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fake scharfsshutzengewehr98

gew98

gew98

Well-known member
fake scharfshutzengewehr98

A dear friend slowly bleeding off his collection gave my son a fake gew98 scoped rig. Was owned by John wall whom got it from a collector "CB". Anyhow JW thought it was legit , my buddy sort of did too. Anyhow it's bogus , but it will make a nice deer rifle when I find someone to fix scope internals and have my smithy properly align bases. It is a 1917 Amberg . EWB marked stock - really gorgeous finish of metal and wood.
Perfect bore . The triggerguard and floorplate, follower were fake renumbered - my old eyes still spot this kind of chicanery easily - wrong number fonts , reblue and old grind/polish marks - too obvious.
The bases appear to be orgianl with fraktur proofs , but have been monkeyed with by weld in slots to make the scope chosen fit..pretty obvious. The Bases were attached sloppily with button headed screws - really bad job. As well the soft solder of bases to receiver is retard sloppy. Rear base appears a couple thousandths higher than front base, and has a slotted head screw for windage adjustment ( should have had a square head for a key ) . As well trough in scope bases is too high to use Iron sights . Bolt handle bend looks great - original serial matching rifle not deformed but fraudster needed to weld a bit on bend area as he didn't quite get it right. All said not a good machinist job for sure ! ( thankfully ).
The scope is #13979 Hensoldt wetzlar 5x. Double claw front and back. I'm pretty sure this is a post war made scope - and it has internal issues.
Anyhow if I can get issues fixed to just make it a shootable and zeroable rifle It will be my sons go to deer rifle next season. Shame such a nice rifle was sacrificed so.
 
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gew98 said:
A dear friend slowly bleeding off his collection gave my son a fake gew98 scoped rig. Was owned by John wall whom got it from a collector "CB". Anyhow JW thought it was legit , my buddy sort of did too. Anyhow it's bogus , but it will make a nice deer rifle when I find someone to fix scope internals and have my smithy properly align bases. It is a 1917 Amberg . EWB marked stock - really gorgeous finish of metal and wood.
Perfect bore . The triggerguard and floorplate, follower were fake renumbered - my old eyes still spot this kind of chicanery easily - wrong number fonts , reblue and old grind/polish marks - too obvious.
The bases appear to be orgianl with fraktur proofs , but have been monkeyed with by weld in slots to make the scope chosen fit..pretty obvious. The Bases were attached sloppily with button headed screws - really bad job. As well the soft solder of bases to receiver is retard sloppy. Rear base appears a couple thousandths higher than front base, and has a slotted head screw for windage adjustment ( should have had a square head for a key ) . As well trough in scope bases is too high to use Iron sights . Bolt handle bend looks great - original serial matching rifle not deformed but fraudster needed to weld a bit on bend area as he didn't quite get it right. All said not a good machinist job for sure ! ( thankfully ).
The scope is #13979 Hensoldt wetzlar 5x. Double claw front and back. I'm pretty sure this is a post war made scope - and it has internal issues.
Anyhow if I can get issues fixed to just make it a shootable and zeroable rifle It will be my sons go to deer rifle next season. Shame such a nice rifle was sacrificed so.
Click to expand...

Got the scope refurbed several months ago. Just got the rifle back from smithy. He had to put a roughly 125thousandths shim under the front base to get the scope bases on the same plain. Amazing the original faker got it so far off wrong. Smithy could have modified the rear base and made it "look better" , but his fix saved money and prevents it from ever being passed off as legit. And it works. Just gotta weld up a truck frame for a buddy and them me and the son will zero it today. Got a lot of clean ecquadorian ball on chargers...likely use that . Then some soft point fodder to verify . And son will use it this coming deer season !. scoped1.jpgscoped2.jpg
 
Looks like it'd make a fine hunting rifle for everything you had done to a Bill. I would like to see reports of how this rifle performs with some good quality M75 Yugo sniper ammo.
 
gew98 said:
..Was owned by John wall whom got it from a collector "CB". Anyhow JW thought it was legit , my buddy sort of did too. Anyhow it's bogus..
Click to expand...

I did not know CB however over the last xx several rifles came up for sale on various venues. Some were even touted 'out of the CB collection!' I know several of them had problems. Some were pointed out by others. Some I spotted. I think that may have been my introduction to the bleach blond era of collecting. Maybe Mike or Ham brought it up? I never saw that era of collecting but I see the occasional survivor show up for sale.
 
Warrior1354 said:
..would like to see reports of how this rifle performs with some good quality M75 Yugo sniper ammo.
Click to expand...

Or some killer handloads?

I'd love to check the array I still have. Most I only shot patterning groups and marked the box and into storage they went. I ran several batches each of Privi in both 196 and 198 from Graf's I believe. IMR powders 4064 and 4895. Graf's used to have bags of bulk 'blems' which mostly seemed hard to find fault. We mic'd em and weighed them and they were pretty good. Especially for the price. A bit more spendy but the SST 170s rip. I'd love to chrono them.
 
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heavy_mech said:
Or some killer handloads?

I'd love to check the array I still have. Most I only shot patterning groups and marked the box and into storage they went. I ran several batches each of Privi in both 196 and 198 from Graf's I believe. IMR powders 4064 and 4895. Graf's used to have bags of bulk 'blems' which mostly seemed hard to find fault. We mic'd em and weighed them and they were pretty good. Especially for the price. A bit more spendy but the SST 170s rip. I'd love to chrono them.
Click to expand...

Many years ago it was impossible to get stateside 200 grain .323" Sierra btHP matchkings. Had a buddy that spent time in Europe and brought some home. He gave me a wad of them. Using IMR4350 at around 50gns behind that bullet as he suggested produced some excellent shooting. Got a huge load of Dillon equipment last December...need time to get around and back into reloading since I lost all that gear to a fire a few years ago.
As for the ecquador ball ammo...my son did damn good with it late this afternoon. The horizontal adjustment is very fine tuned...a tiny turn goes a looong way. He got to where he was pinging the tops off 20 oz soda bottles at 90 yards with ease once he got the hang of the two stage issue trigger.
He can't wait to drop a decent buck this November. My go to load for hunting was a Hornady 170gn blunt nosed softpoint with 48.5 gns of IMR4064... it was a good load in iron sighted 98k's when I shot them a lot deer hunting. Only thing I need to do is find a lace on cheek wrest for the buttstock as the non original scope set up is rather high and a bit uncomfortable to make a decent head hold onto scope.
 
heavy_mech said:
I did not know CB however over the last xx several rifles came up for sale on various venues. Some were even touted 'out of the CB collection!' I know several of them had problems. Some were pointed out by others. Some I spotted. I think that may have been my introduction to the bleach blond era of collecting. Maybe Mike or Ham brought it up? I never saw that era of collecting but I see the occasional survivor show up for sale.
Click to expand...

In the 80's and 90's the undercurrent of boinkered with pieces was in it's infancy but it was there. People like the guy that supplied a lot of his "collection" for examples used in backboner had a lot of integrity issues in the collecting circles. His fraud was well known and more or less laughed at. He had shite made up if he could not buy or find an example someone else had.... and the one - upmanship to say he had something more unique yadda yadda yadda. There were two very skilled smithy's...both deceased now that made crap for this vainglorious fella. The one I met even joked about it.
I'd wager this gewehr98 scope job is one of those early day frauds when there wasn't enough knowledge out there to combat such chicanery. Anyhow it will never be confused for the real thing again thankfully.
 
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