Interesting (to me) Gew98 SCW

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pyotrbyali

Member
Found an interesting rifle the other day and thought I'd share it here. I'm by no means very knowledgeable on Gewehrs, but I have never ran into what I think is a 1918 depot rebuild rifle that was not 1920 marked but made it to Spain later. There doesn't seem to be much info about the "DZ" stamp anywhere.

My books don't really have much on this, but using intuition I believe this rifle was a Spandau 1917 manufacture SER#: 1670, and then either late or post-war rebuilt at Danzig in 1918. I don't know if the new serial was applied at this time, later by the Spanish, or post-military use at all, as there is clearly a font difference in the stamp. I'm assuming it was never claimed under the Versailles disarmament and therefore missed being marked with the 1920 stamp. At some point, it was updated with a flat rear sight and shipped off to Spain. I assume that that is where it was restocked with the typical Spanish stock setup and stamped with the Anarchist symbol on both sides of the buttstock.

Anyways, I personally found it interesting so I wanted to share.

https://imgur.com/a/kIgSEb3

Thank you.
 
You are close: it was a Spandau contracted receiver made in 1917, but built into a full Gewehr 98 at Danzig in 1918. Spandau ended rifle production in 1917, so the receivers they contracted from Pieper and Siemans & Halske ended up in Hannover, Dresden, Erfurt, Danzig, and WMO. The 1670 does not appear to be the original serial number, based on the font, but the fireproof is the correct Danzig eagle.

Unfortunately i can't help you with its post-WWI history. Start with breaking it down to see how the barrel and rear sights are marked.
 
Nice to see some more pictures of it. That auction had quite a few interesting Mausers in it and I was wondering what the heck that one was.
 
Could be ended in armory of Poland, which sent a large numbers of rifles to Spain in late 30ies.
 
Interesting rifle! The stock looks like the pattern used on the post SCW M43 model rifles. I don't recall seeing a later pattern stock like that with the circle A stamp (Anarchist?) before. It is usually seen on the earlier Polish Mausers and other earlier Spanish Mauser rifles(1893 and 1916). Perhaps that style stock was being made in Spain earlier than the M43?
 
Now that is cool!

As far as its post WW1 history goes (to the best of my knowledge), this would have been a gew98m that ended up in Spain during their civil war. When the war was over the nationalists standardized their military on the Mauser action, using primarily Gew98m rifles from Germany, and WZ29 rifles from Poland (bit of a generalization). Just with every other nation that adopted the Mauser they realized they did not need 29-inch-long barrels and decided to follow the standard of the time. Spain did not have the ability to produce their own Mauser 98 actions initially so all early "prototypes" (early production) of the Spanish m43 used recycled gew98m actions, as well as many other parts. If you were to take your rifle apart, I would venture to guess almost the entire rifle is just a shortened gew98m with a new Spanish stock set added to it. Spanish m43 rear sights are exact copies of k98k rear sight bases, save the handguard retaining ring, and a lot of them ARE German rear sights. They just chopped the handguard retaining rings off.
 
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