1916 Amberg Gew98 Military Rifle

[Patrick Chadwick]

Very low serial number, (all matching),

Sorry, not so. As Jmoore pointed out, the bolt sleeve appears to be marked with a different number. Since the average soldier would not have a spare sleeve to make a swap (or mistake) when dismantling/reassembling his rifle, the mismatch suggests that at some time the bolt was completely disassembled and reassembled on the same bench as with other rifles or parts thereof. The finish also looks "too good to be true".

Re: "All matching". On an Imperial Gew98 that means (no guarantee of completeness or correctness)
- Full number on barrel, receiver, butt behind the swivel (dropped after 1908), bolt body, barrel channel, trigger guard, floorplate, buttplate ...
- Last two digits on most items large enough to stamp, i.e. cleaning rod, front cap, backsight leaf, slider, trigger arm, bolt, bolt sleeve, bolt nut, safety lever, extractor ...
- Acceptance stamps on pretty well everything - even the wood screws (up to 1905)

... And, of course, the "Lange Vizier", not the later style of backsight.

It looks as if this rifle has had a complete makeover by somebody. Who that was, is now impossible to tell. And as several contributors have pointed out, look at the bore rather than the external finish!

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[john_anch_ak]

Howdy again everyone! Well, the rifle finally arrived late last week. I think they must have just put it on a very slow barge to Anchorage!

You are certainly correct about the "all matching s/n's" Nope, not even close once I took it apart to clean it up, and the metal parts certainly needed to soak in hot water with TSP to get that crud off. But now everything is clean and right now has a light coating of oil on all metal parts. Two springs were broken so I have them on order from Numrich Arms, other than that everything looks great.
I scrubbed the heck out of the bore and chamber. When I first looked at the bore/chamber I thought it was rusted and no good. After cleaning I have to say both the bore and chamber look to be in fine shape. Rifling and grooves still look pretty sharp in the barrel and the chamber looks good too. So maybe I lucked out there! I don't have a borescope so have no way to take any pictures of the bore and chamber.
The wood is in pretty good shape so I don't intend on doing anything with it, (and other than cleaning and oiling the metal parts of course).
I am going to upload some pictures I took of the stock that are not in the original pictures that I got from the auction website. The stock does have someone's name in pencil and you can also see that the buttstock was repaired at sometime. There is also a flaming bomb that says "MP 8" on the buttstock. Not at all sure what that means.
At any rate, I am happy with my newest addition and it was made the same year my Mother was born.