Yard sale receivers/Chaing Kai Shek

[jon_norstog]

I was in Sandpoint ID for a family wedding, staying with my brother at his place. He is always picking up gun stuff at yard sales and thrift stores. He had a couple ratty-looking Mauser receivers sitting on his gun-and-fishing bench in the "laundry" room. I took pictures.

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Did a little research on them. The gear-and-arrow is the symbol of the Ordnance Department and can be found or not found on practically any Chinese rifle. The rest of the stuff is the arsenal stamp. The stamp is pretty much the same except for the arsenal logo included at the top of the cartouche. The one with the star is the "First Arsenal" that was set up at Hanyang to manufacture G 88 rifles, back during the Imperial Chinese "self-strengthening" period 1861-95. They got an updated machine tool setup at sometime and supposedly passed their old machinery to another arsenal, but they continued making the G88s. From that time on they also made '98 Mausers in 7.9x57 caliber. The Hanyang Arsenal was moved to Hunan Province when the Japanese occupied the original location in 1938. This arsenal was shut down for good in 1947 and its managers moved on to Taiwan.

The other receiver is pretty ratted out. Its crest has a swaSTIKA symbol that indicates it was made by the 21st Arsenal. AKA the Nanjing Arsenal. I think it may have actually been made elsewhere as Nanking was occupied by the Japanese after 1937.

The year zero is 1911, so you add 11 to the year date to get the calendar year of manufacture. Thus the Hanyang receiver was manufactured in November 1943. The "Type 24" which is the most commonly seen, was designed and adopted in 1935.

The arsenals used Chinese steel from the numerous ironworks. Needless to say, some of this stuff was pretty iffy. It's a testimony to the Mauser design that these rifles were more dangerous to the target down range than to the shooter. An internet search finds there are a LOT of people interested in Chinese Mausers, many of them quite knowledgeable.

jn

[5MadFarmers]

I was in Sandpoint ID for a family wedding, staying with my brother at his place. He is always picking up gun stuff at yard sales and thrift stores. He had a couple ratty-looking Mauser receivers sitting on his gun-and-fishing bench in the "laundry" room. I took pictures.

m_1 (2).jpgm_1 (1).jpg


Did a little research on them. The gear-and-arrow is the symbol of the Ordnance Department and can be found or not found on practically any Chinese rifle. The rest of the stuff is the arsenal stamp. The stamp is pretty much the same except for the arsenal logo included at the top of the cartouche. The one with the star is the "First Arsenal" that was set up at Hanyang to manufacture G 88 rifles, back during the Imperial Chinese "self-strengthening" period 1861-95. They got an updated machine tool setup at sometime and supposedly passed their old machinery to another arsenal, but they continued making the G88s. From that time on they also made '98 Mausers in 7.9x57 caliber. The Hanyang Arsenal was moved to Hunan Province when the Japanese occupied the original location in 1938. This arsenal was shut down for good in 1947 and its managers moved on to Taiwan.

Yes. At one point I did some serious digging into the various flavors of the Commission Rifles. The Chinese made them in a bewildering variety. I have a picture around here somewhere of Chinese troops fighting the Japanese. The six soldiers closest to the camera each have a different variation of the rifle.

The arsenal and iron works were started in 1890 by the local warlord. He died not terribly long after it was started and that delayed it to 1895ish. The rifle machinery at that arsenal was all, as expected based on the rifles, imported from Germany. Loewe of course. Loewe had ordered Pratt & Whitney equipment and then simply copied it. One of the Pratt/Whitney kids toured a Loewe supplied arsenal after the turn of the century and he was astonished at how closely they copied the machines.

In 1911 the arsenal fell, without a fight, to the revolutionaries. Sun Yat-sen supporters.

In 1914 the Chinese gave the parent company of P&W a contract to completely upgrade that arsenal. In addition to the rifles they planned on making machine guns.

Strange bit of trivia: the arsenal was built with money from loans given to them by the Japanese.

[dave]

Those are not 'commission' receivers, they are model 1898 Mausers receivers, which the Chinese copied in many arsenals. But you may know this already?

[5MadFarmers]

Those are not 'commission' receivers, they are model 1898 Mausers receivers, which the Chinese copied in many arsenals. But you may know this already?

Yes, solid bridge.

[jon_norstog]

Crazy thing, they kept turning out the "Commission" rifles right into the 1940s. Perhaps because they had a complete production line for them which would otherwise be idle? They apparently did have a separate line for the '98s.

So 5, if the Krag story gets tame and boring for you, you could do your thing with the Chinese Mausers?

jn

[5MadFarmers]

Crazy thing, they kept turning out the "Commission" rifles right into the 1940s. Perhaps because they had a complete production line for them which would otherwise be idle? They apparently did have a separate line for the '98s.

So 5, if the Krag story gets tame and boring for you, you could do your thing with the Chinese Mausers?

jn

Going to do one more "gun book" and that's it for those. Not Chinese Mausers though.

Two things are really needed to make rifles: machines and jigs. The machines are generic to making guns but the jigs are very specific. For the M-1917 it was about 125 different jigs for the receiver alone.

Off the top of my head there were arsenals at Danzig, Spandau, Erfurt, and Amburg. When the 1898 Gewehr entered production it was about the same time as the Chinese arsenals started looking at making guns.

I wonder if the Germans basically sold them the jigs for the Commission rifles. New machinery and the existing jigs. It'd make some sense.



I'm pretty sure it was right there. Behind it is "Tortoise hill." Most pictures of the arsenal were taken from that hill.

[jon_norstog]

Thanks for the map, 5. Looks like even the buildings are gone. I was interested at one time in the Tientsin Arsena, both because it put out a better-than-average (for China) rifle and for its Perils-of-Pauline history, Found this on the Hanyang Arsenal - a paragraph and a few pictures.

http://ww2db.com/facility/Hanyang_Arsenal/

jn

[PhillipM]

I always think of this photo when Chinese Mausers are brought up.

Flying-Tigers.jpg