Light Strikes on Gewehr 88

Did you check the bolt for markings? The Chinese Hanyang 88 rifles don't have tight tolerance to the German specs. I have an 1890 Spandau that came with a Chinese bolt body with a German head and other parts on it. It swallowed a Field Gauge and the bore of the bolt body was undersized. I swapped the German parts onto a German bolt and Bob was my uncle. Headspace is now very good, strike very strong and smooth. It is a great shooter with cast boolits now.
The old Hanyang bolt body resides in a Chinese wall hanger rifle now. That thing is crude. Most of the Hanyang parts are undersized when comparing to a German 1888.

ajczarkowski said:

As far as headspace goes, I don't have any 8x57 go/no-go gauges, although maybe there is some way I could rig up a measurement without the gauge.

AJ

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You only need a FIELD Gauge. The NO GO is used when cutting a new chamber to indicate not to cut any deeper. The GO gauge indicates minimum chamber depth. If you can't close on a FIELD gauge and can close on a new, unfired round without effort, you don't need either a GO Gauge or NO GO Gauge for routine headspace checks.

jsz said:

Have you inspected the tip of the firing pin, many have been altered and some repaired poorly.

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Yeah firing pin seems fine, I’m almost certain the nut on the other end that it screws into is the problem. It’s not threaded enough for that final rotation, it only makes it 3/4 of the way. Although I suppose the other end of the firing pin with the thread on it may have been filed down, but it doesn’t seem like it.

DtheD said:

Did you check the bolt for markings? The Chinese Hanyang 88 rifles don't have tight tolerance to the German specs. I have an 1890 Spandau that came with a Chinese bolt body with a German head and other parts on it. It swallowed a Field Gauge and the bore of the bolt body was undersized. I swapped the German parts onto a German bolt and Bob was my uncle. Headspace is now very good, strike very strong and smooth. It is a great shooter with cast boolits now.
The old Hanyang bolt body resides in a Chinese wall hanger rifle now. That thing is crude. Most of the Hanyang parts are undersized when comparing to a German 1888.

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Yeah it’s all Czech and Turkish marked. Granted, I don’t know if the Czechs actually made them, I know the Turks didn’t. The Czechs may have just gotten them from Germans as war reparations and then filed their markings off of them and put their own on. Then the Turks put crescent moons on them. Who knows!

That is a very interesting situation with the Chinese Hanyang parts though! Glad you were able to get the 1890 Spandau working after getting a German bolt body.

AJ