Help with Mauser identification please.

[dreverlast]

How do I remove the wood to see the markings? Thanks

[emcon5]

How do I remove the wood to see the markings?

This shows the steps, probably farther than you want to go.

http://www.surplusrifle.com/mauser98...2006/index.asp

I don't do it in that order, he unscrews the action before taking the barrel bands and handguard off, I do the bands first.

[James K]

Hi, Tamara,

I have run into guys who didn't bother with mere generals. One guy showed me the the Walther PP he "tooken off ol' Herman hisself". Sure enough, the gun had "Herman Gerring" electric pencilled on the slide. And there was the guy with a Luger he took off none other than Hitler himself when he captured Der Führer. When I mentioned that the "gentleman" in question was supposed to have committed suicide in Berlin, the ex-GI told me that Hitler got away while he was not looking.

I was still a youngster (12-13) when those guys came back. They were heroes and we owe them our freedom, etc., but they were the biggest bunch of liars you ever saw. I suspect the biggest liars were the ones furthest from combat, but can't prove it.

Jim

[madcratebuilder]

Cute story Jim. I get worked up over the "bring back" term as a few friends have been ripped off by unscrupulous dealers that use the term freely.

I go ballistic when I hear Viet Nam bring back!

[Tamara]

Originally Posted by madcratebuilder

I go ballistic when I hear Viet Nam bring back!

I've seen a Vietnam bring-back SKS. Of course, back in '80, that was about the only kind of SKS you'd ever see, and they were rare and exotic. It belonged to a friend of my parents and he'd had it chromed like a bumper. I took it, along with a bunch of other souvenirs and trinkets, to school in the 7th grade for a class project on the Vietnam War. If you see an SKS with no import marks that hasn't been refinished, it might well be a bring-back, since there wasn't a lot of commercial firearms trade going on between the US and the East Bloc before 1968.

Also, if you run into a safetyless Tok with no import marks and the right grips, it's pretty good odds it came home in some GI's dufflebag. Not that that adds any special value to what's already a pretty rare piece. Even if it is a "bring back", it just means some clerk in Saigon bought it as a souvenir, not that a Navy SEAL snatched it from the holster of the sentry he'd just eliminated. (My parents' friend was a USAF radio operator at Tan Son Nhut, and never saw combat, although he heard some. That's how I know his war stories are true: I know of him, a truck driver, a helicopter crew chief, and a cannon cocker, and other than those four guys, every other Vietnam vet I've met was a Force Recon Ranger SEAL Green Beret Sniper, and presumably full of it.)