utter devastation in Germany, Italy, and Poland, however, the Czechs were in remarkably good shape after the war, and quickly set about re-equipping their army with modern weapons, including a brand new self-loading rifle: The vz 52 (vz being the abbreviation for “vzor”; Czech for “type” or “model”.) The Czech arms industry had a tradition of quality and innovation, and the vz 52 was no exception. Designed using experiences gathered during WWII, it was a rifle that spanned two eras: Its full-length wood stock, intricately machined steel receiver, and semi-automatic operation wouldn't have been out of place in the 1930s, while its intermediate cartridge and detachable box magazine looked towards the future.

LEFT: Detail of receiver and magazine. Photo by Oleg Volk.

The trigger mechanism and safety are nearly identical to that of the American Garand, while the gas system utilizes a short-stroke annular piston derived from that of Germany's Walther self-loading rifles. The bolt is a tipping design, much like the contemporary Belgian and Russian autoloading rifles, but utilises lugs at the front of the bolt, rather than at the rear. Other features included a side-folding knife bayonet and unique double buttplates, with the outer one being a replaceable thin steel shell that protects the inner one from damage. The proprietary Czech cartridge, 7.62x45mm, is roughly the ballistic equivalent to the Soviet 7.62x39mm M43 round. The whole package makes for a handy little carbine, slightly smaller than the Russian SKS, and a fair bit handier in the bargain.

RIGHT: Side-folding knife bayonet. Photo by Oleg Volk.

Interestingly, the rifle was released as part of a whole suite of new infantry weapons in the early '50s by the Czechs, who hoped to get foreign currency in exchange. The weapons included an innovative pistol that used a roller-locking short recoil action to tame the potent 7.62x25mm Tokarev round, a general-purpose machine gun that was simply a belt-fed update of the proven Bren gun (another famous Czech design), and an innovative submachine gun featuring a bolt that telescoped around the breech and a magazine well integral with the pistol grip: both novel features that made for a compact weapon, and both features that would be cheerfully plagiarized by Uziel Gal when he "designed" his famous Uzi.

With this cornucopia of small-arms technical excellence poured at their feet, it is somehow unsurprising that the Soviets ignored it, and instead forced their own far cruder designs on the nascent Warsaw Pact. Meanwhile, most of the Czech weapons faded into undeserved obscurity, with sales slumping since both superpowers were essentially giving guns away to third-world nations who promised to be on their team. As a result, vz 52’s have turned up in the oddest corners of the world, flotsam and jetsam of the global arms market; they’ve been encountered in the hands of terrorists in Lebanon and Cuban “advisors” in Grenada.

The CZ52 pistol is well-known to American shooters, having been imported in droves over the last five years or more. Its companion rifle is a little less recognizable, and many of those coming in recently have been barely shootable junkers. Most of the rifles have been painted with an ugly black substance bearing a remarkable resemblance to pickup truck bed liner, and these seem to run for $100 or maybe a little less, but a nice clean one could fall into the $200-$300 range. Loaded factory 7.62x45 ammunition for the vz 52 is scarce; the only source I could find online was Buffalo Arms. Unfortunately, their brass is known for splitting case necks, so for properly annealed, reloadable 7.62x45 brass, the source is Gewehr 98 of the blog Neural Misfires. His brass is correctly annealed and reports have casings lasting through ten reloadings or more.

Sunday Smith #6: .44 Hand Ejector Second Model, 1921

Smith & Wesson followed up the release of the .32 Hand Ejector in 1896 with a larger-framed .38 Hand Ejector in 1899 and a diminutive .22 Hand Ejector in 1902. The top-break .44 Double Action Frontier, however, was forced to soldier on as the only big-bore entry in Smith's catalog until 1907, when it was joined by the .44 Hand Ejector, also known as the New Century. To go with the new gun, S&W created a new chambering: .44 Smith & Wesson Special, which was derived from the old .44 Russian cartridge, but featured a lengthened case to prevent it from being used in any older black powder top-breaks.

The new big bore Hand Ejector contained a couple of traits that distinguished it from its smaller siblings. The cylinder crane featured a third locking point, in addition to the one at the rear of the cylinder and at the front of the ejector rod, causing the guns to sometimes be referred to as "Triple Locks". The most visually distinctive feature was the shroud under the barrel that protected the ejector rod from damage. These revolvers were assembled and finished with great care, and are considered by some to be among the finest revolvers ever made by anyone.

Even in the good old days, however, Smith was never averse to a bit of cost cutting. When it was realized that both the third locking lug and the ejector rod shroud (the latter being an especially tricky and time consuming addition to the barrel machining process) could be abandoned without any real effect on the gun's performance, Smith did so, introducing the newer and more spartan version as the .44 Hand Ejector 2nd Model in 1915. The newer design remained in Smith's lineup until 1940, when it was dropped due to the demands of turning out wartime M&P's.

Standard barrel length on the .44 Hand Ejector 2nd Model was 6.5", although both 4" and 5" barrels could be had as well. The vast majority were chambered for .44 Special; out of over 17,000 manufactured, only about 1,300 were chambered in .44-40 or .45 Colt, and these will bring a substantial premium today. The guns were available in both blued and nickel finishes, and with fixed or target sights. Checked walnut stocks were standard, and most had a lanyard loop on the butt, a popular feature for a large holster gun in that time. Production was halted for 1918 and 1919 due to the war effort, and resumed towards the end of 1920.

The above example, a nickel 6.5" .44 Hand Ejector 2nd Model, sports period mother of pearl stocks, and the serial number indicates that it was the 472nd revolver built after Smith resumed production in 1920. Pre-WWII .44 Hand Ejector prices are high and climbing higher, but the 2nd Models are fairly affordable when compared to their Triple Lock predecessors. The pictured revolver, a tired shooter in fair-to-good condition with some timing issues that needed correcting, set me back some $325 in '06. A Triple Lock in similar shape would probably fetch at least five bills. If my .44 H.E. 2nd Model was in, say, 85-90% condition, you'd probably be looking at $900 or more in today's hothouse market, while equally nice Triple Locks regularly fetch $2,500 or more. As with most old Smith & Wessons, though, they are going nowhere but up in price because, much like real estate, they aren't making any more.

Sunday Smith #5: .32-20 Hand Ejector Model of 1905 - 4th Change, 1921

Got a thirty-eight special, boys, it do very well
I Got a 32-20 now, and it’s a burnin’ --Robert Johnson, "32-20 Blues"

Revolvers in rifle chamberings have always been popular in America, and after Smith & Wesson had introduced their .38 Hand Ejector in the 1890s, they saw an open market niche. The .32 Winchester Center Fire cartridge, or ".32-20", was a very popular cartridge in the Eastern US. It was chambered in plenty of lever action rifles, was more than potent enough for taking small game for the pot, and (while not ideal) many folks pressed it into service as a deer cartridge because it was cheap to buy when compared to the other primary carbine cartridges of the day, such as .38-40 and .44-40.

Smith chambered their medium-frame "Military & Police" revolver for the .32 WCF in 1899 and continued production through the start of US involvement in WWII. It was an especially popular chambering in the southeast, a region hit hard by the Great Depression, and was immortalized in blues song and legend.

These days even a wretched late 1930s .32-20 Hand Ejector that looks like it's been dragged behind a truck will command a price above a C-note, while a nice example of a pre-1902 .32-20 1st Model can fetch more than $3,000 if it has all the proper accoutrement. The revolver in the picture is factory nickeled, dates to 1921, and has a 5" barrel; it was purchased at a gun show in April of '07 for $250, and is in probably 75% condition, with all matching serial numbers and a bore that showed signs of some pitting. Ammunition is still loaded by Winchester, Georgia Arms, and some of the smaller specialty houses; the Georgia Arms offering launches a 115gr unjacketed roundnose flat point bullet at a sedate 850 feet per second, and is plenty safe to shoot in an old Hand Ejector. The .32-20 K-frame is a joy to shoot, and I can't recommend one highly enough, but if you're looking for one, be prepared to spend money and caveat emptor when it comes to condition.

Arisaka Type 38 Cavalry Carbine: A Samurai Mauser.

When Commodore Matthew Perry's ships dropped anchor in Uraga Harbor in 1853, the insular Japanese were brought face to face with a harsh ground truth; if they wanted to remain free from the colonizing spree being engaged in by the great European powers, they needed to modernize. They did so with a vengeance.

By the early 1870s, the Japanese army was armed with German Gew.71 Mausers and French Gras rifles, but they didn't rely on foreign small arms for long; in 1880, they began equipping with the Murata Type 13, a homegrown single shot bolt action sporting a melange of Mauser, Gras, and Dutch Beaumont design features; Winchester was contracted for 100 prototypes, and then production commenced in Japan. Ironically, it would be another twelve years before the land of Commodore Perry would replace its side-hammer Springfield Trapdoors with a bolt-action rifle.

ABOVE: Arisaka Type 38 Cavalry Carbine, photo by Oleg Volk.

When Japan shocked the world by beating a European power in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904, they were equipped with a new rifle designed by a Colonel Nariaki Arisaka in 1897. He trumped this design eight years later with a rugged rifle based on the Spanish M1893 Mauser, known as the Type 38 Arisaka, (Type 38 refers to the 38th year of the Meiji Restoration, with 1868 being Year 1.) This rifle would go on to serve as the primary Japanese service rifle for the next thirty-four years, and remained in production in some factories until the Japanese surrender in 1945.


LEFT: The knurled knob on the rear of the bolt served as both a safety and a gas-deflecting flange. Photo by Oleg Volk.






Col. Arisaka's rifle was made in both rifle and carbine formats and had several innovative features, some more useful than others. The rifle handled escaping gas from a ruptured case very well, being equipped with both gas vent holes in the receiver ring and a large round knob on the rear that doubled as both a safety and a flange to direct gas away from the firer's face. Famous gunsmith P.O. Ackley considered the Type 38 to be the strongest military rifle action he'd ever tested. It certainly was a rugged looking rifle.

RIGHT: The front sight was drift-adjustable for windage, and was protected by sturdy "wings". Photo by Oleg Volk.

The stock was somewhat blocky in shape, and the butt was of two pieces fitted together tongue-and-groove style, which allowed stocks to be made from smaller blanks. The rifles came from the factory with sliding sheet-steel dust covers, but these were frequently discarded by troops in the field as they rattled as they got loose. The sights consisted of a triangular front blade protected by beefy wings, and a rear ladder-style sight that was graduated to 2,000 meters on the carbine version. The infantry rifle had sling swivels on the bottom attached to the butt and barrel band, while the cavalry carbine had its swivels on the left side of the stock. Both took the same long sword bayonet. Unlike most Mausers and Mauser derivatives, which required a cartridge nose or punch to release the magazine floorplate for unloading, the Type 38 could be unloaded safely by releasing the magazine floorplate by means of a finger-operated catch inside the triggerguard.




LEFT: The Type 38's 6.5x50mm round, in this case a 156gr Norma soft-point, with a 5.56mm NATO round and a .30-'06 M2 ball cartridge for comparison.







Like many other rifle designers in the late 1880s/early 1890s, Arisaka selected a smallbore bullet, in this case a 6.5mm projectile. The military loading launched a 139-grain projectile at 2500 feet per second, giving it slightly better-than-average wallop among the military 6.5's. The flatter crack of the 6.5 was easily distinguished from the deeper muzzleblasts of the .30 caliber rifles used by the Allied forces in the Pacific during WWII, at least according to most memoirs of the time.

ABOVE: The receiver ring of the Type 38. Note the ground-off mum, indicating a surrendered weapon. (And no more inscrutable or mystical than the canceled "Broad Arrow" on a de-milled British weapon; it just means it's not Imperial property anymore.) The markings below it read "Type", "8", and "3" from bottom to top. Also note the dual gas-escape vents. Photo by Oleg Volk.

Not only did the Type 38 see service with the Imperial Japanese military, but excess rifles were also sold to fellow allies Great Britain and Russia during WWI. Rifles found in the US today will generally either be battlefield-captured souvenirs, or surrendered pieces brought home by returning GIs and sailors or imported after the war by surplus houses. The latter can be distinguished by the fact that the chrysanthemum symbol, an Imperial property mark much like the British "Broad Arrow", on the receiver ring will be defaced or ground off. Prices will start at under $100 for a tatty infantry rifle with a ground mum, and can climb north of $500 for a nice carbine with intact mum and dust cover. Ammunition is still loaded by Norma as well as some specialty houses, but expect to pay dearly for it. This is a rifle for which it is definitely worthwhile to reload, especially since the strong action allows the caliber to shine. As with all WWII weapons, expect a lot of volatility in pricing over the next years as the war passes from living memory, with the passing of the generation who fought it.

Sunday Smith #4: .32 Regulation Police, 1918

In the early 20th Century, police forces were still a fairly new concept in most of the United States. In much of the rest of the Western world, military or paramilitary forces were used to keep order, but the American distrust of standing armies and the posse comitatus act prevented that in the US. Sheriffs backed up by hired deputies and with the power to raise posses from the general populace had kept order in the USA since the nation's founding, but the idea of permanent municipal police forces gradually spread across the settled regions of the East in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Large belt revolvers were seen as uncouth artifacts more appropriate to the unsettled West; an Eastern policeman's gun was as much a badge of authority as it was a weapon. In 1917, Smith & Wesson released a new adaptation of their diminutive I-frame revolver with a four inch barrel and a modified grip frame that allowed the use of wood grips with a squared-off profile to the butt. The new pistol was called the "Regulation Police" and was fairly popular, with many thousands shipping between 1917 and 1942, when the model was discontinued.

The gun in the above photo is a nickeled .32 Regulation Police, holding six rounds of the then-new .32 S&W Long cartridge, probably built in 1918 or thereabouts. While the nickel finish shows some signs of wear and pitting, the grips are worn nearly smooth, perhaps from where an officer rubbed it like a worry stone in the pocket of his frock coat as he made his nightly rounds of Main Street, ensuring that all the doors that were supposed to be locked actually were, and that all was quiet on his watch.

Sunday Smith #3: .32 Hand Ejector 3rd Model, 1924

In the early 1890s Colt's debuted a solid-frame double action revolver with a cylinder that swung out to the side for loading. Smith quickly followed with their own version in 1896. Previous top-break Smiths would automatically eject the spent cases when hinged open, but the solid-frame gun with its swing-out cylinder required the shooter to manually operate the ejector rod in order to dump the empties; consequently, the new revolvers were dubbed "Hand Ejectors". The first Hand Ejectors were small revolvers in the new .32 S&W Long caliber, and their cylinders were unlatched by pulling forward on the ejector rod under the barrel. This frame size came to be known as the ".32" or "I-frame". In 1903, the I-frame was redesigned to add a thumb latch for releasing the cylinder, and a lug was added under the barrel that the ejector rod locked into by means of a detent, giving the Smith & Wesson cylinder a stronger means of locking than their Colt rivals.

The I-frame revolver in the photo above is a .32 Hand Ejector Third Model produced some time in the 1920s. It has a factory nickel finish, a 3.25" barrel, and the factory hard rubber grips are in unusually good condition for their age. It's in fairly good shape, all things considered, with nice bright case coloring still evident on the hammer and trigger, and likely spent most of its many decades in a desk or dresser drawer providing peace of mind to a householder before its honorable retirement as a collector's piece only occasionally exercised at the range.

Sunday Smith #2: .38 Safety Hammerless 4th Model, 1899

In 1887, S&W introduced its "Safety Hammerless" or "New Departure" models. Legend (surely apocryphal) has it that Mr. Wesson was disturbed by the tale of a child accidentally shooting himself with a small-frame S&W wheelgun, leading to the invention of a small-frame pocket revolver that couldn't be cocked, had a horrendously heavy double action trigger pull, and required that a grip safety on the backstrap be depressed in order for the trigger to be pulled in the first place.

In a move that seems alien to our lawsuit-besotted times, the Safety Hammerless revolvers shipped from the factory with a pin under the stocks that could be used to disable the grip safety. Interestingly, these pistols (known as "Lemonsqueezers" to their aficionados,) with their enclosed hammers and double-action-only triggers, became the pattern for the hammerless "Centennial" S&W revolvers that are the preferred pocket pistols of today's cognoscenti.

The pistol in the above photo is a .38 Safety Hammerless 4th Model, circa 1899. It has been re-nickeled, which can be deduced from a distance by the fact that the trigger is no longer case-colored and the trigger guard is bright rather than black. Despite its age, it still fires .38 S&W cartridges reliably and, if one can hold the hair-fine sights on target through the 15+ pound trigger squeeze, will hit what one is aiming at.

Japanese Type I rifle: An unusual hybrid.

In the late 1930s, Imperial Japan's ongoing invasion of China was beginning to place a strain on the ability of her arsenals to keep the army supplied with rifles. With the army taking all the rifle production from home, the navy was forced to go shopping for a source of rifles for their naval infantry. A call to their new Axis partner, Italy, resulted in one of the more unusual military rifles of WWII.

ABOVE: Japanese Type I rifle. Photo by Oleg Volk.

The new rifle, referred to as the "Type I", was a hybrid of Italian and Japanese features. (Sort of like ramen al dente, or a teriyaki beef calzone. Mmmm. Anyway...) The rifle's action was that of the Mo. 1891 Carcano, which itself was a more-or-less direct ripoff of the old Gew.88 "Commission Rifle", sans the usual Mannlicher-style magazine. In its place was a Mauser-type box magazine that could be fed rounds from stripper clips. The rifle was chambered for the standard Japanese 6.5x50mm cartridge, and the furniture and sights were pure Arisaka, down to the two-piece dovetailed buttstock. Unlike other Japanese service rifles, they were not marked with the Imperial chrysanthemum on the receiver ring. In fact, except for the serial number and various small proof marks, they were remarkably devoid of markings of any sort.

Never common on the US collector scene (less than 60,000 were produced; compared to millions for most other WWII service rifles) it's possible to go many years without ever seeing one at a store or gun show. It's not listed in the Blue Book or the Standard Catalog of Military Firearms. It's mentioned but not pictured in Japanese Rifles of World War II and Scarlata's Bolt Action Military Rifles book. At the previous gun store I worked at, an old guy walked in the door with a long rifle in tow:

"Hey, I got this ol' military rifle. A buddy of mine tol' me that this lady that works here knows a lot about ol' army guns, collects 'em, even, and could tell me what it's worth."

"That'd be me."

As he started to heave the rifle up onto the counter, saying "I think it's Japanese...", I heroically kept from squeaking "Ohmigod! It's a Type "I"!" I'd never seen one in the steel before.

"So, what's it worth?"

"Well, sir, it's hard to say. The gun isn't in any of the usual price guides. Obscurity may work against it, the bore is a nasty dark orange with corrosion, and ammo is so expensive that an empty magazine means the gun's nearly totalled. On the other hand, it's cosmetically nice, and someone who knows what it is and is just dying to have one for their collection may be willing to pay well to get it. What do you figure you need to get out of it?"

"Well, I'd like to get out of it what I've got in it..."

"Which is? If you don't mind me asking..."

"Naw. I paid $75 for it, and I reckon I've got $5 worth of my time in running it over here. How's $80 sound?"

"Let me call my boss."

I walked in the back room and rang him on the cell phone. Bear in mind my boss at that shop didn't know one milsurp from another. To him, they're all just junky old rifles.

"Hey, I've got this guy that wants to sell us a Type I." *long pause* "It's a rifle with Arisaka-style parts on a Carcano action." *longer pause* "Anyhow, it's an oddball old Japanese rifle. He wants $80 for it."

"I dunno, money's still kinda tight right now. You think we could sell it for $150?"

"Hell ye... er, I mean, I know somebody who'd pay $150 for it."

"Who?"

"Me!"

"Okay, give him $80."

Back out front.

"Here you go, sir."

"Thank you very much, ma'am; if I find anything else, I'll let you know."

Later, my boss apparently decided that he could live with making only a $50 profit off me, instead of a $70 one, which was just fine with me. The rifle in question turned out to be one that was produced at Beretta, rather than one of the more common government arsenal-produced specimens. Ammunition is still produced by Norma, but at today's prices, two and a half boxes actually equal what I paid for the rifle, so until I get dies in the caliber, it won't get shot much. Whether it gets shot or not, it's an interesting artifact from WWII and makes for quite the conversation piece.

Sunday Smith #1: .32 Double Action 3rd Model, 1883

Smith & Wesson is, if not the oldest surviving American gunmaker, the only American arms company who has continued to fill the same market niche since their inception. In an era when Colt dominated the military contract market, S&W purchased a patent from Rollin White and began turning out a line of tiny revolvers chambered for the then-new .22 rimfire cartridge. Despite occasional military interest, Smith & Wesson has been turning out revolvers and pistols mostly for the civilian and law-enforcement market since 1857, the date of introduction of the Model One. (Before this, they made lever-operated pistols based on the Volcanic pattern.)

Smith & Wesson collecting is still a wide-open and fertile field. With tens of millions of revolvers and pistols made to hundreds of patterns over the last 150+ years, it's easy to start a modest collection. Rarer models may have started commanding high prices, but even a pristine Triple Lock or Registered Magnum is a bargain when compared to a cherry first generation Colt Peacemaker. Hence, the Sunday Smith series; a more-or-less chronological walk through my S&W collection, with a dab of history and pricing data to boot.

The first gun featured, and the oldest Smith currently in my collection, is a .32 Double Action 3rd Model, dating from approximately 1882 or '83. The gun is chambered in .32 S&W, one of the oldest centerfire cartridges still extant, and sports a 3.5" barrel and a nickel finish. These were intended as pocket pistols in an age when most gentleman thought nothing of having a handgun in their coat pocket, and many ladies felt likewise. The tiny size of the gun is shown by the 1937 penny included for scale. These small-frame top-breaks are still cheap to acquire in average condition. As one can guess from the shells showing in the cylinder, this one is still a safe shooter, and I paid under $200 for it from a private seller at a gun show in April of 2006.

Springfield M1903 Mark I: American Icon.

The United States Army was slow to field a breechloading repeater, the single-shot "Trapdoor" Springfield M1873 proving adequate for the needs of a military that was mostly involved in Indian fighting. By the early 1890s, however, the need for a new rifle was apparent and after an open trial the Krag Jorgensen rifle was settled on, being adopted as the M1892. Within six years it would see its first test in combat.

The Spanish-American War of 1898 marked the first time that armies equipped with the new smokeless powder magazine-fed rifles faced each other. The Spanish army was equipped with the M1893 Mauser, a thoroughly modern design, which featured Mauser's stripper clip loading system which allowed a soldier to strip five rounds into the magazine at once from a disposable sheet-metal clip. This contrasted sharply with the Krag, which required the soldier to dump loose rounds into the magazine; an easy thing to fumble on a two-way rifle range. The Mauser was also stronger, and fired a higher velocity round, which gave it a flatter trajectory. The Krag's action was incapable of taking the pressures involved in firing the newer, faster rounds. Despite winning the war, the US Army immediately began seeking a replacement for the Krag Jorgensen.

ABOVE: M1903 Mark I, photo by Oleg Volk.

After studying captured Spanish rifles, the United States adopted the United States Magazine Rifle, Caliber .30, Model of 1903. It was destined to be an icon; of all the myriad weapons produced at the government arsenal over its many decades of operation, when one says "Springfield", it is understood that one means the M1903. The '03 was a radical departure from the contemporary military practice of issuing a long rifle to infantry and a short carbine to cavalry; it split the difference with an overall length of roughly 43 inches, and the same rifle was issued to all branches. This was the same course Britain took with the SMLE in 1904; Germany didn't follow suit until the introduction of the kar 98k in 1935. The early rifles had a flimsy, fiddly rod bayonet and a simple, sturdy tangent sight like that found on the Mauser. These were quickly replaced with a sturdy sword bayonet, and a fiddly, complex rear sight more at home on the manicured ranges of Camp Perry than on a chaotic battlefield.




LEFT: Complex Springfield rear sight was windage adjustable, and marked out to 2,850 yards. The lower peep in the example is set at 800. Photo by Oleg Volk.







Service in the trenches of World War One showed a need for a higher volume of fire than could be delivered by the bolt-action rifle when clearing trenches or suppressing enemy fire during the dash across no-man's land. A hasty secret program resulted in a device that would replace the bolt of the Springfield, allowing the rifle to fire semiauto pistol cartridges from a 32-round magazine. Known as the "Pedersen Device", rifles meant to use it are marked "Model 1903 Mark I" and are easily distinguished by the oval port cut in the left side of the receiver to allow the ejection of spent shells.



RIGHT: The ejection port for the Pedersen Device. Photo by Oleg Volk.






The M1903 was one of the most beloved service arms in US history. It was the primary rifle of our troops for thirty three years, and served on long after that as a sniper rifle or in rear-echelon roles. When it was replaced by the M1 Garand in the 1930s, resistance to the change was fierce, and the new rifle met with a level of scorn that not even the M16 faced. Over a million Springfields have gone on to become hunting rifles, family heirlooms, and collector's pieces in the US, and original examples in good condition are demanding ever more stratospheric prices on the collector's market. A Mark I with the correct stock and barrel (which the rifle in the photos does not have, more's the pity) can bring in excess of $2,000, while even a homely WWII-era '03A3 is rapidly becoming a $500 proposition. A joy to shoot and a joy to look at, no collection of American militaria is complete without one.

Timeless lines. Photo by Oleg Volk.

Vintage gun pinup No.1

1948-vintage Polish-made Pistolet TT, aka "Tokarev".

Imported by Tennessee Guns in Knoxville, this Tokarev is one of the relative few that bear the "FB Radom" logo rather than the "Circle 11" Warsaw Pact country code for Poland. (Only those made in '48 and '49 had the former.) The Tokarev, designated Wz48 by the Poles, remained the standard Polish military sidearm into the '60s, when it was replaced by the P-64, which was a PPK-esque pistol chambered for the 9mm Makarov cartridge.

Other than the serial number and year of manufacture atop the slide, the small proofs in the triggerguard area, and the serial number on the left rear of the frame, these guns are devoid of markings. They also show a level of fit and finish unusual in a mid-Cold-War Warsaw Pact firearm.




LEFT: Polish Wz48 Tokarev. Photo by Oleg Volk.








As an interesting aside on the perils of believing everything you read, in a sidebar in the second edition of the Standard Catalog of Military Firearms, gunwriter Charlie Cutshaw praises the Polish Tokarev as the most comfortable variant to shoot, stating that the Poles had equipped theirs with thumbrest grips and a manual safety. This is untrue, as the crude manual safety (which only blocks the trigger) and the thumbrest grip were retrofitted by the importer in order to gain enough "points" to be importable under the handgun provisions of the Gun Control Act of 1968; the pistols originally had flat grips and no manual safety. The embarrassing sidebar disappeared in the third edition of the Standard Catalog, but the description still lists the Polish Tok as a "Polish copy with manual safety", and Cutshaw's sidebar is repeated almost verbatim elsewhere on the 'net. Don't believe everything you read.

Ask The Gun Nut: Why don't they...?

Dear Auntie Gun Nut,

I think that the British Bren gun of WWII fame is so cool! Why can't I find a cheap modern semiauto copy?




Gentle Reader,

The Bren gun had a receiver machined from a single forging. The stripped receiver weighed four and a half pounds. The forging from which it was finish-machined weighed twenty-two pounds. That's a big pile of metal chips, even for a CNC machine...

Future Additions to the Museum...

Although the museum expands in a largely random fashion, I always have a wish list in the back of my mind. In addition to the wish list, I have a more practical one of firearms I'm actually likely to find and be able to afford...


1) The German collection: Kar. 71, Gew. 71/84, Gew. 88/05, Gew. 98 (Transitional), Kar. 98k.
What I'd like to add: A G43 autoloader, or a Dreyse.
What I'll likely get: An intact Gew. 98, complete with the rollercoaster (Lange Vizier) sight.

2) The French collection: Gras Mle. 1874 M80, Berthier-Mannlicher Mle. 1907/15 M16, and Mousqueton d'Artillerie M1916, MAS Mle. 1936, MAS Mle. 1949-56.
What I'd like to add: A Chassepot.
What I'll likely get: An Mle. 1886 Lebel. If I can ever find one.

3) The British collection: Enfield Pattern 1853 rifle (replica), Martini-Henry Mark I, Enfield SMLE Mk.III*, Enfield No.4 Mk.2.
What I'd like to add: A real Tower musket (aka "Brown Bess"), or a Lee-Enfield Mk. V.
What I'll likely get: A replica Brown Bess, or a No.4 Mk.1.

4) The Japanese Collection: Type 38 cavalry carbine, Type 99 short rifle, Type "I" rifle (Beretta marked!).
What I'd like to add: Type 2 paratroop rifle or Arisaka Type 30.
What I'll likely get: Type 38 rifle.

5) The Russian collection(ette): Mosin Nagant M91/30 ('44 Izhevsk), Tokarev SVT-40.
What I'd like to add: An Imperial-era Mosin M1891, un-altered.
What I'll likely get: An M38 carbine.

6) The American collection: M1 Garand, Springfield M1903 Mk.I, Eddystone M1917, M1896 Krag Jorgensen, Remington Model 11 riot gun.
What I'd like to add: Lee straight-pull U.S. Navy musket.
What I'll likely get: M1 carbine or M1873 floptop Springfield.

7) The Swiss collection: Vetterli Gew. 71, Schmidt Gew. 96/11.
What I'd like to add: Kar. 1911
What I'll likely get: The ubiquitous K31.

8) Mauser Miscellania: Spanish FR-8, Chinese Chiang Kai Shek, Siamese M1903, Swedish M1896/38, Argentine Mo. 1891, Venezuelan M24/30 carbine, Chilean M1895 carbine.
What I'd like to add: Argentine M1909 or an OVS M1895.
What I'll likely get: A Swedish M1896 or Yugo M48.

9) Mosin Miscellania: Finnish M39, Hungarian 44.M.
What I'd like to add: Polish M1891.
What I'll likely get: Finnish M28 or M28/30.

10) Miscellaneous Miscellania: Carcano Mo. 1938 carbine, Steyr-Mannlicher M95/30, Mannlicher-Schoenauer M1903/14, FN SAFN-49.
What I'd like to add: A Remington rolling block of some type, or my ultimate holy grail: A Remington Pontificio.
What I'll likely get: A vz. 52 rifle. I feel this is almost a certainty. (ie. I have one on layaway. :) )



Hints, bird-dogging, suggestions and pointers always welcome. Donations will not be turned away, either. ;)

Gewehr 88: A rifle designed by committee.

Between 1871 and 1898, the Germans issued four different bolt action rifles. It started with Mauser's seminal Gew. 71, an 11mm black-powder cartridge breechloader. This rifle was standard issue to the armies of the newly unified Germany for thirteen years, when it was replaced by the Gew. 71/84; essentially the same weapon, but with the addition of a tubular magazine below the barrel. After the shock of the French Lebel, the Germans put the Gewehr Prufungs Kommission (Rifle Testing Commission) at the Spandau Arsenal to work designing a new rifle. Initially, it was suggested to just rework the existing 71/84 to a smaller-caliber smokeless round, but this was overridden by a desire to get a quantum leap ahead of the French and their tubular magazine Lebel.

Mauser wasn't consulted, due to the fact that the contracts he had with the Ottoman Empire contained stipulations that any new rifles he made for Germany would also be used to fill the balance of open orders he had with the Turks. Bereft of the country's premier rifle designer, the committe went to work, and produced a result in a surprisingly short time.

ABOVE: Gewehr 88/05, photo by Oleg Volk.

The committee-designed weapon was a hodgepodge of Mannlicher, Mauser, and other odds & sods. It had a Mauser-esque safety and trigger allied to a new bolt, a magazine system so like that designed by Ferdinand Mannlicher that the Germans lost a patent infringment lawsuit to Steyr, and was most notable for its bizzare tubular sheet steel barrel sleeve that was intended to keep accuracy from being affected by stock warps or swells, while still giving a soldier something to grasp during bayonet work that wouldn't burn his hand. The new arm went into service in 1888 as the Gew. 88, but is better known to us as the "Commission Rifle."



LEFT: The distinctive sheet steel barrel shroud of the Gew.88. Photo by Oleg Volk.






RIGHT: The wing safety was a more-or-less direct copy of Paul Mauser's designs. Photo by Oleg Volk.





Paul Mauser took der Vaterland's acceptance of a non-Mauser rifle as a personal snub and set to work designing a series of rifles that eclipsed it entirely. The culmination of the resulting evolutionary tree was the Gew. 98, which replaced the Commission Rifle after the latter had only been in use for ten years, and is regarded by some (including your humble scribe) to be the pinnacle of the era of the military bolt-action rifle.

Ironically, the Gew. 88's major combat debut with the German armed forces took place after it had already been replaced as the standard rifle by Mauser's Gew.98. German naval infantry in China during the Boxer Rebellion were largely equipped with the Commission Rifle. In an interesting twist, its commercial success made it one of the most common rifles used by their Chinese opponents as well. With the coming of the Gew.98 and its faster spitzer bullet, many old Gew.88s were refurbished to use the new rounds and the stripper clip loading system that came with them. The converted weapons, known as Gewehr 1888/05s, could be identified by the stripper clip guides affixed to the rear of the receiver, the sheet metal block closing off the old clip ejection port on the bottom of the magazine, a notch machined in the receiver ring to clear the longer pointed noses of the new rounds as they were loaded, and an "S" marked above the rifle's chamber. Thus modified, they soldiered on well into WWI, long after their obsolescence.


RIGHT: Detail of the Gew.88/05's magazine floorplate, showing the sheet metal cover closing off the old clip ejection port. This was a major improvement, as the old Mannlicher system could introduce dirt into the magazine when the firer went prone. Photo by Oleg Volk.




LEFT: This rifle, originally made at the Danzig government arsenal in 1890, shows the signs of being upgraded to the 1888/05 standard. Visible are the notch for clearance of spitzer bullets and the "S" mark showing that the rifle had been altered to use the newer round. Photo by Oleg Volk.


Commission Rifles were the red-headed stepchild of German rifle collecting for many years, selling for not much over $100 as recently as four or five years ago, and they're still cheap compared to their more famous Mauser brethren. As has everything else in the world, however, they've become more expensive than yesterday, and a really nice Gew. 88 can set you back more than three hundred dollars now. (As a friend commented: "They're actually wanting money for Commission Rifles these days!") Still, no collection of German military rifles is really complete without at least one example of the only non-Mauser rifle that country issued for almost seventy-five years.



(PS: I am going to avoid getting into the arcana of "J-bore" versus "S-bore" rifles, handloads, pressure levels, lengthened throats, rebarrellings, and whatnot, and say that before you decide to shoot your Commission Rifle, you should have it checked over (complete with chamber casting) by a competent gunsmith. Don't believe what the Jerries may have stamped on it under wartime duress; the eyesight you save may be your own.)