We have all heard of the Mauser rifles haven't we? How much do you really know about them? You do know of course that virtually all modern bolt-action rifles derive from the Mauser designs. A few minor changes here and there, improvements (so called) and you have your Winchester model 70, Remington 700's, Ruger model 77's and so forth and so on. Even our venerable 03 Springfield owes its design to Mauser. The United States had to pay royalties to Mauser for some of its design. After the First World War it was said that the United States had the best target rifle, The British the best battle rifle and the Germans the best hunting rifle, meaning of course our 03 Springfield (few of which actually saw combat in WW1, the P-17 Enfield saw most of the service), the British SMLE (short, magazine, Lee Enfield) and the German Mauser-98.
Peter Paul Mauser and his brother Wilhelm created the Mauser companies that grew to be the arms giant that it was. Peter Paul was born in Oberndorf, Germany on the Neckar River in June 1838, youngest of 13 children. Four yrs younger than Wilhelm. Mama Mauser must have been a busy lady. Peter Paul, hereafter called Paul, was the mechanical genius while his brother Wilhelm was the marketing strong man. Until his death at a young age Wilhelm guided the financial affairs of the companies founded by them.
Paul's first design was for an improved needle gun, a crude form of single shot black powder gun with a bolt mechanism and a needle like firing pin that hit a percussion type of cap. It was a type of what we call today an in-line action. This design cocked the gun when the bolt was retracted instead of the manual cocking of previous designs. Most European armies of that era used some design of needle gun. His next design was a needle gun that used a fixed type of ammunition like today's modern cartridges. Obviously a big improvement in reliability and speed of fire. This design had a firing pin instead of a needle, which became a standard type with a rotating bolt also a Mauser innovation. Mauser's attempts to sell this design to various European countries didn't work as most had just equipped their armies with the needle guns and considered them sufficient.
The Mausers then hooked up with an American, Samuel Norris, the European representative for Remington. Norris looked at the design and thought it could be used to convert the French Chassepot needle guns into cartridge guns. Norris and the Mausers formed a company to do that but when the French didn't buy it, Norris bailed out and left the Mausers in dire straights financially. In the meantime the Prussian authorities were testing a Mauser rifle and requested that Paul come see them. After discussing some minor changes the Prussian government requested, and making the changes, the gun was adopted as a replacement for the Prussian needle gun. It didn't mean much for the Mausers, as the Prussians wanted it made in their arsenals and only paid them 8,000 talers of the 60,000 promised. This rifle, called he model 71 was an 11 MM black powder single shot bolt action rifle.
From there on they developed a magazine rifle holding cartridges in a tubular magazine under the barrel and a box magazine familiar on today's rifles. As years went on important design changes were made, such as forward locking lugs, Cock on closing, the stripper clip, etc. The largest purchaser of Mauser rifles over many yrs were the Turkish Ottoman empire who required in their contracts that the Mausers immediately change the order to give them the same rifles and improvements that Germany and Austria got.
The shock that hit European armies like a ton of bricks was when France came out with a new smokeless powder cartridge, the 8 mm Lebel, and the first mass-produced smokeless powder cartridge to be used by any country. This of course caused quite a stir and all firearms manufacturers now scrambled to develop smokeless powder cartridges and the smaller calibers smokeless powder afforded. Mauser was the best of them. He developed smokeless 7.62 mm (308 cal) cartridges for several countries as well as 6.5 mm's, the most famous being the 6.5 x 55 Swedish cartridge so popular today. And probably the best of them, the 7 x 57 used so effectively by the Spanish in the Spanish-American war against our troops equipped with the .30 cal. Krag rifles and single shot 45-70's (Yes, many National Guard Units were still equipped with the old black powder 45-70's at that time). By now the Mauser bolt-action rifle was used by dozens of governments, made in many countries under license, and in many calibers, but the most popular was the 7 x 57. That cartridge is and has been my primary hunting cartridge for many yrs and I would not exchange it for any of the newer wiz-bang stuff. As Jack O'Connor the famous gun writer said, it will take any game on this continent but the big bears if the shooter does his part. And yes, my rifle is on a commercial Mauser action made by Fabrique-National in Belgium, one of the last makers of Mauser actions. The 7 x 57 was designed in 1892. It has lasted a long time and should be much more popular than it is. Of course the most famous Mauser rifle is the Gewer 98, which became the standard issue German army rifle from before the turn of the last century until WW2 and even into the 1950's by many other countries. Many fine hunting rifles have been made from War return Mauser rifles after 1945 and kept many gunsmiths busy making conversions to sporting rifles. A common conversion was the 8mm-06 which was made by running a chambering reamer into a standard 8mm and then fire-forming 06 cartridges to the 8mm neck and loading with .323 (8mm) bullets. Older reloading manuals gave loads for this cartridge and it is impressive. Older Mausers with bad barrels are prime pieces for conversion by rebarreling to a caliber you may want but find scarce today, like .257 Roberts (necked down 7 x 57) or .35 Whelen (a necked up 30-06), both great cartridges designed by some of our great American shooters much neglected today. As a friend of mine says, "they have class and character that the newer cartridges just don't have."
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Until next time, Keep Your Powder Dry.
Bill Oikle
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