Thanks, very interesting. I've never seen an Astrawerke roll stamped BNZ 4 rifle before.
Not more that I can help with at the moment ... but already confirmed I would be buying it. So I can post more pics later this week!
..The ones I have seen have e/77 Radom inspections on the side of the receiver as well.
Even Bubba'd it's at least interesting from a Steyr collectors point of view. It puzzles me why Astrawerke would send receivers to Radom instead of direct to Steyr.
A few reasons I could come up with is that Radom was the sole point of origin for receivers, so any that Steyr used would need to be inspected there - perhaps they did not have the proper inspectors at Steyr. OR, after the bombing they had no way to receive them, so they went to Radom first. Either way, it's bizarre to me to see e/77 inspections on them. I guess it's about the same distance from Astrawerke to Radom or Steyr, but still....
This rifle was assembled in April-June of 1944, we know because of the suffix and serial on the barrel. Steyr used a lot of mixed barrels from everywhere after the bombing, so trying to place it in conjunction with Gustloff production is not useful really as it wasn’t normal supply. And, your 18000 range bcd was late 44 assembly. His rifle has nothing to do with Gustloff really.
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This rifle was assembled in April-June of 1944, we know because of the suffix and serial on the barrel. Steyr used a lot of mixed barrels from everywhere after the bombing, so trying to place it in conjunction with Gustloff production is not useful really as it wasn’t normal supply. And, your 18000 range bcd was late 44 assembly. His rifle has nothing to do with Gustloff really.
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