Mauser C98 semi-auto rifle

The rifle that cost Paul Mauser his eye. Personally I believe if Mauser was younger he would have eventually made a more successful semi-auto rifle. Still a neat video on a very rare German Imperial weapon.

Warrior1354 said:

The rifle that cost Paul Mauser his eye. Personally I believe if Mauser was younger he would have eventually made a more successful semi-auto rifle. Still a neat video on a very rare German Imperial weapon.

Click to expand...

I wouldn't say Paul's age was the problem, there were many other reasons. Paul Mauser came late to the self loading rifle area and at that time there was already many patents by other makers which limited him in his concepts. In his construction a major issue was the overall weight of the recoilling parts, in any similar construction you had this problem. Gas operated system was at this point in time not liked by military and it's a pitty because Paul had some good concepts for this. Still in later time the higher German commanders and procurement officers didn't trust the design element of the drilled barrel and they imposed on the designers that the barrel shouldn't be drilled for the automatic cycle. Therefore the Gewehr 41 (Mauser) and Gewehr 41 (Walther) had the gas system at the muzzle, which made the system complicated and expensive.
Another major issue was that his rifle needed greased cartridges to work, without greased cartridges the rifles had extraction / ejecting problems. If he would have already the later Mauser concept with the grooves in chamber (later as example tested with the MG45 and used post war with the G3 rifle), the rifle wouldn't need the greased cartridges anymore.

It's a interesting clip and you can see the concept very well. At minute 3:22 Ian is talkiing about the safety and he isn't sure about the function. I have made a little collage, there you can see the function of the safety lever.
Safety positions:


I have made another collage about the locking system and I have used different colors therewith it's easier to see the function.


Regards,
Stephan

Thank you for the diagrams Stephen very helpful. And yes I thought it was a neat discussion to talk about something that Mauser was trying too invent. Even though it was horrible that he lost his eye in the process of making this rifle and designing it after shooting it.

We see what effects that had on the man when he designed the model 1898 Mauser action rifle. He added so many more safety features to it. Such as the third locking lug and the gas shield too name a few. So right there that tells you he really cared about the users of these weapons. For the soldiers in the field, Hunters on a hunting trip, or competition target shooters. For them they had in front of them the best Bolt Action System ever designed and not only that the safest.

It's been now 120 years since it came out have we seen anything better than that? I think not. Quality never becomes obsolete!