PSA - Dewat Spanish 1916 Mausers

I am putting this out there as a warning. Recently a ton of Samco Spanish 7mm Mausers hit the market. I recently picked one up at a gun show for $100 after digging through a pile of ugly guns. It had shellac on the stock but metal was pretty decent. When I got it home I tore it down for a clean up and found a pretty horrible surprise.

Three holes drilled in the bottom of the barrel. Yep, deactivated parade/drill gun. There are absolutely ZERO marks externally on the gun to suggest this is the case. Had I been careless and put live ammo in this gun without checking it, it would have been a disaster. The holes were pretty cleanly milled and not obvious when looking down the barrel, with the minor burrs present being easily confused for gunk/cosmo in the bore. A few runs with a .270 jag to clean the bore went fine.

The only external signs to watch for is a shellac finish on the stock and black paint on the rear sight. Mine was the original 7mm caliber, mis matched bolt, no crest. Firing pin hole on the bolt like normal, and the firing pin protrudes when deocked. These guns will very likely fire if loaded with a live catridge.

Not even going to try and salvage this, as it had a fairly clean bore. It had to be deactivated for some other reason so I won't dare try my luck by fitting a new barrel.

So as always, thoroughly check out and clean your milsurps before shooting but be on the look out for these. At this point I am considering getting a hold of the seller to see if I can swap it out for a live but ugly one, or maybe get a refund. I do not have the time right now but will try to get pictures out tomorrow.

Edit: There was one more of these on the table when I was there. The gun show was in PA, known as the Oaks Show. I may have gotten a one in a million gun but the presence of one other made up like mine suggests others may have slipped in with other retailers or lots.

Thanks.
I have been looking for one of these in 7mm and will be very careful indeed.

Has the firing pin been shortened as well so that it can't actually fire a live round?

Whew, prompted me to take mine apart which I realize I never did because it was so clean. I rarely shoot them anyway so not a huge deal. No issues. I don't know if you bought from the same guy I did or this was another batch but I paid $149 for mine I think. Could be the batch you bought from was lower quality. Shame, I'd be heading back to Oaks today for a refund or replacement. Good luck.

The firing pin is full length. I did drop a round into the chamber (with the bolt disassembled and stashed elsewhere) and noted it would not quite go all the way in. Unfortunately since I had no dummys/snap caps I could not actually install the bolt and see if it would go into battery though I suspect you'd have a hard time doing so.

I was not able to make it back there today as I had a shoot. However, it is a dealer and I have their contact information, so I plan to call them tomorrow. The only interesting thing is the "T" letter prefix on the serial. However, this is a normal prefix as far as I know and it does not appear a prior prefix was scrubbed. Still I included a picture in case anything stands out to anyone about the markings on the gun.

https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...mz6xmzv6-1.jpg

https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...kndlkuas-1.jpg

https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...5reqriya-1.jpg

https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...jqnedrce-1.jpg

https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...wsbw7ppc-1.jpg

I would be interested in buying it if you get stuck with it .

A Cadet Rifle? I would hate to fire that bad-boy. Might make for a bad day. I would guess there are probably more then one floating about.

Contacted the seller and good news, they are going to exchange it for a live one. They were very concerned and not aware any others that had come back. Hopefully this has a happy ending after all.

Edit: Also, it dawned on my Dewat is a term more appropriate for a bring back deactived machine gun... perhaps drill, parade, deactivated, or cadet would have been more accurate.

I would also be interested buying it from the seller , if he was just going to dump it .

I wouldn't support the use of the term deac or deactivated for this particular weapon because you could potentially chamber a round and also fire it, albeit with possibly injury to the user. In Europe this sort of thing gives all collectors of deactivated guns a bad name. This particular gun is clearly not safe to shoot and, in my opinion, clearly not a properly deactivated gun, as would be expected in the U.K.. Personally, I wouldn't call it a D.P. rifle either, for military training/drill, purely on safety grounds.

Replacement came in Wednesday, cleaned it up Thursday, shot it Friday. Nice gun - good stock, Oveido crest, lange vizier rear sight, hinged floor plate, good bore. Crown is not good due to the rifle looking like someone left it muzzle down for extended periods but I think that can be quickly fixed by a counterbore or moving the sight back slightly and just cutting that little bit off the barrel since it's not like these are some one off heirloom. It will need it to restore accuracy as I'm getting the occasional keyhole at 50m but I'm happy overall as I can fix that, unlike holes in the barrel :lol:

https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...so7zuoun-1.jpg

Other than the keyholing aspect, I like it. Glad the guy came through for you. I'm afraid a lot of them wouldn't have. Counter boring is amazingly easy, hand drill a good bit and a very careful 5 seconds. I'd tape off the bit real well because it's easy to go too deep. Now if it were a fancy rifle that I was expecting to get super accuracy out of, I'd probably get a gunsmith to do it but for one of these, save the $50.

These are coming out of Century via Samco? Somebody needs to notify Century ASAP. Not a joke if even a single rifle slips by.

As far as I can tell, these have been sitting in the Samco warehouses since they went bankrupt and were auctioned off. Fellow I bought mine from got thousands of them. Not sure if he got them all or if several guys did. None looked like they were taken apart and inspected. Mine was very difficult to get apart.

Yeah, if this was a nice hunting gun I'd face the bad part of the barrel off on a lathe then make a new crown, or a good military gun counter bore on a lathe. This gun doesn't justify the expense of having a gunsmith do it and I don't have easy lathe access (well, easy access to a lathe where I can also bring a gun to). I'll just use my drill press. All I ask for out of my milsurps like this any more is to hold a 6" black at 100 yards which isn't too hard.

As for the origin these were from the Samco stash. I get the feeling the people I dealt with wound up with most of them (aside from perhaps the batch Classic got, with both parties likely getting them from Century who no longer has any) and my guess is they are now bore scoping them prior to selling them, like they did on my replacement.

Honestly it does raise some questions we'll never have answers to. Now one thing I noticed is a cartridge would not quite go all the way into the chamber on it's own - for safety reasons I obviously was not going to install the bolt and see if I could force it or tap it in. But I'm really curious what would happen if you could force it close and fire it in a controlled environment. Kind of like when Forgotten Weapons tested a Ross to the point of failure. My guess, if you could get it to chamber, would be that the case would rupture out the bottom of the chamber, probably blowing the bottom front of the receiver open. But if the bore is obstructed enough by the subtle burrs, then what?

I'd also be curious about why this was done and where it fits in the timeline of these guns being reworked to 7.62NATO/CETME. Alas I know of no good resources on this beyond the Spanish Mauser page.

Wow! Never heard/seen anything like this.
I got in on the first batch of SAMCO sell offs. 1923 date. 7mm. Numbers match all but bolt. Had greasy Navy Arms tags on it.

Tore it down (it was a cosmoline Queen) cleaned it up. Did a "Alabama Redneck proof test"...(strapped it to a tree...one round...with a 20 foot long piece of twin tied around the trigger)

Pulled from 20 feet away. Fired. No explosion. Calipered the case. All was well. Sent 20 more rounds down wind. FUN!
https://www.milsurps.com/showthread.php?t=57921

Dealer called 10 days ago with another batch. Had me one tucked back. Another nice example. 1927 date. Haven't cleaned it up yet.

Glad you found out and weren't hurt!

Took it out today after doing a counterbore last night. Bored it out to 19/64th in steps and to a depth of about .25". Cleaned it up, then took it out and shot it. Shot a three shot group of about 2.5" @ 50 yards, not bad for old Samco ammo. Will need to drift the front sight a little bit as like before it's shooting around 2.5" right. Overall satisfied if it shoots 4-4.5" at 100 for what the gun is and what I paid. Not able to get guns in the grease for $100 real often anymore.