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