At first I was surprised there isn't more discussion about this chapter, but then I realized something - due to lack of examples to collect, there just aren't any collectors that can care. Looking back, I'm pretty happy with how the chapter is. I have to admit that I had to learn everything in these chapters from scratch as I had never cared about the Weimar era or 98b's prior. I wished I could have located an example of a 98b (still never have) but I was surprised to find that I had accidentally purchased an early S28 type rifle on the forum trader here. I bought the DWM 1918 sn 5191 on the trader as a Gew,98m flat sight conversion, only after working on the research for the chapter did I realize I owned one of the very rifles I would need for the book. If someone was good, they could actually collect S28 rifles just based on the info in the book, and maybe sneak up on a few. The roll marked 1920 (mentioned many times, LOL again) is a dead giveaway. The early guns are straight bolt so you can find them. I wrote a lot on the S28 rifles - at the time it was suspected that S28 was either Mauser or DWM (not many researched them), I felt I had enough evidence to say it was DWM/BKIW Karlsruh - its not easy having to make a definitive call where none has been made before (publicly). We did that a few times with these books, lay a marker down where none had been.
The majority of collectors didn't know much about 98b's at the time this chapter was written (well Paul knew what they were along with other people interested in the Weimar era guns). Information had been collected for many years but nobody has ever put anything on paper about them. I compiled a lot of info, discovered some minor things, and was lucky to get a ton of information collected by Hans Lockhoven on 98b's. It's been so long since we did Vol.1 in the scheme of things I forgot a lot of what we did so it was nice to see it again. I have more documents and data on 98b's that didn't make it into the book, but nothing that would further what is written. I forwarded all of the observations to Paul and he said it doubled his data, so I felt good about that.
The Simson 98b is a fascinating rifle in the history of the 98k, too bad there aren't more around to study and collect. Also, the depot assembled 98b type rifles, wish there were more.